Angler

High Level Concept / Design

Working title Concept statement Genres Target audience Unique Selling Points

Product Design

Player Experience & POV Visual and Audio Style Game World Fiction Monetization Platform(s), Technology, and Scope (brief)

Detailed & Game Systems Design

Core Loops Objectives and Progression Game Systems Interactivity

High Level Concept / Design

Angler

An Angler is a hunter who fishes with a line and hook. Likewise, an Angler Fish is a marine predator that lulls and attracts desperate prey with a promise of a hearty meal, only to be itself snatched and devoured.

The underlying mystery of this game is that of a desperate civilization, lured with a false promise and instead, consumed whole.

Concept statement

Jet through history rich temples and desolate, tradition imbued abbeys, learn the stories of the race which resided within them. Complete puzzles, revive the traditions and submerge in ritual to re-discover the history of this desperate, long since tragically perished alien civilization and the purpose of their unresolved mission which they had embarked on. Resurrect a derelict ship from it's chains and slumber, stuck in eternal limbo, forced to suspend the fate of life in this universe on a knives edge, awaiting for something, someone to relieve it of it's duty and complete it's mission.

Genres

The game is a 3D, Narrative driven Puzzle platformer Adventure, mixed with elements of Survival Horror.

The story is a Sci-Fi Mystery Drama.

Target audience

PG13, teens to young adults. Science Fiction enthusiasts. Mystery genre enjoyers, narrative heavy connoisseurs.

Unique Selling Points

  • Strong focus on delivering a deep narrative.
  • Multistage interconnected puzzles that interact with the world and progress the narrative
  • Detailed backstories and intertwined conflict between protagonist's and antagonist's interests.
  • Detailed setting of involved alien civilizations as a whole, as well as deep, tragic histories and conflicts between individual key figure characters.
  • Explicit focus on character development arcs, transformation and conflict evolution.
  • Heavy attention towards establishing presence of purpose crafted mood and atmosphere in each environment, through use of composition, light and shadow, environmental effects, liminal spaces.
  • Submerging the player into the world through extensive use of a custom written soundtrack.
  • Story Rich world, supplying consistent narrative sustenance through scattering of expositional micro-narratives and side stories exploring the theme through varying points of view and building up a thoroughly detailed world backstory.
  • Extensive focus on visual and environmental storytelling.
  • Unique Compositional Interpretation.
  • Unique visual style and non-stock Artistic Delivery.

High Level Concept / Design

Player Experience & POV

Who is the player?

Player is a human, playing through the first person perspective.

What is the setting?

Distant, Dystopian Future where humans, still believed to be the sole intelligent species in the know universe, have populated vast reaches of space under the rule of a gargantuan, industrial, ruthless and tyrannical government empire, waging wars against rebellions and conquest against foreign interstellar ruling body, opposing their dogma. It is a time of wars and civil unrest.

What is the fantasy the game grants the player?

Fantasy of being in outer space, fantasy of flight as well as the fantasy of coming into fortunate of making a discovery that which no normal human being would ever have the privilege of discovering. A Fantasy of being thrown into a parallel world with a much more interesting story than their daily life. A Fantasy of becoming a pivotal key character, intertwined in an larger than them adventure.

What emotions do I want the player to feel?

Throughout the journey, through the process of gradually discovering the backstory and piecing together many individual intertwined micro-narratives, I want the player to experience Unbridled Curiosity, Sense of Awe, Sadness and Loneliness, Sorrow, Loss and Betrayal, a sense of being the last of a kind, kinship and relatability, joy, humor, perseverance and a sense of being a part of a heroic event.

What keeps the player engaged for the duration of their play?

Drive to discover, to find answers and to solve the Main Mystery of the foreign world the were thrown into. Drive to decipher the events that tool place within each location they progress to. Getting answers to questions established by the very environments they found themselves in and the remnants of characters residing within them. A drive to achieve closure to the unresolved individual tales of the characters they discover and the dilemmas they experienced.

The established grand overarching mystery is comprised of individual mystery narratives distributed across a number of key characters and their respective zones / levels. Each one featuring it's own micro mystery, which, upon discovery, forwards the main narrative and offers a puzzle piece to progress towards resolving the grant mystery. Each environment varies significantly to present a rich tapestry of problems and mysteries which all tie into the alien backstory and how they ended up here.

Visual and Audio Style

Game World Fiction

Monetization

Platform(s), Technology, and Scope (brief)

Detailed & Game Systems Design

Core Loops

Objectives and Progression

Game Systems

Interactivity