A mock-up story concept based around the design mechanics of “run, sneak, or fight,” and the creative pillar of making sure to “motivate the player to embrace the horror.”

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Release (Working Title)

The Fugitive and A Quiet Place Part II meet The Long Dark and Silent Hill

 

• You play as a wrongly convicted murderer who has barely survived an attack from a giant, hideous monster that attacked the prison bus transporting you upstate. You, two other inmates and a guard are the sole survivors. Together, you start off by alternating between crafting one time-use weapons to fight off the monster’s offspring and sneaking around the monster and its offspring to scavenge for resources and find clues of how to defeat it once and for all as you slowly learn more about the people you’re with and where you are. 

• This leads to you fleeing the danger of the forest for a nearby small town. There, you must run, hide, and fight off not just the monster but those in the town who will do anything to save their own skin so that you can discover the key to defeating the person responsible for the malevolent evil behind everything that has happened to you once and for all and finally gain your freedom. 

• Ultimately, you discover an abandoned house in the town where a murder took place years before and realize while searching within it that you are trapped in a coma in the hospital of the prison you were supposed to be transported to at the beginning of the game.. You are perpetually stuck in a living nightmare and are responsible for the monster’s creation as it and it’s offspring represents the person you killed and your own-self justifications for you believing you were never responsible for the murder you committed. The three other people with you are manifestations of the family of the person you murdered. The townspeople represent the lawyers, judge, jury, witnesses and bailiffs who were at your trial. With this discovery, you can accept your actions and “move on” or perpetually run, fight, and hide against everyone throughout the rest of the town, unable to accept your fate, trying to find a way to escape until the monster finally overwhelms you and the screen fades to black.

 

(During testing, the designer says that players are requesting a "crouch" mechanic be added to the game. Here is the tweaked pitch incorporating the new mechanic into the narrative concept of the game.)

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Release (Working Title)

The Fugitive and A Quiet Place Part II meet The Long Dark and Silent Hill

​

• You play as a wrongly convicted murderer who has barely survived an attack from a giant, hideous monster that attacked the prison bus transporting you upstate and left you with a debilitating leg injury. You are patched up with the help of two other inmates and a guard of which you are the sole survivors. Together, you start off by alternating between crafting one time-use weapons to fight off the monster’s offspring and sneaking around the monster and its offspring to scavenge for resources to survive the night and escape the forest to find further medical treatment to treat your leg. (The player will have limited movement and crouching due to their injury that will slowly increase over time as they heal throughout the story). 

• This leads to you fleeing the danger of the forest for a nearby small town. There, you must run, hide, and fight off not just the monster but those in the town who will do anything to save their own skin so that you can discover the key to defeating the person responsible for the malevolent evil behind everything that has happened to you once and for all and finally gain your freedom. Throughout, in order to crouch and sprint for an extended period of time, you must heal it using limited medical supplies.

• Ultimately, you discover an abandoned house in the town where a murder took place years before and realize while searching within it that you are trapped in a coma in the hospital of the prison you were supposed to be transported to at the beginning of the game (your leg injury revealed to be a brain injury you suffered from a prison fight). You are perpetually stuck in a living nightmare and are responsible for the monster’s creation as it and it’s offspring represent the person you killed and your own-self justifications for you believing you were never responsible for the murder you committed. The three other people with you are manifestations of the family of the person you murdered. The townspeople represent the lawyers, judge, jury, witnesses and bailiffs who were at your trial. With this discovery, you can accept your actions and “move on” or perpetually run, fight, and hide against everyone throughout the rest of the town, unable to accept your fate, trying to find a way to escape until the monster finally overwhelms you and the screen fades to black.