Design Document: Dracula's Castle - Part 1

In the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd start with a game about Dracula. It might be that it's merely his season, or that I've recently begun to take a course on Gothic Horror and Dracula is the first assignment, but I've got the good Count on the brain recently. Coupled with Yahtzee's comment that a Castlevania game should be designed by "writing the word Dracula in the middle of the page and then work it out from there," I figure that's a good place to start for just about any kind of game. So let's take a crack at it shall we?

A note about how these Design Documents posts work, over a few weeks I detail the particulars of a game idea in the form of a Design Document over several posts. Generally I attempt to come up with a new idea to implement in each game I write a document for, or at least a new way of implementing a standard feature like bullet time or a sandbox world. In Dracula's Castle I'll try and tackle a new way of using a "morality system" in games. Although this isn't a radical departure from how they are used in the past, laying down some design doctrine for how it could or indeed should be implemented in games could be helpful moving forward.

As for my method, I use Chris Taylor's design document template, for right now, but that's not to say in the future my method won't change. At the end of this process I intend to collect the whole of the design document into one Google Doc and link it on the page for download. Since this is my first ever post, let's start slow and begin with the game philosophy and common questions, leaving the rest for later.

Game Overview

Game Design Goals:

1. The most important goal of this game is to implement a "morality system" that is more than just picking an option in a dialogue tree, or getting scolded by the game for indulging the players natural tendency to pick up whatever happens to be lying around even if the game considers it "stealing." The game will present the player with clear decisions for good or evil that they must enact during actual game-play. The game should play very differently depending on whether the player chooses the good or evil actions, and not just a cosmetic difference added on top of the default game play. If the character chooses the path of good he becomes a divinely powered Vampire Hunter, while choosing evil causes the character to devolve into a bestial monster as he succumbs to his Vampiric Curse.
2. The second goal of the game is to exude a very Gothic atmosphere. Although the game isn't going to be a survival horror and thus does not need to be out and out scary, there should be a feeling of intense dread and foreboding as Dracula's Castle looms large atop the jutting hill cliff rising into the night sky, visible in the distance at all times unless the player is physically within it or another building. Although the game will alternate between night and day, the day time should at best be over-cast and gloomy, with the night being the deepest torchlit midnight of nightmares.
3. The game should be heavily exploration based, although the narrative is fairly linear, only branching at two paths for the good and evil choices, the player should feel free to return to previous areas and explore them for secrets and the game should make that as easy as possible. After all the longer we get the player to play in the spooky environments the more unnerved they will be when they finally encounter the Lord of the Night.

Common Questions:

What is the game? The game will  be a 3D action platformer in the God of War style. The game will also feature an emphasis on platforming, climbing various bits of terrain to gain tactical advantage in the fight, and to reach new parts of the level. The main feature of the game will be a "morality system" that presents the player with two possible ways to resolve a situation during game-play and changes the game-play experience in a meaningful way depending upon those choices. The art design will be heavily inspired by the Gothic style, evoking a sense of mortal dread. Finally the game will also feature many "Boss Battles" with unique enemies to allow for greater variation in combat encounters.

Why create this game? I personally have a soft spot for Dracula and think that he is the perfect candidate for a video game villain. Powerful, evil, ruthless, with his own built in aesthetic and mythos not to mention within the public domain and free from copyright issues. The story of Dracula invites the possibility for a richly detailed villain that most people can readily recognize. Recently there as been a move away from the traditional narrative of the vampire, and as these things go there is inevitably going to be a conservative return to the classical version of the concept, making this game now stands to help usher in and also capitalize on that return to form.

Where does the game take place? In 13th century Targoviste, Wallachia, although in the subtitles it will read upon entering the town "Dracula's Manor, Transylvania" as a majority of the game takes place in Dracula's Castle and the surrounding settlement that rests within his manor walls for protection. The town consists of the stereotypical wooden hovels of peasantry with a few finely appointed manses within the town for wealthy merchants and petty nobility such as Boyars, along with a few civil buildings such as a prison tower and possibly a guard barracks. The main feature of the town is Dracula's Castle located on a sheer hillside in the center on the town, where obviously the local lord resides. Portions of the game take place in the deep gnarled tree woods and fetid marshes outside the manor.

What do I control? The player controls one person, Adelbert Zsigmond to be precise, a man who shortly after the start of the game gets infected with Vampirism by Dracula and must fight to survive the undead horrors under Dracula's command. Although from time to time Adelbert will transform into a bestial Vampire, most of the game is spent in human form.

What's the main focus? Dracula turned the player into a Vampire because the Order of the Dragon, a group of church sanctioned knights, knows there have been Vampire attacks in the area lately, and he needs them to find a Vampire, or at least a Vampires corpse to get them to go away so they don't slay him. Now that the player has been infected with Vampirism he's got until the moon is full to slay Dracula or become his thrall and succumb totally to the Vampire curse, although if you like being a Vampire you can only complete your true transformation by drinking all of his blood. Either way the player only has 30 in game days to gather the power to fight and kill Dracula. Game-play will consist mainly of platforming and combat, to gather items and power for the final fight against Dracula, occasionally transforming into a feral bat-creature as a special game-play mode.

What's different? First the way morality is implemented, occasionally the game will give you two contradictory prompts, for example to kill or defend a certain person, one option good the other evil. Both options are viable and fun, choosing to kill the person provokes a boss battle, choosing to defend him brings on a swarm of lesser but still challenging monsters to defend the target from, although if the person you were defending was a possible boss battle, then he should be no light weight in combat and be much more than helpless in combat. Also the structure of the game, if the player is skilled enough, after the first few introductory levels the player can march right up to Dracula to try and kill him, they'll probably be completely destroyed in the attempt and greatly benefit from exploring the town and castle to gain power-ups, but if they think they can take the entirety of Dracula's Castle with just the starting load out, they are welcome to do so.

This concludes part one of Dracula's Castle Design Document, tune in next week for part two which will go into more detail about the game features and game world. See you next Friday.