Your father has passed away. The two of you weren’t close, but he has left behind his cabin, and remaining belongings, all to you. The cabin is dusty and poorly kept, clearly just a one room living space, with a bed, small kitchen, and writing desk. As you explore the cabin you notice signs of scraping on the floor near the back wall, and after further wandering around discover the mechanism for a hidden door. As you activate it, the wall melts away and a portal opens to another realm.
You pass through to discover an extensive alchemical laboratory, with a large cavernous room containing strange contraptions, brewing equipment, and at the very end a large glass cabinet containing a selection of potions, and on the desk in front of it, a selection of loose labels. A note lies on the desk, and reading it informs you that the potions are the culmination of your fathers work, and one that went unfinished, as the labels that lie in front of you are each intended for one of the potions in the cabinet. In the note, your father pleads with you, despite your estrangement, to label the potions, and mail his notebook with his research to the Institute of Medical Sciences in the Northern Regions.
Without any idea of which label corresponds to which potion, you must explore your father’s lab to uncover the identities of each of them, and learn about his life’s work that he left to dedicate himself to.
Core Concept and Systems
Project Legacy will be a first person induction ’em up (I had no better term) and mystery game where the player will have to navigate and explore the environment to gather clues as to the identities of the potions. The game will attempt to tell a narrative purely through environmental and diegetic means using the principles of Indexical Storytelling previously discussed.
Objective
To label and categorise each of the potions, to complete your father’s Grimoire. There will be a number of labels corresponding to each of the potions which must be assigned correctly to each of them, and a number of category fields must be filled in to correctly complete an entry into the grimoire. Examples of Categories include:
- Classification: The type of potion
- Tincture: A drug dissolved in alcohol
- Tonic: A medicinal solution taken to experience a feeling of vigour or well-being
- Potion: A liquid with miraculous qualities ( reacts with air to ignite fire )
- Cures: A solution made to cure a particular ailment
- Viscosity: Thin, Regular, Viscous
- Stability: Safe, Controlled, Volatile
- Effect: The actual effect of the potion
I will design some categories to have overlapping information in order to have certain potions have one category answer that identifies it’s other category answer. This way certain clues can lead to multiple pieces of information for one or many of the potions, and the player can decipher this information to identify the other categories’ answers. For example, a potion that treats gout can be categorised as a Cure and therefore discovering that it cures gout allows you to identify it’s classification as well, whereas learning that it is a cure does not allow you to immediately learn that it cures gout.
Environment
The environment for the cabin will have little to do with the primary gameplay of the game, and serves only to introduce some of the game’s mechanics, and allow the player to acquaint themselves with its controls. The first room of the alchemical laboratory will contain the potions, a writing desk, and some basic equipment, along with a couple of “traces” that allow the player to discover a few scattered pieces of information, and together give the identity of the first potion in the cabinet, as well as bits of information on the rest. (although the player doesn’t know which information corresponds to which potion)
Once the player has identified the first potion correctly using the system for cataloguing info (similar to that of Obra Dinn with modifications for the smaller scope), new sections of the lab will become available allowing the player to explore the remainder of the game space. Each room will have a purpose that loosely relates to some of the potions, and within a set of “traces” that provide additional and loosely connected clues to some of the potions.
I wish to design it so that after a player has entered and studied two rooms, they can have a guess at at least one or two potions, and each new room they enter gives information to identify another one or two. To complete the game, the player should have to enter and study each of the rooms.
Traces
Traces will be divided up into clear categories for myself to design around, that will also allow the player to identify them as traces more easily. The current categories are:
- Notes: Written drawings or notes or books with an open page and hand written scribbles in the margins. The player can read these notes by clicking on them, and they give small bits of information with no context.
- Dioramas: I call them this as they will be self contained little environmental puzzles that provide information on one or more of the potions ( A cracked bottle with liquid spilt on the table and has singed it; This suggests that the potion is volatile, the liquid viscosity should be seen by how much it has spread and collected together, and potentially it has some heat related effect )
The real challenge will come in combining these categories to maximum effect, through spatial and gameplay relations. An example of this would be to have a note with a rough scribble of the shape of a bottle, with a fire symbol drawn next to it. The bottle can look similar to one or two in the shelf, but nearby there is a cracked bottle and puddle of liquid near it that has singed the table top it fell on. Through the colour of the liquid and the note nearby the player can likely link this information to one of the bottles on the shelf, and thereby gain information on it that can later come together to identify that potion when new information related to it is found.
Next Steps
With the core concept down, I want to begin by fleshing out the core of the game starting with the core pieces of the game that will need to be developed together: The Level Layout, the Potions Identities and Categories, and the the “hidden” categories I will be using to help design the level. These hidden categories will be things like, Volatile potions which will all be worked on in one room, and allow the player to somehow identify that potions in that room should be remembered as volatile. As a side not I could throw in a twist where one of the potions in the room is not volatile, but instead a salve for healing burnt skin due to an accident with one of the potions in the room. This salve can also be one of the identifiable potions.
Alongside designing these aspects on paper, I will create a prototype with the core systems implemented: First Person Player Controller, Interaction with Notes (Brings them up on Screen Space UI), and the System for “Guessing” Potions.