Oct 16, 2014

I’ve been tossing an idea around my head after seeing this video and this other of the same location (turn off the audio for both); a game that evoke an unsettling feeling of deep, dark water.

Positioned at the edge of a ocean cliff (preferably something like the above, Dean’s Blue Hole), the player treads above bright Caribbean sand that leads the unknown darkness. Exploring this descent (perhaps the only feature of the game), provides a natural increase to the tension. Diving moves further from the light, the comfortable start and towards complete unknown. The execution relies heavily on the how eerie atmosphere; the player needs to feel uncomfortable going deeper.

But the player is in control of their agent, and so they choose to continue, and ideally depths would beckon the player to match the discomfort.

Where does it lead to though? One potential option is to have the player lose oxygen as they dive, limiting the game by time and introducing more tension. As the game progresses, the player’s vision darkens from a lack of oxygen even if the surface is still visible. The combination of the darkness and the suffocation swallows the player in the end. I like it, it’s a neat image but it’s a little trite. There’s no reason not to swim back to the surface and, you know, not die for nothing.

I thought about having the player attached to some dead weight, forcing the player to descend. The player can only slow the descent, but this removes any real choice, detaches the player and makes the experience more about watching the darkness consume the agent than being drawn into it, a concept I’m rather attached to.

This led me to the idea of having some reward, a glint of gold or something that pulls the player further after the light has gone. The player is given meaningful choice on one axis: how deep to descend. There’s something the player wants to see, but exploration would pull them past oxygen limits, to suffocation. Alternatively, a player could hover above the blackness, refusing to dive and end the game by surfacing.

Boy, do I want to make it happen.