teaching machines

HAAM short “game sketch”

December 19, 2012 by . Filed under fall 2012, honors 304.503, postmortems.

Haampshire Castle (pending name) is sort of a dark, mysterious game where the player wakes up inside of a castle that is trying to keep him/her trapped inside. The castle is full of secrets and riddles, and the player has to explore the castle and solve the riddles in order to advance and try to escape from the castle. The catch: the player ages with every move. The castle has the power to make the person age, so it is gradually stealing life from its captive player. If the player wants life left beyond the castle walls, he/she must really focus and get out in a hurry.

The main mechanics we will use to make the game fun and interesting are riddles and problem solving. We will have several riddles/problems to solve throughout the game, and they will keep the player challenged and intrigued to continue and find the next one. We also have this concept of aging, which is unique compared to other games. It almost creates this racing concept, where the player is racing against his/her own time to try and escape. This leads into potential truth-based themes for our game, such as “The mind is ageless” since the player will have to use his/her mind to play through the game regardless of the fact that he/she is “aging.”  But in general the game has a dark, almost eerie feel to fit the mood of the game.

Building our game will be heavily model-based, as we will have to model every room and everything in the rooms. Therefore, we all realize that we will need to improve our modeling skills. We also know that our Unity skills will have to be proficient, so we all intend on improving our Unity skills as well.