Lament is a roguelite journey through the five stages of grief; overcoming Denial, Anger, Bargaining, and Depression to reach Acceptance. Each stage presents hauntingly beautiful unique challenges and environments, symbolising emotional obstacles and growth. Survive, adapt, and ultimately find peace in a quest toward healing and acceptance.

The roguelite genre structure lends itself very well for exploring the theme of grief because its core mechanics and design principles. The iterative nature, characterised by repeated attempts and gradual progress, reflects the non-linear process of overcoming grief, a cycle of setbacks, breakthroughs, and revisiting emotions. Roguelites often emphasise loss as a natural consequence of failure, but they also offer growth through persistence. Players may lose out on resources, progress, or opportunities in each run but gain new skills, knowledge, or upgrades for future attempts.

Loss is inevitable, but it also fosters resilience and personal growth over time.

Pitch

Confront and overcome the entities that stand in your way of moving on and discovering a life beyond grief.

Story Overview

The story centres around a grieving protagonist tasked with the burden of recovering Acceptance through the Tree of Sorrow, a being once full of life that now stands weak and hopeless. They must fight their way through the four regions and confront the Four Griefs that have corrupted the land, overcoming them and returning their souls to the tree. The protagonist is then able to move on, having brought peace and hope, not only to the world, but to themself.

Core Mechanics

✧ Combat: Pass through waves of enemies in four different regions of a hostile world by utilising primary attacks and dodges. Once levels are cleared, the player must overcome the unique Boss of that region.

✧ Exploration: Become immersed in game world areas dedicated to depicting the metaphorical representations of the Five Stages of Grief through art and sound.

✧ Progression System: Use item drops obtained in roguelite-style levels to simultaneously guide players through the game whilst developing their player stats in a way that better suits their personal play style.

Gameplay Experience

In essence, I want the player to navigate and understand the importance of the emotional journey of loss and overcoming grief. That is the Essential Experience.

By collecting and recovering the Tree of Sorrow’s lost Terra Shards and Terra Souls, the player will be further informed of the world’s story through interactive dialogue.

Player Motivation

The player motivation is the drive to help recover the Tree of Sorrow by confronting the four Griefs of the world in order to restore peace.

Platform

The game would ideally be on a wide range of platforms, PC, PS4/PS5 and Xbox One. Which would require both keyboard and mouse bindings and controller mapping. The game should be simplistic enough to adapt it to market to a broader audience. Making it available on most platforms would be ideal.

Target Audience

This game will be developed for both console and PC, which will enable the game to receive a wide reception of audiences. Players will be placed in the 12 to 25 age range, this is because it is expected that younger players will revel in the combat and exploration aspect, while older players will get more enjoyment from the narrative and overarching story/meaning. The art direction is intended to influence any audience regardless of gender or age.

The more challenging elements of themes (death, violence), visuals and language will likely make it inappropriate for some audiences therefore being PEGI12, or an ESRB rating of T (Teen).