Shrouded in Sanity is heavily inspired by the Souls, and Silent Hill games.
My idea was an open world city where you`ll have to fulfill a contract to regain your freedom.
The city just happens to be enveloped by the nameless fog, and citizens are turning mad.
I use a semi Victorian setting since its one of the most fascinating times of history for me. The whole Science shaking the foundations of a religious nation, and the populous breaking down the foundations of monarchies. (Not to mention the horror that came form this era the disillusioned realizations of Lovecraft.)
In game terms I am striving for as much immersion as possible, the game have almost no menus and contains zero non-diegetic sounds, or music. There are no cut-scenes, control is never taken form the player, and every npc is killable.
The city is open world and is executed using a gigantic room (using Game maker studio) combined with activation fields. Only upon entering buildings you see a short fade to black. The city is filled with nooks and crannies, secrets and shortcuts abound. The city was designed first to be an actual functioning believable city, housing 30.000+ citizens and stores, factories, hospitals, etc placed in logical places, suggesting a history of a living city.
The game features a center hub known as the Sanctuary roughly in the middle of the city, this is your home-base and where most of the non-hostile npcs are found. The game will task yo to kill a total of 5 bosses before gaining access to the final challenge. After dealing with any of these bosses the game will progress 1 day, each day featuring new enemy types and changing enemy placements. Some of your non-hostile npcs will serve as shopkeepers with altering stock each day, but they are not there to serve you, they will eventually wonder off to complete their own goals, they might get themselves killed if you don't help them.
The story will be relatively easy to consume if you are willing to pay attention. Your main objective will be clearly told to you, but all other information you`ll have to deduct yourself, npcs will tell you stories but their accounts will be conflicting, since each of them tend to lean toward their particular views. And some will outright lie and make shit up... You wont have dialogue wheels or big color-coded choices to make. Your actions will speak for you. Each boss can be spared, and at the end you`ll be able to alter the course fo the city`s future based on who lives and dies. For example at the very end you can: Sit the throne yourself, place the bloody princess on it (if spared), spare the King entirely, destroy the throne, destroy the throne, or flat out leave with no decision. The game will focus on your actions and that fact your motives are not what history remembers but the result of your actions.
Right now I have the basic engine ready with all game design finished. I am halfway through the "drawing" process of the city in Photoshop, its a whooping 22.000 X 18.000 pixels and over 600mb :D Once the city is finished I can place the collisions and it will be possible to walk and run around in :D
This is one of the most time-consuming portions of this development, but its incredibly important to establish a living, believable city to the a character, not just a background.
You can find some art and stuff here: http://evolutionistraven.tumblr.com/
But I plan to share a lot more as I go along, as well as how I pixelart, and how I handled some of the challenges of my design and code.
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