Written 28.11.2008 - Uploaded 09.05.2009 - PDF (contains entire design document)
These scenes, along with other parts of the design document, was written for a course project at the university. This design was ultimately turned into a prototype, implemented as a Half-Life 2 mod. I have no idea about the mods availability, but we got pretty high marks from the course (4 out of 5). Remnants of Reality is a horror game that focuses around sound.
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Scene 1: Introduction / Corridors of Desolation
Image 1: rough scene layout
Setting: On a deck above the car deck. The area contains Vincent's cabin, a hallway and a stairwell (see rough layout). In both ends of the hallway, massive doors are stuck closed, preventing passage to other departments of the deck. In the hallway there are a total of 7 cabin doors. Two of them are swinging open whereas the rest are stuck closed. Vincent's cabin door is still functioning normally. The stairs leading upwards are blocked by some rubble, so the only way forward is down.
Curiously enough, Vincent's cabin has been left untouched by the dimensional shift and remains as it was before. It's a typical cabin for two people: two beds (on top of each other), a small table (where Vincent's gun is located), a closet for hanging clothes and a bathroom with a shower and a sink. Outside Vincent's cabin the ship looks like it has been laying in the bottom of the sea for several years. Paint on metal doors has peeled off and the carpet-covered floor in the hallway is partly rotten and still soaked in water. For some odd reason, lights are not entirely out but they do flicker a little, sending the hallway into temporary darkness from time to time. The other cabins (which are there merely for adding some atmosphere) look pretty bad: their inhabitants have withered away, lying on the floor along with rotten sheets and blankets, all still damp. Woodwork is twisted.
Scenario: The scene starts on autopilot. Vincent looks around in his room, making the player notice the gun on his table. After looking around for a bit, Vincent steps outside and there's a temporary shock, some blinks. Vincent has time to say “What ... “ and then the static noise hits his head, accompanied with a grunt from Vincent. Still in autopilot, Vincent looks around and sees another man entering the hallway from a cabin. Almost immediately after, there pulse noise starts, and the man gets slashed apart. At this point control is transferred to the player and Vincent says “I better get my gun, just in case.”
While Vincent is getting his gun, the monster goes inside the dead man's cabin and returns to the hallway a short while afterwards.
The main focus of this scene is for the player to get a feeling of the noise sense. So far, no method for marking the monsters is given but the relatively narrow hallway makes it easier to find the monster. Overall the scene is very linear, an introduction to the threat and some elements of the game.
Scene 2: Car Deck
Setting: In the car deck below Vincent's cabin. For now no sketch is provided, inspiration should be drawn from how real car decks in ships look like inside. Originally the deck was parked full. However, once the shift took place, most cars have been moved as if the whole place had been filled with water and stirred afterwards. Most notable is a huge pile of cars near the staircase where Vincent comes from. Remaining cars form a maze in the middle (exact design left for level designers) with several possible routes through it.
The place is dimly lit, but enough that it's possible to see the whole area after climbing on the huge pile of cars. The lights flicker a bit between dim and brighter. There are small pools of water remaining on the floor and some litter from car wrecks.
Scenario: A short while after Vincent's entry, some cars start to act up. Not all at the same time, but with various intervals, some cars suddenly start up, making engine noises, while others have their alarms suddenly go off. There is one predator in the area and Vincent must make his way through, preferably without being noticed as this one's much tougher than the one encountered in scene 1. Vincent can turn off the cars that are making noises, so that they don't interfere with his noise sense.
The point of this scenario is to familiarize the player with the concept of noise detection and to use it to his advantage when avoiding enemies. The predator moves around, so the player must keep scanning for its location from time to time in order to find a safe route through the maze. Naturally the maze must not be too large, for it will be too easy to go around the predatory monster. Optionally, there can be a few monsters instead of one, two or three maybe. This will make the scene rather challenging already though.
Scene 3: Lobby
Setting: The area is a lobby, spanning several floors (four maybe), connected by stairs and a working elevator (it only goes between two of these floors, top and bottom). The place looks relatively okay, rust and rot aside. The lobby halls are relatively empty, there are just some benches, drink dispensers and such. Most entrances are blocked off – the only one leading out goes to the tax free shop through some café-restaurant. There's some bloody mess on another floor, remnants of a predator's meal. The place itself is fairly lit, more so than previous areas and the lights are functioning quite well, there's little to no flicker.
Scenario: Vincent enters from bottom lobby hall. Immediately upon entry, there's the markup weapon (if the marking system is a weapon that is, if it's something like a psychic power, then it will trigger and become available in this scene) and a weak but fast and small predator in the hall. Using the marking system, the predator should be fairly easy to defeat, the point of this fight is to demonstrate the marking system's usefulness to the player.
A short while after the predator goes down, the ship's intercom flips on. There are speakers everywhere in the lobby, and the intercom is producing static with some noise-ridden pieces of speech. Depending how much work can be put into this, these speech samples could instruct Vincent about how to make the nightmare end, by giving cryptic clues.
The real challenge in this scene is to proceed onward. There is a more dangerous predator wandering the area, on the level where the route forward is located. Vincent needs to either distract it to move away or use his new ability to take it down.
Scene 4: Shopping madness
Setting: Tax Free shop. Shelves are mostly intact, but their contents are definitely not. Glass walls are partly broken, creating another entrance to the shop. The place is fairly lit, and there's a lot of litter from the shelves on the floor.
Scenario: Vincent enters through the broken glass wall, end his goal is to get to the exit. A few steps into the shop, the glass ceiling breaks and a predator drops in. The focus of this scene is a stalking game behind shelves and in tight alleys between them. The predator is quite small and fast, and relatively tough. Once again Vincent can either go around it, or kill it if he still has bullets left.
Scene 5: Random Cabin
Setting: This scene takes place in a corridor on the upper passenger floors. The cabins are larger, designed for first class passengers. Most of the doors are stuck, except two which are located opposite to each other. The area is more lit than the corridor in scene 1 but otherwise relatively similar.
Scenario: Once Vincent gets closer to the open cabin doors, his noise sense naturally goes off. It is left up to the player whether to check the cabins or try to proceed. Either way, in one of the cabins a sole predator is stalking and will come out if Vincent walks past its door, or if he opens the door opposite. Once it comes out, the player can, if he is careful, get a warning from the sound of the door opening. This scene mostly reminds the player to stay sharp at all times – if the predator is not detected in time, it will take Vincent out from behind rather easily.
Scene 6: The Deck / Finale
Setting: This final scene takes place on the deck. The sky is dark but there's a glimmer of light coming from the horizon. Almost everything not bolted to the deck is gone. This is the most open area in the entire ship. Two lifeboats remain, both on one side of the ship, out in the open, in the middle of the ship.
Scenario: The biggest and baddest predator is located here. It's too big to fit into every passageway on the sides of the ship, but the remaining two lifeboats are out in the open where it has access. Vincent's goal is to drop a lifeboat into the sea and get on it, avoiding the predator at all times. If he still has enough bullets left, Vincent can try to kill the predator, making it easier to get that lifeboat out. If not, he has to work quickly: the mechanism holding the lifeboats is stuck, and must be “fixed” first. There's a single crowbar located in the aft deck with which Vincent can “fix” the mechanism with a few sound blows. Once the lifeboat starts to descend, it draws the predator's immediate attention, forcing Vincent to avoid it while waiting for the boat to land beyond its reach.
Alternatively Vincent can locate the last survivor from the topmost deck. If the player has understood the given hints (from the intercom in the lobby) correctly, he'll know that by killing this person, the nightmare will go away. Of course, the survivor is by no means monstrous but actually rather pathetic and entirely innocent, pleading for his/her life if Vincent points a gun at him/her. If the person is killed, all remaining predators from the ship will disappear and Vincent can safely go and land the lifeboat.