Game Storyline + mood board

 

Project Ideas and Inspiration

For my project I'm thinking about basing my game concept work around the theme of horror maybe in the style of a slasher. Some of the games that I've looked at that embody a lot of the traditional slasher formula are Clock Tower, Puppet combo and haunting ground. Throughout my work I will reference a lot of these games as many of the ideas within them translate the traditional slasher formula often seen in movies (Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween, Friday the 13th etc.).

A tradition of the Slasher formula is the trope of the "Final girl". The final girl is a lead female character who manages to survive the killers pursuits and inevitably defeat the killer. Typically the final girl is a young women or teenage, beginning as naïve and gradually grows as a character as the deaths of those around her force her to rise up and either escape or defeat the killer through Wits rather than power. While the formula first was pointed out within films it can also be applied to a lot of the games I have been using as an inspiration for my concept, Clock tower features this trope several times throughout the series. Jennifer the lead heroine is a young 14 girl thrust into an unsavory situation with her friends who are all killed at the hands of the 2 killers. She is the only one to remain, forcing her to deal with the 2 remaining killers.  Concurrently, this is the same for all the games in the series. 

Puppet Combo employ this trope throughout the entirety of there games, Babysitter Bloodbath. Sarah, a young 14 year old girl is forced to protect the young boy she is babysitting as a killer stalk her throughout the house. Throughout the game Sarah is pursued by the killer with no means to defend herself until it culminates in a final fight. In Haunting Ground the main protagonist is yet again another young girl (18 years old) who is forced to defeat her pursuers through her wits in a foreign environment.

Looking at all these games there is a clear pattern, The protagonist is typically a  teenage girl, who is found displaced in a foreign environment.(Sarah is babysitting at house she's never been to, Jennifer is taken to a mansion, Fiona is kidnapped and awakens in a castle). From looking at these games I will make my character a young teenager, and go with a foreign setting similar to the castle in haunting ground and the mansion in Clock tower.

Plot Summary

Alice has truly never had a real home, constantly changing cities year after year with little explanation from her father, with no friends and no real place to call home her heart begins to grow bitter. As she and her father are about to depart for another city, she lashes out running away in the aftermath of her words, her father chases after her however his old legs aren't as they used to be. At the dead of night Alice returns home, calling out to her father she receives no reply, she quickly quiets herself upon seeing the blood trail and smashed glass within the house her father’s body breathing silently at the end of the trail before she can speak she is quickly silenced by an unknown force, and awakens in mysterious mansion confused and terrified she begins to search for her father, the only true home she has ever known.

Item Designs

In a lot of these survival horror games (Clock tower, haunting Ground, Babysitter Bloodbath) the player has to interact with their environment to solve puzzles to access new areas and progress through the story. A lot of these items fit within there environment for example, In babysitter Bloodbath the player must find a key to access a cabinet to collect a gun the key is just a simple key that would fit in a midwestern home and makes sense, however within the environments of Clock tower and Haunting ground there environments are bizarre, gothic and ancient, so having a puzzle where you need to reassemble a mannequin/corpse to gain an item to progress the story doesn't seem out of place. So I decided to do some rough drawing of some of the potential items that could be found and interacted with by the player.