Impending Doom

We got an assignment about designing an impending doom game and writing an essay about the game we wanted to make. I just finished my essay and sent it in and thought I should share it here on my blog too.

Under the knife

When the player starts up the game the character is lying on an autopsy table in a quiet, white room in a mortuary. The player can look around in the room but is unable to move any limbs or talk. Some unidentifiable person enters the room, picks up a scalpel and starts the necropsy on the body right in front of the player’s eyes. The player is given a few choices, trying to move their legs, arms or trying to speak up. In the top corner of the screen the player is watching the character losing blood while being cut open.

Game play

In Fundamentals of Game Design(Ernest Adams, 2014) it says “Games provide gameplay, that is challenges and actions that entertain. People enjoy a challenge, as long as they can reasonably expect to accomplish it”. I wanted to create a gameplay where you are given a few choices where the player might think that they could survive by doing these actions in a specific order. Of course there is no possible way that the player could survive in this nerve-racking scenario but I want to engender the feeling that in some kind of way the player could make the character speak up or show that they are still alive.

But since the gameplay is very graphical it is going to be hard for the player to make the decisions. How are they going to react? Will they try different combinations of these actions and losing more blood faster or will they try to stay calm while playing it and only trying to talk during the autopsy? The player should not know that it is an impending doom game. Therefor I want more actions to be added after they have struggled with the three actions that are available in the beginning. For example after the player has tried to move their legs for five times they now are also given the action to try to move their feet. And after that they can try to move their toes. The player is slowly trying to get back the control over their body and it is working, slowly they can feel more of their body and try to control it but the time is running out. Of course it is not working in the end but it will give the feeling to the player that they maybe could survive it if they just were a little bit faster or made the right choices right from the beginning. Every move the character makes they lose more blood, the more they get control over their body the faster they are going to die. There is no win-situation.

Fun

In Adam Mayes presentation Introduction week 2.1 MDA he talked about fun and how different games could fun to play in different ways. There are 8 different kinds of fun, for example sensation, fantasy and fellowship. It is hard to fit in an impending doom game under any of these fun genres since it is very short and does not have a lot of story. But I believe “Under the knife” is more of a challenge game, as there is a main goal that the player must try to achieve by timing, doing actions and critical thinking. The player must think twice before pressing any button. They have to be critical towards everything they make the character do. I strive towards that the player would want to replay it more than once to try to survive and to try out other strategies. The game could also fit under sensation; I want the game to feel very realistic and beautiful in that way. If the game was not in 3D or not from a first person perspective it would lose the charm and the experience would not be the same.

Story and setting

Neither the setting nor the story is important. Why the character is lying on that table in the beginning could be for various reasons. They mistook the character for dead or someone kidnaped them and now is going to sell their organs on the black market. Maybe it is some sadistic murder that drugged the character. It is up to the player to decide why they are there but I hope they will focus on trying to get up or scream to survive. Not wonder why the character is in a mortuary.

For me this is an impending doom, it is slow but inevitable. The player is seeing what is happening right in front of them and they are giving the possibility to do something but the body does not respond. As player you cannot make the right choice to survive. It will make the player frustrated and give a feeling of being helpless. It does not matter how hard they try or if they just accept what is going to happen. In the end the character is being cut open from a first person point of view and the player have to watch it. The character will pass out from pain and die from blood loss and the player could not do anything to save them.