To do:
- Jeder: Profilbilder und Matrikelnummer
- Ideal play session anpassen
- Mechanic: ganz viel
- Moscow: korregieren
- Ressourcemanagement
- Moodboard
- screenshot
- Controls
CONTENT
TEAM
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Matr. Nr. | 2192466 |
Role | 2D Artist |
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Matr. Nr. | 2548148 |
Role | 3D Artist |
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Matr. Nr. | 2031423 |
Role | 3D Artist |
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Matr. Nr. | 2548180 |
Role | Programmer |
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Matr. Nr. | 2551816 |
Role | Programmer |
SPECIFICATIONS
Working Title
Genre
Concept
Target age classification
Platform
Engine
Bathyal
Tactical Exploration, Roguelite
Lead a group of characters down through the alien layers of a chasm. Make tactical decisions to keep them sane and alive and unlock new paths, to finally uncover the secrets of the abyss.
Players age 12 and older.
PC
Unreal Engine 4 (3D)
INTRODUCTION
UNIQUE SELLING POINTS
- Selling the fantasy to explore the Unknown
- Unique visuals conveying excitement & horror
- Recognizable art style and design
- Gameplay mechanics found in board games
- Dark, Grim & Gritty
TARGET AUDIENCE
Our Audience enjoys:
- Turn-based tactics & board games
- Resource allocation & short-term planning
- Meaningful decisions
- Customizing characters & builds
IDEAL PLAY SESSION
Sam buys a game he heard his favourite Twitch-streamer talk about. Sam loves games about strange and unknown worlds and tactical challenges. Upon starting it, he sees the silhouettes of three people looking down into the darkness of an abyss. The music starts: a haunting, dark melody. He is intrigued and already feels the atmosphere of the game: gloomy and mysterious.
He sees a short cutscene explaining the background story: When did the chasms open? Why are people going down there? He starts to feel excited about exploring the chasm and uncovering its secrets himself.
The cutscene transitions into the game. There, Sam sees the characters who are waiting to start their journey into the
depths. There is not much he can tweak in their equipment at this point so he decides to just go with the defaults and starts his adventure.
What he sees now is a rocky plateau on the side of a steep cliff from an isometric perspective. There he finds his party in the middle of the screen. He notices that the background music is now slightly more unsettling: the real game begins. Sam notices alien-looking plants and ruins spread across the plateau. Some places catch his attention, among them a spherical, papery structure that is held by thorny branches. When hovering over it, the location has an animated exclamation mark on top. He realizes there is some kind of game-event waiting for him and decides this will be the first thing to explore.
Sam now tries to get a feeling for the movement on the plateau. When pointing his cursor somewhere, the UI tells him how much travelling there will cost. Noticing that his party has a limited number of action points at their disposal, he becomes more careful before clicking away. The party approaches the sphere and Sam reads a description, telling him that it has a hole large enough for a human to enter and that it smells like cinnamon. Sam chooses the scientist and the adventurer to investigate the structure and they both spend an action to climb in.
The next thing he sees is a 3D diorama of the sphere’s inside, illustrating the situation the characters encounter and a few words describing where the strong cinnamon scent comes from: Hundreds of semi-translucent strings dangle from the top. They are thick like fingers and the smell is so strong it’s sickening. There is something shiny further back. Now Sam can choose between three actions using different abilities: Wind through the strings quickly (acrobatics), cut a way through the strings (fighting), or carefully cut one of them for research and leave (no ability check).
Also, he notices that his scientist passed a plant life check upon entering, and he sees the bonus info that this is a carnivorous life form, which means that the strings are dangerous to touch. Knowing that, he thinks that cutting down the strings is the safer option. The UI shows him that each decision requires a character to spend an action-point and that action-points are of different qualities. Sam wants to save the higher quality actions for later and uses one of lower quality first. Unfortunately, both characters get entangled in the strings. They feel searing pain where the strings touch their skin and barely manage to struggle free, both suffering a wound. Sam finds himself back on the map and sees a speech bubble over the scientist’s head: “Never again!”. He is unable to enter the sphere for the rest of this run.
Learning that every action he takes could have severe consequences, Sam is determined to beat the hostile Bathyal by playing his cards right from now on. He can’t wait to see what lurks behind the next corner of this strange place.
NARRATIVE
Shadows move in the depths, hungry eyes and restless limbs. A sinister world of beauty and terror which swallows those foolish enough to approach it. Oh, the chasm is deep, filled with darkness and nightmares. Go there, if you must – but know that you might never return, my friend.
The game takes place inside a giant, multi-layered chasm. The chasm has swallowed the big cities of the world. Most people don’t know why this has happened, but afterwards, the world started to change: Toxic fumes leaked from the depths and changed the weather for worse. Swarms of strange insects crawled from the murkiness and infested the fields, the orchards and the animals of the people who lived away from the big cities, in villages or as nomads. Nowadays, many have become sick and barely have enough to eat.
Some people have climbed into the chasm in search for answers. They have brought unfamiliar relics from below, some in the language of the city dwellers, some alien and outlandish. They are scientists, treasure hunters, soldiers of fortune. Some want to gain knowledge about this world below, some want the gold they seem certain to find. Some come for the thrill, and some are desperate to end the curse the chasm has cast upon the land.
In time, they (and the player) will learn that the cities were not innocent as to their downfall. Warnings have been ignored, and the underworld has been exploited, thus causing a delicate balance to collapse. The player will gradually find out more about the exact events that led to the world as it is now. The chasm itself is filled with toxic air, which is why adventurers need to plan their trip thoroughly, as no-one can withstand the fumes forever if they want to stay sane and healthy.
The chasm has many layers, and going down feels like entering the maw of the world. There is a bottom, but few have seen it and rumor has it that this place is full of structures that resemble houses, though uncanny and not much like human dwellings. On their way down, the adventurers will see many ruins of the fallen cities, among the multifarious fauna and flora of the chasm. Most creatures here are dangerous, as are the plants, but with enough persistence and curiosity it’s possible to find a way down.
The layers of the chasm each have their distinct personality and style, because they symbolize different ecological biomes. The chasm’s ecosystem strives to be believable, yet alien. All creatures encountered and studied will be added to a bestiary that will prove helpful on future runs.
CAST
CHARACTERS
The player will have several different characters to lead on their journey. They come from different backgrounds and have diff erent reasons to explore the depths, but ultimately, they all know that teaming up will improve their chances of coming back alive. There is Nazyr, an ageing professor of zoology from the Purple Sea, or Yama, a young tinkerer from the mountains. There is Zara, aristocrat from a fallen dynasty, or Kesirat who doesn’t talk much but knows how to wield a sabre. More will come and go, many will lose their life in the chasm. Who and why will always be different. The characters will wear masks as they descend, to avoid some of the toxic fumes.
NPCs
The world inside the chasm is pretty much devoid of human life. Apart from the odd adventurer here and there, the only other humans the player can encounter are very strange people, who have grown accustomed to the poisonous air. They aren’t exactly human anymore, but have been twisted and consumed by the chasm. Many have forgotten how to speak or have fungi growing from their bodies. Their skin may be green, and their eyes may see like cats’ in the darkness. The player is better off avoiding them, but the occasional encounter will occur.
MECHANICS
GAME LOOP
RESOURCES
Sanity & Time
The toxic atmosphere of each biome causes the characters to go mad. The longer they stay there the worse it gets and the more hostile the biome becomes. Since Bathyal is turn-based, different actions take different amounts of time and sanity units. The characters' sanity is the most important resource in our game.
Items & Knowledge
To better overcome challenges, characters can use item and knowledge resources. They are acquired through exploration and consumed on usage.
GATHERING A PARTY
When our game starts the player is given a team of three characters: an adventurer, a scientist and a treasure hunter. While traveling they will find other characters that are trapped in the chasm. If they free them and the run eventually ends, those new characters will be recruitable in the next runs. The player can now build their own team from the
default characters and those they saved. Each character has their own attributes, abilities and Items but can be customized as well in order to optimise the team and reach deeper levels. Some characters and abilities open up alternative paths, previously hardly traversable.
DIORAMA / LEVEL MAP
TRAVERSING THE CHASM
The chasm consists of many layers. Each layer contains multiple dioramas which are connected via passages. However, certain passages are blocked or hidden and require special key-characters or key-items, which the player has to find and unlock first. Unlocked paths canopen up shortcuts between the layers for future runs or reward players with rare items. Every layer will have its own theme, colour palette, and
(maybe) its own sound. This helps keep the player engaged throughout the game. There are multiple branching ways down that lead through different bioms and dioramas. To reach the bottom of the chasm and to finish the game, the player needs to find the last key-character hidden in the fourth and most dangerous layer.
DIORAMA
When entering a diorama players are greeted by a short introduction text. Afterwards they can interact with the diorama by turning the camera around and selecting places
they want to investigate. Sometimes these places are not immediately visible and players have to look around a little.
POINTS OF INTEREST
Before committing to the investigation of a point of interest, players get a short description of what they are facing and can decide to leave it be. If they still wanna investigate, they have to pay time and sanity for every following decision.
Most decisions require the players character to pass a check on one of their abilities. They may use their resources to increase their chance of success or even compensate for bad luck.
PASSAGE EVENTS
to do
SAMPLE EVENT
to do
PROGRESSION
During a Run
- Characters can improve through loot and
experience but also regress through wounds or
insanity. - The deeper the party descends, the fiercer the
environment will become.
Across Runs
- New characters, abilities and items can be
unlocked that enable new tactics and routes for
future runs. - Knowledge of the world makes future runs
more likely to succeed.
ART STYLE
VISUALS
We try to create our own Style by mixing physical based rendering and visible brushstrokes. Our goal is to achieve a rough painterly look without using any post process effects.
We want to maintain a realistic behaviour of light to simulate the increase of darkness as you move deeper into the chasm.
We also want to have realistic light interaction with surfaces so that our assets fit perfectly into the given scenery, therefore we use a PBR rendering Pipeline.
To avoid much effort by hand painting each Asset, we work on a procedural workflow to achieve the painterly look.
At the top layer the environment shapes, foliage and living beings will have similarities with real life environment (e.g. commonly shaped rocks, monsters have similarities with animals, there will be some known plants).
At the bottom levels, there will be unnatural environment shapes, grotesque monsters, and strange looking plants.
SOUNDTRACK
Sound effects underline every player interaction, like button clicks or item selection as well as different consequences of player decisions.
MOODBOARD
PROJECT PLAN
ROADMAP
First playable prototype | Playable blockout demo (2 explorable dioramas, 20 events, dummy characters and assets). |
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Community ready | Mostly game ready first layer (5 dioramas, 50 events, player characters). Presentable screenshots and gameplay snippets. Discord and Twitter setup. |
Kickstarter | Game ready assets on first layer and mostly game ready assets on second layer (10 dioramas, 100 events). Presentable demo ready, showing the basic gameplay and polished looks for the Kickstarter as well as Gamescom. |
Final prototype | Game with polished first two layers that’s presentable to publishers. |
PIPELINE
*Preferably, we would like to hire students of the
sound/vision branch of the masters degree course
Sound-Vision-Games of the HAW-Hamburg
SCOPE
MOSCOW
Must Have
Gameplay
- Plateau navigation
- Exploration events with branching paths
- Character stats, abilities and items
Environment
- Modelled & animated characters
- High quality 3D assets (dioramas)
Audio
- Main game theme
- Basic sound effects
Roguelike Mechanics
- Quick play-rounds and thrilling game-flow
- Session can be interrupted and continued at any time
Should Have
Gameplay
- Turn-based creature encounters with individual behaviour
- Several play styles as result of chosen Characters and their abilities
- Insanity mechanic
Environment
- Unique look for plateaus of different layers
- A deep lore connected by events and locations to explore
- Special effects
Audio
- Theme for each layers
- Theme for creature encounters
- Combat sound effects
Could Have
Gameplay
- Usage of environmental hazards for own advantage
- Animations for every action in combat
- Special animations for characters (e.g. execution)
- Different resources and crafting system
- Each character has their own side-story (side-narratives)
Audio
- More variation of themes and sound effects
Won’t Have
- Multiplayer
- Complex animations like facial animations
NEEDED GAME SYSTEMS
Character
Stat & Ability Systems
Ressource/Inventory System
Event
Decision Tree
Check System
Save System
SWOT
Strengths
- Experienced team members
- Cost-Efficient
- High 3D production quality
Opportunities
- Unique game concept
- Large audience for tactic genre
- Unsaturated niche in tactical exploration games
- Rogue-like with narrative
- Germany as a location for business
Weaknesses
- Outsourcing sound
- Limited budget
- Disagreements on game mechanics
Threats
- Drowning in the sea of new indie game releases
- Not being able to deliver the desired feeling & visions
INSPIRATIONS
DARKEST DUNGEON
Link: https://www.darkestdungeon.com/
Genre: Indie, Roleplay, Roguelike, Turnbased
Gameplay: Darkest Dungeon is a role-playing game in which the player manages a roster of heroes and adventurers to explore these dungeons and fight the creatures within. The group of characters move side-view in formation, allowing for certain attacks, abilities, or defenses if they were in the right position. Characters in the front could have powerful melee attacks but take more damage, while characters in the back would be more protected but limited to weaker ranged attacks.
Further character classes have various strengths and weaknesses based on their rank positioning, creating more strategic elements for the player to explore. Impact of stress and afflictions is heavily emphasized in the game, using special graphics and sound cues to signal the onset of an affliction, preventing the player from having full control or potential of the affected character. Each round has the goal of collecting as much treasure, artefacts and plot points (required for upgrading buildings in the settlement), while preventing the death of any character, since death is permanent.
Darkest Dungeon Resources
Treasure | Treasure helps you buy new equipment, skills for characters or gear upgrades. |
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Artefacts | Items which can be equipped by characters to improve their values in combat. |
Health | Once a character’s health falls to zero, they die. |
Horror | Representing the stress a character suffers, they might be affected by despair (or courage at a low chance) once their horror reaches hundred. Once horror hits the 200 mark, a character immediately dies from a heart attack. |
CURIOUS EXPEDITION
Link: https://curious-expedition.com/index2.html
Genre: Indie, Roguelike, Turnbased
Gameplay: Curious Expedition casts players as late 19th century explorers, on a mission to chart the undiscovered corners of the world and pilfer as many priceless artefacts as possible, all in a grasp for fame and glory. Players safely guide their party across a new procedurally generated wilderness each round,
carefully managing limited food and resources to stave off hunger and madness, maintaining good relations with the increasingly unimpressed locals, and battling deadly fauna along the way. The ultimate goal each game is to be crowned the finest explorer of them all by scoring highest against AI opponents across a set number of rounds, with points being accrued for ransacking archaeological sites for ancient treasures.
THE 7TH CONTINENT
Link: https://the7thcontinent.seriouspoulp.com/
Gameplay: In the exploration board game The 7th Continent players begin by choosing an explorer character and discover the extent of a wild new land through a variety
of terrain and event cards. Fraught with danger, players have to craft tools, weapons, and shelter to ensure survival. The final goal is to discover the means to remove the curse haunting the player or die trying.
MADE IN ABYSS
Link: http://miabyss.com/#1
Made In Abyss is a manga and anime series by Akihito Tsukushi, which follows the orphan girl Rico
and her robot-friend Reg on their descent into The Abyss – a strange, giant hole in the earth, where they hope to find her mother.