Peaks and Valleys

Game Design Document

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Game Design

 

Summary

 Peaks and Valleys is a story-driven, horror game in Virtual Reality. One key feature that sets it apart is an integrated GUI, in the form of a heart rate monitor that you must drag around with you and frequently look at to make sure your vitals stay high.

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Gameplay

 The gameplay should be similar to that of Amnesia, where you don’t have any weapons and can only distract and hide from your enemies, whether they’re real or just in your head. The goal of the game is to earn forgiveness from the child that will haunt the main character throughout the game because the it was his fault for the child’s death. The player will have to use a plethora of pick-ups to ensure his sanity remains intact, and his IV bag never goes empty, so that you can uncover more information about the child and why it’s haunting you and while you’re distracting other enemies that you can only run from.

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Mindset

 The player is going to feel weak at times, and stressed. While in VR, the game will be paying attention to how nervous the player is and will play off that emotion. The heart rate monitor will reflect those readings and you’ll be more likely to receive a jump scare as well. We want the player to feel anxious, but wanting to progress deeper into the story.

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Technical

Screens

1. Title Screen

   1. Options

2. Game

   1. Heart Rate Monitor / Inventory

   2. Checkpoint cut-scenes

   3. Pause

3. End Credits

 

Controls

 How will the player interact with the game? Will they be able to choose the controls? What kind of in-game events are they going to be able to trigger, and how? (e.g. pressing buttons, opening doors, etc.)

 The player will interact with the game visually with the VR headset. The controls will be preset, but will be your basic layout (i.e. left thumbstick for movement, B for the heart rate monitor, X for doors, etc.). Some events will be triggered by his or her headset movement (if he or she is nervous or scared, their head movements may be able to indicate that. Further research will be conducted to prove this notion.).

 

Mechanics

 The new, experimental mechanics that we’ll be incorporating will be dealing with the refreshed, VR environment. The game will be reading the player’s movements to determine if he or she is nervous or scared and will display that reading on the heart rate monitor.

 

Development

Game Flow

1. The player starts in a hospital room.

2. The player can glance around the room and observe some items like the heart rate monitor.

3. After a while, the nurses will be gone and the hospital will get dark.

4. The player will be visited by some nightmare-inducing creatures.

5. The player will then be visited by the spirit of a little child.

6. The player and the child will exchange some nasty dialog. (This could be an opportunity to produce multiple endings based on what you say to the child, not only here, but throughout the game.)

7. The screen will go black and then reopen with the player still in the hospital bed.

8. Upon examination of a clock on the wall, two or three days will have past since the altercation with the child.

9. The player’s character will feel weaker than prior to meeting the child, as noted in his groans as you struggle to sit up.

10. Since it appears to you that no one is coming to check on you, the player will be able to get up and slowly move around the room.

11. In this room, you find a couple IV Bags, one of which you will have to attach to your machine, as well as an adrenaline syringe and a bottle of Rythmol pills.

12. The player will be advised that the adrenaline shot and pills are to help control his or her heart rate, displayed on the monitor that they must drag around with them, however, taking too many of either will result in overdose.

13. The player will notice the character is able to move somewhat quicker since they have used one of the IV Bags in the room.

14. The player will now be allowed to leave the room, but it will be stated that this is also a “safe room.” That means that the player may return here whenever and can hide from the enemies outside the room that will go away after a while.

15. The hospital outside the room will look dilapidated and gloomy. Paying a homage to Silent Hill.

16. The player will explore to gain more knowledge on what’s going on at the hospital, and why he or she is being haunted by this spectral child.

17. As the story unravels, the player will understand the consequences of his or her actions prior to waking up in the hospital and will discover what the would appease the child.

18. Once the player earns the forgiveness of the child, it’ll be revealed that that child is yours and that it was your fault it’s dead now.

19. The child will stop haunting you after this cutscene and you once again wake up in another bed.

20. This bed isn’t in the hospital, it appears as you look around, unable to get up because you’re hand-cuffed to the rails.

21. A cutscene follows where you’re taken down a few hallways. You glance up at the people moving you around, and briefly, they take on the look of some of the creatures you were seeing in the hospital.

22. As they bring inside a padded room, they welcome you to your new home.

23. When asked about what happened at the hospital, they simply respond with “What hospital?”

24. End Game

 

 

System Components

1. 2D/3D renderer

 

1. State Machine

 

1. Save/Load system

 

1. Integrated GUI on Heart Rate Monitor

 

1. Collision system

 

1. Particle system

 

1. VR tracking

   1. Reading Movement system

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Asset Breakdown

1. Art Assets

   1. Player (4 states)

   2. Enemies (3 states)

   3. Environment (2 states)

   4. Integrated GUI Monitor

Art is currently developed with Photoshop, Max, and Blender.

 

1. Text Assets

   1. Tutorial

   2. Tips

   3. Scripted Dialogue

   4. Narration

 

1. Sound Assets

   1. In-game sound

   2. Heart Rate Monitor sound

   3. Background music

   4. Voice

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Graphics

Artistic Style

 The artist style will be unique as it is with nearly every artist. We want to instill fear and make the player feel unnatural just being there. This is one of the ways the game will take a toll on the main character as they try to understand what’s going on around them. This is inspired by the way Silent Hill changes its entire environment around you. As the player goes to leave the room in the hospital, only the doors to that room will look “normal.”


 

Schedule

1. Develop base classes

   1. Base entity

      1. Base player

      2. Base pick-ups

      3. Base enemy

   2. Base app state

      1. Game world

      2. Menu world

2. Develop player and basic block classes

   1. Physics / collisions

3. Find some smooth controls/physics

4. Develop other derived classes

   1. Pick-ups

   2. Enemies

5. Design levels

   1. Introduce movement

   2. Introduce pick-ups

   3. Account for exploration

6. Design sounds

7. Design music

 

A rough estimation of the time frame for fulfillment would be around 10-11 months, with 3-week Sprints being the way new pieces of the game will be added.

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