One of the mechanics that will be introduced mid game to keep the game play refreshed, is stealth and sanity. The stealth bar is a way to keep the horror elements whilst also challenging the player.
Stealth is mechanic that requires the player to sneak around the enemy entity, in this case, the audience member. If the player:
- Walks or runs past them
- Lets go of the sneak key
The audience member will lunge towards them with great speed and jump scare them, consequently killing the player – this is called a dead end.
Sanity bar affects, remedies and
The sanity bar is out of 100%, when an audience member lunges towards you, your sanity goes down by 10% and when you’re hiding from the ring master, your sanity goes down continuously by 1% until he leaves the room. The player is alerted on their screen if the ring master is coming.
- If the player messes up the mini game once, the ring master gets suspicious and stays a bit longer.
- If the player makes 2 mistakes, the ring master will catch you, leading to the player having a dead end.
- If the player fails to find a hiding spot, the ring master will catch them resulting in a dead end.
- It’s important to note that the player can’t die during the controlled breathing game, if their sanity reaches 1%, it stays that way until the end of the game. Once it does reach 1% however, the ring master leaves after 10 seconds or so.
If the sanity bar reaches below 80%, the player will star to see the world a lot differently, their interactions with NPCs seem more cold and distant and the screen changes slightly as well. If the sanity bar reaches 30% or lower, the NPCs have more aggressive dialogues- some may even break the 4th wall, calling out the player behind the screen. The UI also changes slightly as well to match the current state of the protagonist.
There are a few remedies to combat the loss of sanity;
- The player can buy carnival food, this restores a tiny bit of sanity
- The player can go to the medical tent to get treatment which recovers a lot of sanity, but this is expensive.
- Once the player reaches a certain friendship threshold with one of the main NPCs, they will be able to unlock a recipe that restores a decent amount of sanity. However, the player will need certain ingredients to make this.
