Example of an Experimental Game
Papers Please.
Papers, Please is a puzzle simulation video game created by indie game developer Lucas Pope. Papers, Please takes place in a fictional country called Arstotzka in the year 1982. The aesthetic is very Soviet Union.
The player takes on the role of the checkpoint inspector, the player then reviews arrivals documents and uses and array of tools to see if the papers are valid, if the arrival is a wanted criminal or the documents are forged then the player gets the option to detain people. For each in-game day, the player is given specific rules on what documentation is required and conditions to allow or deny entry which become progressively more complex as each day passes. The player can use a number of tools to review the paperwork to make sure it is in order. When discrepancies are discovered, the player may interrogate the applicant, demand missing documents, take the applicant's fingerprints while simultaneously ordering a copy of the applicant's identity record in order to prove or clear either name or physical description discrepancies, order a full body scan in order to clear or prove weight or apparent biological sex discrepancies or find enough incriminating evidence required to arrest the arrival.
The player ultimately must stamp the entrant's passport to accept or deny entry unless the player orders the arrest of the arrival.
At the end of each day the player is given money based on how many people they have processed; the amount of money goes down depending on if the player has taken any bribes or got any violations. They must then decide what they would like to spend money on food, medicine, heating and rent.
Artifact Vision Document
Title: Mind's Line
Brief Summary: A short story based on the Backrooms creepy pasta, where a regular office worker, unknowingly passes out and wakes up in a sort of limbo that looks like his office. While exploring this surreal office space, slowly, but surely, he finds out what really happened.
Gameplay Overview: This would be a simple walking simulator, the only interactions in the level would be doors.
Story: The game's story would be told through visual hints in the environment, and the reason behind the events in the game would be revealed by the end.
Summary: It’s a late night at a High-rise office in NY, where one of the workers just finished writing a report. He’s very, enough to pass out on his desk. As soon as he wakes up, he wonders why no one's come to wake him up, but nonetheless gets up to leave, but after crossing a couple of rooms, differences start to show. Rooms seem flipped, doors leading to different rooms than normal and the whole structure of the building seems to have stopped making sense.
Next thing he knows, he enters a large empty room, which is normally filled with cubicles, but the real shock is what he sees outside the windows: an endless horizon of the same impossibly high building, the building he’s in, standing above the clouds in a starless night sky.
Now in a hurry to get out of wherever he is, he further explores the eerily empty office, now sometimes noticing a shadow out of the corner of his eye. It’s tall, almost shapeless, not resembling anyone he recognizes. Before he can have a good look, it vanishes in a fraction of a second. He’s not alone here.
As he moves through the spaces, messages start appearing in office posters and in bathroom mirrors, messages that don’t make sense as to why they’d be where they are. Hospital equipment begins to appear, hallways become more sterile and brighter, the furniture changes. By now, he feels compelled to go certain ways, ultimately leading to a hospital room, in which he sees himself, lying unconscious on the bed.
As soon as he opens the door, he feels himself waking up. He passed out due to a tumour in his head acting up for the first time. He realizes what that shadow might’ve been: death, an angel? He doesn’t know.
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Visuals: Apart from the surreal elements, the office would look mostly normal. How I'd describe the environment would be like the Uncanny Valley, but instead of people or creatures, it’d be a place, like a room that has a ceiling just a bit too tall or where the furniture is evenly distanced from each other, as if this alternate reality was trying to imitate ours, but slowly failing.
As mentioned before, it would look like a high end, but normal, modern office: clean, organized, with ceiling lights turned on, etc. Maybe one room or hallway has it’s lights off. Any room with windows would have low lighting to better show the outside view and have the blue light come in better.
As for room variety, there’d be cubicle rooms, regular office rooms, different lounges, hallways, maybe a bar or cafeteria, and a CEO’s office.
For story reasons, about halfway into the game, hospital equipment would start showing up in the office rooms and rooms will slowly turn into hospital rooms and hallways. Waiting Rooms, Long Hallways and Patient Bedrooms.
(Both images are concept art created by Gonçalo)
Game Design Documents
Gameplay Preview
Game Teaser
Assessment 01: Minds-Line
My group settled on a version of the Highrise Backrooms, the general idea would be used, though there would be a lot of changes.
Advancing through a surreal office was still what we aimed to create, but a new environment was chosen for the games later stage: a hospital.
Why a hospital? Because now the game would aim to have a narrative a reason for the player character to enter this surreal office setting and a reason to try and get out of it, but like all game projects, plans changed along the way.
As mentioned, our game went through a lot of changes, some unfortunate, and the final version of our GDD can be found above along with the 1st and second versions
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Final Gameplay
Indivisual Game Idea
Star Wars: Project I71A is a singleplayer/ multiplayer game based off the original death troopers, the gameplay with be similar to left 4 dead and back 4 blood. There will be 4 survivors one a stormtrooper, one a rebel spy, one a imperial officer and the other will be a droid. the art style of the game will be cell shaded.
The players will have to make their way through star destroyer that has been attacked by an unknown enemy, they will have to make there way from one side of the ship and reach the escape pods. on their journey they will come across weapons, bactapods and unique abilities.
