For our Synoptic Project the very first thing we were assigned to do was create a game pitch based off of our game brief, in which we have to associate or ideas with mischief making like in 'Untitled Goose Game', so I wanted to take this idea and further develop off of it. Here I'll slot in slides of my presentation and go into detail about my ideas for the project.
As an idea for for the title, I thought it'd be nice if you were asked to enter your name, once the title screen appears it'd display 'Sweet Dreams, _____', incorporating you into the title of the game.
The game would take place in levels, 'Day' and 'Night', both having their own quirks and things that need to be done. As a main premise for the entire game things such as needing to interact with items around your house and characters will always be necessary, as well as needing to be completing some kind of objective. To help strengthen my ability to draft out some sort of mischief making experience I thought that'd be made quite a bit easier by paying through the eyes of a curious child who ought to always be getting into some sort of mischief even if this is merely implicit through the eyes of other characters the concept of interacting through imaginary friends and the like.
Levels will take place in 2 parts and combined together generate a unique combination of innocent fun and horror elements.
Day - During the day the sun is out, the atmosphere is warm and tranquil, yellow and browns flood the area. During this time (although there are no present time limits), the player must complete objectives around the house displayed on UI in the form of a diary, each objective messily written out and crossed out when initiated and completed. Objectives the player must tend to include making mischief as their Primary theme, whether it be pestering a sleeping Father on the armchair by throwing soft objects to wake him up or chasing your pet cat around the garden to back them into a corner. They all end in a small feel-good transition where the player might interact with the character with a hug to complete the objective and cross it off the list. This entire interlude is expressed to great length to seem happy and wholesome to generate the best contrast for the second part of the level.
Night - Once objectives are complete, a small cutscene plays where the player goes to sleep in bed. They abruptly awake seconds after in a violent scream, what was once warm and serene is now cold, with blues and blacks setting the tone as an unwelcoming place to be. The player picks up their diary, as they do the UI reappears and a question mark is engraved into pages as if almost scratched into form and filled with deep black ink. The player now moves with a trembling stutter as an oppose to happily skipping about. You pick up your nightlight and go to investigate a now very different household. The main premise of the night level is to envelope contrast and to better do so, the one prime objective is something you'd find in the main level but very much flipped on its head. For example, instead of waking up Dad you must now traverse a decaying room of objects littered everywhere without hitting and making them fall, because that would wake up whatever demon is sleeping on the sofa and representing Dad and end the level for you, making you restart. Upon completing it you let out a silent sigh of relief and wake up, ready to start the second day level.
The control scheme is pretty basic and probably reminiscent of many many other PC games. Although it should be noted that crouching is an important mechanic as it lets you get into spots otherwise not possible and also makes moving slower but silent.
The game will retain an isometric camera view to add some sort of stylisation to the game, it also allows us as developers to get more leeway with being able to make models more low-poly for the game's performance as you're much further away from them. Although not in the presentation I thought later on a nice idea might have been to use the left and right arrow keys to allow for movement of the camera on a fixed 45 degree basis, in hopes this would make puzzle solving more interesting and perhaps a little more challenging because their might be things you need to interact with which are currently out of view, promoting this use of this feature and always having the player actively looking around the game.
As shows here, I feel dialouge would stirp away some of the game's aesthetic so would communicate with sounds as an oppose to speech. Music would play a strong part in this game and definitely strengthen the contrast of the 2 parts I keep referencing back to.
The characters for the games would greatly resemble those in Untitled Goose game and can be compared to any simplistic looking, featureless characters such as from Monument Valley, they'd look quite simple, just complex enough to animate nicely and potential monstrous forms of characters would need quite a bit more development time to polish.
Here is an expected minimum and maximum I feel should be both acceptable and achievable respectively.
Finally, a Gantt chart entailing the planned development time, but should be reevaluated if I were to have got a group.
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