Game Concept

Team

 Kamen - Team Lead, Manager, Producer 

 Austin - Game Designer, Vision Keeper, Texture, 3D modeler 

 Benjamin - Backend Programmer, Frontend programmer, Gameplay programmer, UI/UX 

Designer Palma - 3D Artist, Animator, VFX Artist, Writer 

Thamara - Audio programmer, Audio designer, Writer, and Gameplay programmer

Introduction/Vision:

Flickering Lights is a 1st person horror game where you’re being chased by an unknown entity while uncovering your dark past.

Intended Platform: Computer.

Target Audience: 16 and up

Game Loop

Flickering Lights is a level-based game. Each level will be a maze with different items to collect. You will be haunted by monsters during your stay and never be safe until you reach the safety room found at the end of every level - the staircase.

Summary of the game’s story

In Flickering Lights we embody Glenn Johnson an office boss who is facing an unsuccessful week of work. Walking across his office he stumbles upon many items that make him remember his wrongdoing from the past. Hoping to understand where those items appeared from, he sets on to discover its origins. His task is made impossible by a terrifying monster that lurks around, where your eyes cannot see. He has to solve puzzles and unravel all his memories hoping to get redemption.

After exploring a floor of the office, Glenn enters the stairways that are his only safe spot away from the hunting shadows. He can remain on the stairway as long as he wants and takes time to read the notes he found throughout the previous level.

The shadow is a representation of his sins and regrets that haunt him.

Genre

The genre of the game is psychological horror. It aims to deliver chilling experiences through sound and encounters with an unknown entity.

Platform

The game is developed for Windows with keyboard and controller support.

Unique Selling Points

An interesting and captivating story that keeps the player wanting to discover more. Good sound design.

Game Mechanics

First priority

1. Lights that can be switched on and off.

   The lights in the game will be controlled by various light switches. They will work similar to real life, where, by using one switch you turn on all lights connected to it.

2. Enemy movement - they will follow you once you get inside their range

3. Listening - being able to stay in one place and increase your listening ability so you can pinpoint with greater accuracy where the sounds are coming from. By doing this, you increase your heartbeat. After some time, it will get louder than the sounds outside and you won’t be able to hear anything but your heart. - With this, you can’t really hear otherwise, just when you’re actively listening

4. Heartbeat - the heartbeat will be used to obscure the player’s hearing. Your pulse will be increased when:

   • you are close to the enemy.
   • you are in complete darkness.
   • you use the listening ability/mechanic.

5. Locked door with a pin code

   • The pin can be entered manually via an 0-9 interface

6. Locked door with a keycard or key objects (no number input needed to open it)

7. Having a normal switch - the lights flash and slowly start turning on

   • An animation will play that allows the lights to turn on.
8. Deadly Trio

• Behavior: They all speed up when you are in their range, otherwise, they move slower than the player’s walking speed.

  You have to run to escape their “enraged” form.

  Make sure that the speed of enemies is accessible for testing purposes.

• Is always looking to stay in the light. (jumps from light to light)
• Hunter enemy: starts targeting the player at given times
• We set interest points where the enemy has to visit and loops between them
• Stalking the player slower than the other two.

• Enemies move faster when you look at them
• Flashlight - introduced toward the end
• Having a slow light switch - perhaps it is jammed or sticky - it requires some time to fully turn on the lights it is connected to - then it slowly turns off giving the player a limited time to collect lore items in the room. Either slowly turning them on or off.

    9.Puzzles:

• Level 1 Puzzle: To progress in level 1, the player must solve an image puzzle. Once the puzzle is completed, a key is revealed. The key is then used to unlock the bathroom, granting access to another key required to exit the level.
• Level 2 Puzzle: In level 2, the player needs to locate all the scattered disk pieces. These pieces must be collected and assembled to unlock the door leading to the next level.

     10.Jumpscares:

• There are four jumpscares implemented in the game:
• Level 2: Clock jumpers: when the player enters the room it touches a collider that will trigger an alarm clock sound followed by an animation of rotating clocks.
• Level 3: Bathroom door jumpscare: it is activated when the player tries to open one of the bathroom doors, it sends a signal that tells the doors outside of the bathroom to trigger a screaming sound when the player is leaving the room.
• Level 4: Locker Jumpscare: when the player crosses the alley near the room where the lockers are it will touch a collider that sends a signal to tell the lockers to start shaking, then if the player decides to go to investigate the cause of the shaking, the locker will open automatically and will release rats that jump to the player face, disappearing a few seconds later.
• Level 2,3,4: Falling Picture: A picture will fall from the wall whenever the player crosses the collider that is in front of him.

Enemy

• The darkness represents the guilt of the main character.
• The last level, if they die > good ending, if they not > bad ending. This is because he faces his guilt.
• The more lore items you get, the more enemies we have in the game. If you die on the last level, you get the good ending the game, if you make it out alive, you score the bad ending.

Lore items; They save when you die

Points: They reset

The Hunter

Roams randomly in the light, and blinks between lights. If the player is in line of sight, it will enter its rage mode, where it speeds up and flashes a wider range of lights in its proximity. If the player escapes line of sight, the Hunter will remain in its rage state until it reaches the player’s last known position, and it does not see the player anymore.

How to identify:

The hunter will cause lights to blink within its vicinity. When it sees the player, it will enter a rage state, which will cause it to suddenly blink faster, and will affect lights in a wider range, and more aggressively

Prerequisites:

• Flashing lights
• Coordinate points on tiles with lights on them
• A rage mode:
  • Speeds up
  • Affects the player’s vision
  • Flashes more lights in its vicinity