Sanity Scape
A Horror puzzle game inspired by Resident Evil 2, Little Nightmares, and Inside
Sanity scape
Being a sacrifice to an old god and resulting in you being sent into their realm, with your sanity slipping the longer you stay, but perform rituals and sacrifices to your home realm to regain your sanity in this world of insanity.
Solve puzzles and manage a resource system to navigate the levels and finish them before you lose your sanity to this world.
Inspiration
Ideation Phase
The idea for this came from the theme of "Sacrifices must be made" and from constructing a word map that also includes the meanings of words.
Then, make a short prompt that explains the premise of the game and the theme.
After reviewing the prompt and other ideas, I either combined the prompts or went with a single one. And making a short game idea card that includes the original prompt for the concept and a more thought-out game idea, researching inspiration for the game (other games, movies, or books).
After this, I would research whether this game already exists.
How unique is this concept?
How hard is it going ot be to create this? (I was the sole developer of this game)
And how enjoyable will this game be?
Prototyping
After ideation, I would go through each feature and break down how they would work and how the player would see them.
Sanity meter
The sanity meter is the player's health bar in this game, but flavored to fit the game's story.
If the player started playing the game, the sanity meter would start at full and slowly decrease over time. Encountering monsters would increase the rate at which the sanity meter goes down, and even just being near them would make it go faster.
Rituals
Rituals or sacrifices would be the main way for the player to regain their sanity, but to perform these, they need to find items that are scattered around the level to make use of. But different items would either increase the effect of the ritual or give the player an ability that they can make use of.
Low sanity
When the player goes down on low sanity, their vision would be affected, with things that weren't there before now appearing, similar to Bloodborne's Insight state. This would also reveal hidden rooms around levels that would hold better items the player can use for stronger rituals or key items that are needed to progress in the level.
example from BloodBorne has this creature is only visable when hitting 40 insight
Camera
For this game, I could go for two different camera options, one being the still camera of Resident Evil 2 on the PlayStation 2, which would be in place in a specific angle in each room and would switch between them when entering the room.
Or go with a fixed, moving camera, like what Little Nightmares and Inside have, where the camera stays at the same angle and keeps the player in focus/center of the camera as you move around the level.
Inventory
The way to store items in the player's inventory would be similar to Dregde and Resident Evil 2, allowing the player to choose which items to keep around and use, and which to throw away or store in a place they can remember.
paper prototype
This game idea was for a school assignment that required creating multiple game ideas and one or more prototypes of those games in two weeks.
I decided to go with a paper prototype, as it would be easier to give to people and easier to change, but needed to be simple enough for paper and easy enough for the player to play, so when it's in 3D, it's on a standard difficulty.
I discovered from earlier prototypes that being overly complicated on paper makes the game feel closer to a higher difficulty than I wanted.
Results and feedback
What I learned from this, especially from a horror genre way, is that the horror aspects come from the effects that come along with the game, sounds, music, environment, VFX, and a general art point.
Making this on paper would be more focused on the sanity meter's main mechanic, which the other features need to support.
I also had to deal with a very short deadline for this game, as I had other projects to work on during the two-week period I had to create this game idea and others for this assignment.
This game is still in development and is planned for release on Itch.io, has a short playable demo, so any feedback on this game is highly appreciated.