Assignment 2 — Game Concept Devlog

By Eliza Gurney (636267)

Sudezine, "SD Boo Font", (N.D),  https://www.fontspace.com/sd-boo-font-f94391) (Background art by Eliza Gurney)

Overview

Working Title: Ghostware

Concept statement:

Prepare to get spooked in Ghostware, a charmingly eerie action-adventure game where you guide Lumen, a ghost-hunting robot that is armed with the deadly Spirit Light 2000 and an array of ghost-hunting items. Embark on an adventure where you will expel evil ghosts, find Lumen's stolen parts, repair your ghost-hunting arsenal, and try to escape the Phantom Manor alive! 

Genre/ category: horror action-adventure game

Ghostware is a horror game with action-adventure elements. The horror can be seen in the setting and enemies, with the player guiding Lumen around the quiet corridors of the Phantom Manor whilst encountering an array of ghostly apparitions. The action-adventure elements can be seen in the gameplay style, with Lumen using light-based weapons to destroy or banish ghosts as well as exploring the manor to find Spirit Orbs for upgrades. Ghostware also has the most common convention of the horror genre: jumpscares. Via well-timed lightning strikes or a ghost sneaking up on Lumen, Ghostware provides a more eerie than outright scary horror game experience that utilises elements of action-adventure to force the player to explore the spooky secrets of the  Phantom Manor,

Concept creation process and influences

Word count: 315

For this project, the first step was deciding who the player character would be, with the goal of choosing a character that has interesting gameplay potential. This led to the choices of either an animal, ghost, skeleton, or robot, with the ultimate decision being a small robot that has a variety of gadgets and abilities. The ghost character idea was then reused to become the main enemy idea for the game in a haunted house setting which subsequently made the game's main genre horror. With the main character, setting, enemies, and genre decided, the last step was choosing the overall concept for the gameplay. The gameplay concept ended up as an explorative game with an end goal of finding all the upgrades and escaping the mansion as well as a secondary goal of achieving a good score/ rank based on different gameplay aspects such as collectibles. This gameplay style was influenced by a mashup of several games:

• Luigi's Mansion by Nintendo served as inspiration for the overall atmosphere and idea of collectibles. (Refer to Video 1)
• The Torchlit Terror minigame within Wii Party served as inspiration for the main gameplay mechanic of using light to attack the ghosts. (Refer to Video 2)
• The loop of exploring an area to find upgrades and the top-down semi-fixed perspective is influenced by Rose-engine games Signalis. (Refer to Video 3)
• The use of a mouse to control the behavior of the light in a top-down environment is inspired by the flashlight in Acid Wizard Studios Darkwood. (Refer to Video 4)
• A light-up antenna to alert the player to enemies is inspired by the radio noise in the Silent Hill games by Konami. (Refer to video 5)

Other gameplay ideas within the concept were original such as the use of a battery tied to certain actions to introduce an element of resource management as the player does not use a gun.

Video 1: NintendoCentral, "Luigi's Mansion - Complete Walkthrough (Full Game)", (2018), https://youtu.be/6w3qTjjxctI?si=zZVZSNpeLL9x-K57 - Spooky but cute atmosphere and collectibles hidden in furniture.

Video 2: NintendoMovies, "Wii Party - Torchlit Terror", (2015), https://youtu.be/vLLCLfcCLCk?si=0K2kvgzWID0MgSX - Torch attacking mechanic.

Video 3: TheBaldMan,  "SIGNALIS Gameplay Walkthrough FULL GAME - No Commentary", (2022), https://youtu.be/FxCvnuWNbgg?si=JsXAFc0BRJ0S23Fw - Camera perspective and objective-based game progression.

Video 4: statyk, "Darkwood Night 2 Spooks GIF", (2019), https://gfycat.com/farthornycommabutterfly-darkwood - Top-down camera effect.

Video 5: Ashley Pruitt, "Silent Hill (1999) - What's going on with that radio?", (2017), https://youtu.be/diknIjVTKxo?si=Ny7YGAQPSHwHcTK3 - An item that alerts the player if an enemy is near.

Audience and Competitive Analysis

Word count: 390

The core audience age group for Ghostware is pre-teens to young adults, with the more specifically targeted subset of this group being casual gamers who enjoy less visually scary horror games regardless of gender.

As a video game genre, horror games have seen massive success in younger audiences, with the creation and subsequent success of Five Nights at Freddy’s in 2014 causing a major increase in horror games aimed at a younger audience via mascot horror. (Christian Simon, “Modern Horror Games Have An Interesting New Target Audience”, (2022), https://studybreaks.com/tvfilm/modern-horror-games-target-audience/) Whilst Ghostware may not directly follow the mascot horror genre, it does follow the convention of a cute art style and mascot via Lumen and the ghosts that can be seen as more appealing to a younger audience. (tvtropes, “Mascot Horror”, (N.A), https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MascotHorror) The easy-to-learn light mechanic also lends itself to a more casual and teen audience however the increasing difficulty and scariness as the game progresses steers the game away from being aimed at anyone below the age of pre-teen. Ghostware's design is not solely aimed at teenagers, with the game being aimed at young adults for its fun gameplay and story that does not treat the player like a child, with room for more skilled players to try and achieve the best end rank/ score. The less child-friendly aspects later in the game also appeal to teen audiences as it makes teens feel more mature and allows for both teenagers and adults alike to enjoy the horror experience. (Safer Schools NI, “Handle with Scare”, (2023), https://saferschoolsni.co.uk/horror-genre-digital-age/)

Compared to similar ghost-hunting adventure games like Luigi’s Mansion, Ghostware features gameplay more akin to survival horror like Signalis without the use of guns, instead using light-based weapons to banish ghosts. (Refer to videos 1 and 3 for gameplay reference) Seeing that Luigi’s Mansion 3 sold 12.82 million copies worldwide as of March 2023, the appeal for a cute ghost-hunting game can be seen as extremely high, and with the differences in gameplay as mentioned previously, Ghostware provides a unique experience that will likely appeal to most who enjoy this niche. (Jim Norman, “Best-Selling Nintendo Switch Games - Every First-Party Game That Has Sold Over One Million Copies”, (2023), https://www.nintendolife.com/guides/best-selling-nintendo-switch-games-every-first-party-game-that-has-sold-over-one-million-copies?page=2) Ghostware also solves one of the main issues that cute ghost hunting games like Luigi’s Mansion 3 face, that being the decrease in the spooky atmosphere in preference of a more child-friendly game, with Ghostware striving to recapture the cute but eerie atmosphere that made the original Luigi’s mansion so charming. (No-Island-1194, “Does anyone else miss when Luigi’s Mansion was spooky ?”, (2023), https://www.reddit.com/r/Mario/comments/14r5kzy/does_anyone_else_miss_when_luigis_mansion_was/)

Overall Ghostware is aimed at pre-teens to young adults who want a casual horror game experience that is eerie but cute and has room for more skilled gameplay.

Game treatment and Concept art

Word count: 937

Key features overview

• Lumen’s arsenal: You will have access to an array of ghost-hunting weapons and tools to aid Lumen's escape.
• Battery power: Navigate wisely as you must carefully manage Lumen's power supply and avoid overheating, which would leave you and Lumen vulnerable to enemies.
• Spirit collectibles and Upgrades: Find Spirit Orbs strewn across the Phantom Manor which can be utilised to help upgrade Lumen's abilities.
• Open-ended structure: Carve your own path in the Phantom Manor! You can tackle Lumen's stolen equipment in any order you see fit, but be careful, as you rebuild Lumen's arsenal, the ghostly inhabitants of the manor grow ever stronger.
• Variety of enemies: Ghostware will challenge you with several unique ghost enemies who will test your reflexes and provide unique challenges as the game progresses.
• Multiple endings: Your performance and actions throughout the game will affect Lumen's destiny to reflect the decisions you have made.

Lumen and the player

Whilst you control Lumen, you do not actually play as them, instead, you play as a spectral guide named Puck who has decided to help Lumen retrieve all their equipment for a mysterious reason that Lumen does not know.

Lumen is a ghost-hunting robot with a variety of ghost-hunting tools that they use to take down even the most powerful spirits, unfortunately, Lumen has lost all their equipment as ghosts have taken it. At the start of the game, you will only have access to Lumen's storage chute, their Spirit Light 2000, and a ghost-detecting antenna. Thankfully you can easily detect the ghosts who have taken Lumen’s equipment with the antenna, the bad news is that you can only tell where they are because they are emitting extremely powerful spirit energy. (Refer to images 1, 2, and 3 for character design concepts)

Battery

Whilst Lumen is a powerful robot, they still need a battery to function, unfortunately for you, Lumen's battery was severely damaged by the ghosts that attacked them, meaning they will power down for a brief period if you use too much battery at once. This can be repaired if you can track down the ghost that stole Lumen's spare battery however that will be no easy task. (Refer to image 2 for the battery design concept)

Upgrades

By collecting Spirit Orbs, Puck can ‘upgrade’ Lumen by using spirit energy, granting them abilities including:

• Mare dash to quickly jump across the air.
• Phantom sprint to increase Lumen's movement speed.
• Spirit boost to improve the potency of Lumen's equipment.
• Wraith Protection to improve Lumen's overall health.

Weapons

You will use Lumens Spirit Light 2000 to banish any ghosts that stand in your way, using the mouse, you can point the Light towards enemies to lower their health until they disappear at the cost of slowly draining Lumens battery which needs time to recharge. (Refer to image 2 for Spirit Light design (face))

Later in the game, you can obtain Lumens Camera which has a similar effect to the Spirit light but with a shorter range, wider spread, and more powerful effect at the cost of higher power usage, making it great at dealing with a hoard of ghosts that are up close. (Refer to image 4)

Another Weapon you can obtain is the Polter Geister which has an exceptionally long range, shorter spread, with similar power and battery usage as the Camera, making it excellent at dealing with ghosts in a line or long range. (Refer to image 5)

Level Design

In Ghostware there is a basic tutorial before the game allows you to choose whichever area you want to go to receive a piece of lumens equipment. Each area has a series of rooms you can explore to find Spirit Orbs, fight ghosts, and solve puzzles to reach the final room of the area. Within each final room is an exceedingly powerful ghost that has stolen one of Lumen's pieces of equipment which you must defeat to repair Lumen’s arsenal. After defeating a boss ghost, time will pass, and the ghosts will grow in power. Alongside normal rooms, you will come across safe rooms where you can heal Lumen and upgrade them using any Spirit Orbs you have collected. (Refer to image 6 for targeted level design style)

Ghost types

You will come across a variety of ghosts during your exploration of the Phantom Manor, with seven main types of ghosts:

• Spirits: small harmless ghosts, you will collect these as Spirit Orbs for upgrades.
• Wraith: the standard ghost enemy, they slowly move towards Lumen with no attempts to dodge light.
• Technology Ghosts: a ghost that resides in technology, they will block you from using Lumen's equipment until destroyed.
• Object Ghosts: a ghost that resides in an object, they will shoot projectile Spirit Orbs until destroyed.
• Mare: a ghost that likes going fast, they will charge toward Lumen at fast speeds.
• Banshee: a shadow-like ghost that enjoys making a lot of noise, will run around franticly and alert other ghosts to Lumen's position until destroyed.
• Spirit Guide: this is the type of ghost Puck is, helpful and friendly.

(Refer to images 7 and 8)

Bosses

Within Ghostware you will encounter three big bosses:

• The Phantom Puppeteer of fear: A phantom who has gained power by feasting on the fears of those who have died in the manor, using his army of marionettes he will attack Lumen from the shadows. They are the ghost who stole Lumen's spare battery.  (Refer to image 9)
• The Weeping Wraith of Regret: A wraith that embodies all the regrets of those who have died in the manor, using this regret to attack Lumen with powerful water magic. They are the ghost who stole Lumen's Camera. (Refer to image 10)
• The Blazing Mare of Rage: A crazed Mare that embodies the anger of those who have died in the manor, leaving behind trails of fire and destruction as they charge towards whoever stands in their path. They are the ghost who stole Lumens Polter Geister. (Refer to image 11)

References