Narrative, opening scene

Game Concept Story

Opening Scene

Character (Jason) is on his way to work listening to a voicemail from his ex-wife Susan, talking about their divorce, and regarding access to his daughter Lilly. Jason receives a call from his work partner Shaun about a house he must investigate.

Game play (Tutorial)

Jason arrives at the house. He meets his partner Shaun and two officers who are already at the scene. From a general perspective the house looks perfectly normal. Jason) is able to ask Shaun and the officers a selection of questions, to gain a better insight on what happened at the house. When Jason enters the house he can see messages and symbols surrounding the infrastructure. He is able to free roam the house to look for clues, in order to advance the story. This gives the player practice to how the game’s mechanics are going to function. Jason has to find a series of items for use of exploring further or to obtain as evidence. He finds a toy box in a children’s room downstairs. It requires a specially shaped key to open.  He searches around the room and finds a loose floorboard. He removes the board and finds a necklace. It appears to have some form of cult symbol attached. He looks over at the toy box again and notices that the key to unlock it matches the symbol on the necklace. He slots the necklace in the shaped slot on the box and unlocks it. The wall behind the box moves to reveal a hidden passageway. Before Jason can enter the room a disturbed cultist falls at the player’s feet screaming. The disturbed cultist is covered in scratches, his clothes are torn and blood stained.  He runs off. Feeling needless to chase after the cultist the player continues his investigation and enters the secret doorway. A spiral staircase lit with candles twists deep down into what appears to be a bottomless abyss. He looks at the walls around him and notices there are blood drawn symbols, dead flesh and scratch marks embedded in the wall. He reaches the bottom of the stairs, and is drowned in darkness. At the far end of the room there is a loud shudder. A flicker of light then appears, the light grows until it illuminates the entire room, revealing a massacre of dead bodies. He steps around the bodies to what appears to be an alter in the center of the room. He finds a journal on top of it. The player is able to flick through the book, to look for clues. A photo falls out, and lands by his feet. He picks up the picture. It is a picture of his ex wife Susan and his daughter Lily arm in arm with a strange man wearing a necklace similar to the one he found in the floorboards. The photo triggers a flashback to the night the photo is dated of Susan going out for the evening and taking Lily with her. He puts the book down on the alter and looks up to the other end of the room. He see’s three ruined bodies fixed to the wall. He doesn’t make out their identity until he is staring them in the eye. It was Susan and Lily, with the strange man he saw with them in the photo. The necklace is hanging from his slit neck. He gets a positive match on the symbol by comparing it with the one he obtained from the floorboards. As Jason continues to examine the bodies a strange hooded person sneaks up behind in and hits him round the back of the head, knocking him out.

Jason wakes up a week later in hospital. Shaun is sitting across from him. Jason is suffering from some form of amnesia and has no recollection of what happened in the house a week ago. Shaun tells him they were investigating a lead on a murder case, and they were sent to the house to look for clues. The search lead them into the basement. Nothing was found in there either, apart from a journal of some kind. Jason had pocketed it without Shaun noticing. The power suddenly went out. Jason forgot his flash light, so he tried to retrace his footsteps but tripped over something and knocked his head. Shaun leaves the hospital, leaving Jason with his possessions to tend to in the meantime. Sifting through his pockets he comes across the journal he picked up. Having no memory of picking the book up, he flicks through it and finds the same picture he previously discovered. It triggers a flash back of a row between him and Susan an hour before she took Lily and left the house, to attend the cult meeting. This gave Jason a burst of knowledge, remembering the scene in the basement. Eager to re discover what he remembers to returns to the abandoned house and navigates back to basement. Totally the opposite of what he was expecting there was nothing other than exactly what Shaun told him. A couple of boxes and a battered up coffee table. Jason wasn't convinced so he uses his UV flashlight to look for signs of blood. He finds no traces what so ever. Shaun arrives in the basement, asking Jason what he is doing back. Nothing ever happened in the house. Was it all a dream? Illusion? Some form of cultist spell his wife had cast on him before the divorce?