Generating Narrative Ideas
- Key factor → needs to fit in with the horror to cute concept
What if…
Exorcism of something that is deemed cute (cat, dog, tameable animals etc.) is in a monstrous form.
Idea: You play as a practitioner
- Mechanic idea
↪ Series of inputs / mini games to do during the exorcism + different possessed things require different items to conduct the practice (some are harder to do = higher level objects needed [rarer items need to be collected] high risk high reward mechanic)
How does this follow the horror to cute factor? → Artstyle
Art style could start off dull and lacking saturation/vibrancy like a typical horror game. The monstrous form should have indications of a cuter form (cat-like ears) but this shouldn’t be very apparent, this keeps the mystery for the players experience.
When the exorcism is complete, the creature will turn cute with a cute particle effects / squeaky sound effect. The colour palette of the room and the character will change to vibrant / illuminated colours.
The narrative could be…
- practitioners animal/pet got stolen/lost and turned into a monster, exorcise the other monsters to find your beloved pet
- after a nuclear fallout/pandemic/crisis, you have been tasked with defeating the resulting monsters
- to become the high priestess witch, you must exorcise … amount of possessed creatures. You can choose whether to be a good or bad witch. Instead of saving, they could harvest their souls to gain power.
I liked idea 3 a lot personally so I decided to expand it by making a mini mindmap to further it.
The word initiation sparked an additional idea and more developed choice 3, now choice 4
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- A witch is doing her initiation, ordered to harvest souls for ritual. The climax is that they are all human/alive/creatures. Narrative path is the choice to continue with the initiation and ignore morals (evil) or deviate and free them instead (good). Different endings based on players choice throughout the duration of the game.
Peer Feedback
The first person I asked had a brief opinion with the 3rd Narrative being his favourite. ‘I like this one, feels like it gives the player more gameplay options and could be expanded on.’
Receiving very brief feedback made me go and ask my boyfriend for his opinion as I know I could practically conduct an interview-like feedback session with him. He initially said:
- Narrative number 2 is bad, scrap it.
- Narrative 3+4 are similar, can choose either or to continue with
↪ In terms of ascension, its doing the same thing picking between 3+4 is reliant on which you prefer as they are too similar
↪ However, I am a fan of number 4’s good and bad choice mechanic
- 1 is cool as it’s different haven’t seen it before
↪ Practitioner? The prequel of the story could be that the pet was a gift to celebrate the character becoming a practitioner and that’s why it’s deemed important when it got lost/stolen.
Further Discussion about Narrative 4
It could start in the middle of their initiation. The option, good path, is to release their souls from unseen encounters. A gradual build up – need to harvest 5.
The game starts off doing the ritual to harvest, that’s how you find out. (scraped replaced with next idea)
If the climax for the narrative is that the creatures are human, why is it revealed at the start?:Z
[]More so you would have a ‘soul pouch’ that has to be filled to a certain amount. The game starts off with it being half full already and the player is only with the protagonist during the second half of the process.
You harvest the first one you encounter, a forced choice, the protagonist and player doesn’t know that it’s the bad option but it’s still there. Therefore it doesn’t impact their morality. May have a side character/rival that you encounter.
You have an exorcism/harvest, those are the peaks in gameplay. In between there could be mazes or puzzles, these you traverse through and act as filler to collect items for harvests.
This is where you can encounter the rival who leaks info about the harvests. This is with bad intentions and is portrayed as a creep. [idea replaced]
First capture wouldn’t affect anything as previously stated, but it should be questioned by the player. Choices become more meaningful and impactful when the reveal occurs at the climax.
Instead of instantly harvesting them they could just capture them in a jar and seal them with a spell? Could capture and release them in the wilderness? Or instead only capture them with the intent to harvest.
[] Around filler areas the steps of the initiation process are revealed bit by bit with some sort of object, stones, engravings , pages, book pieces etc. The last piece of the lost pieces says that your harvesting witches that were banished from the coven. Their punishment for not following some sort of order was to be turned into those creatures.
Bad ending would be becoming the priestess and giving in to the darkness. Good ending would be releasing the mutated witches and challenging the coven.
Mechanic Ideas
↪ Capturing → Different for each creature
Mechanic idea – Original idea 1 repurposed
↪ Series of inputs / mini games to do during the exorcism + different possessed things require different items to conduct the practice (some are harder to do = higher level objects needed [rarer items need to be collected] high risk high reward mechanic)
The witch always gets into a minigame fight scene with the creature to get it weakened, once it’s weakened the option to either harvest or release will appear. If harvest is chosen then an intense spell scene will be done where they will turn into a soul orb. If release appears then they gradually turn into their original form.
Visual Ideas
Overall game will be purple, blue hues. After a harvest or release has occurred the area will turn a brighter colour palette with oranges etc. Maybe around the map there is a scattered abundance of unlit candles and they automatically get lit after the action, this is how it would transition the colour palette?
From this I need to make…
- Protagonist/Main Character
- 4 filler scenes, each with a mission/puzzle built in to find resources for harvesting and to find the initiation plaques.
- 5 Creatures, each with 2 forms (one a mutated creature, one a witch)
- Introduction scene, a still image of the coven giving out the order to the protagonist
- Good + Bad ending scenes
- UI → Moral bar only appears when its affected, soul pouch inventory
I am also changing the concept of it being an initiation into it being an ascension as it would prevent plot holes about the morality of being in that coven originally, with the bad parts being revealed once the protagonist reaches the higher role from the ascensions process.