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THE
CREATIVE VISION OF THE CORE GAMEPLAY LOOP
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The
Ritual of Redemption
Setting:
It's the hunting season, but nobody
care for nature anymore. The beautiful pixelated forest, once a place
of vibrant life, is shrouded in darkness, plagued by a horrifying
infection. Classic
chiptune music with undertones of a strange stillness sets the mood.
Maple sap, the lifeblood of
the forest, stopped flowing, and animals are dying.
Character:
You play as a mythopoetic
meta-redeemer, a unique character created from French-Canadian
folklore.
Objective:
Kill a deer.
The Loop:
Exploration & Resource Management: You traverse the mazy forest with your shotgun, looking for a deer, navigating pixelated landscapes, uncovering its secrets, encountering occasional hunting cabins and sugar shacks. You collect resources like mushrooms, mints, and maple sap. Each area offers unique challenges. By talking to animals, and through your dreams at night, you collect folklore insights that helps you understand what's at stake. Collecting and consuming maple sap grants you temporary buffs during combat. However, over consumption could lead to nausea.
Violent Combats: Some animals in the dark forest are infected with rabies. It is manifested as sick and aggressive creatures with dripping saliva and blood. Combats are violent, like a boomer shooter gory fast-battle festival. Aim tight with your shotgun, make them explode. Don't have a gun? Slice them all with your wood axe. Still have fuel in your chainsaw? Just do it. Only have maple spouts in your pocket? Tap their head to make them bleed to death. The visuals and sounds during these battles are inspired by classic Commodore 64 horror games, with flickering screens and haunting chiptune melodies.
Meaningful Choices: Throughout the forest, you encounter situations where you must choose your path. These choices involve:
Violence vs. Harmony: Do you directly confront the corrupted creatures, or find a way to purify them. This could affect the ending or unlock different areas.
Aid the Land: You might encounter friendly forest animals. Helping them could grant you new abilities or lore entries.
Moral choices : Throughout your journey, you'll encounter moral dilemmas. These choices could influence the ending and the overall tone of the forest, like a butterfly effect.
Rituals of Cleansing: At designated points in the forest, you perform cleansing rituals. These involve completing environmental puzzles (burning infected corpses, aligning stones bathed in moonlight). Each successful cleansing ritual pushes back the infection and unlocks a new area of the forest.
Progression & Revelation: As you cleanse the forest, you uncover forgotten stories of past tragedies, and malevolent entity, source of the corruption. New areas of the forest open up, revealing more narrative elements, and presence of the infection. As you defeat corrupted beings and cleanse the forest, the maple sap start to flow again, syrup slowly regains its golden hue, revitalizing the dark forest.
Commodore 64 Inspiration:
Simple but responsive controls (walking, running, basic action).
Short and catchy chiptune music with distinct melodies for different areas.
Monochrome, with a focus on creating atmosphere through clever pixel art design.
Text-based dialogue to reveal the lore.
Limited lives, with password system for saving progress.
French-Canadian Twist:
The importance of maple syrup adds a unique cultural element.
The narrative explore themes of environmentalism and balance of nature.
Environmental details features iconic French-Canadian flora and fauna (deer, maple trees, northern lights).
Storytelling choices are inspired by historical events and cultural references.
Overall, this core
gameplay loop offers exploration, choice-driven progression, satisfying combats, resource
management, and a unique cultural twist, all wrapped in a charmingly
retro horror aesthetic. It allows players to carve
their own path through the dark forest, cleanse the land and redeem the past.
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THE
CREATIVE VISION OF THE GAMEPLAY HOOKS
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Hardware manipulation : By interacting with the physical console buttons and switches, you
influence the abstract world within the game. This create a
meta-puzzle where solving problems in the real world helps you progress
in the digital one. Moreover, collecting specials items in the game manifests as physical changes to the MITAINEDOR console itself.
Software investigation : Before fixing the problem, you need to find and acknowledge the cause.
The more you get into the lore, the more insights you have, leading you
to understand the right solution.
Meta-Choices, Literal Consequences : Use the forest's "blood" (maple syrup) to rewrite a corrupted
part of the forest's code on the console, which then alters
the physical landscape within the game. This merges the
meta-redemption theme with the hardware manipulation mechanic.
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