So first and most exciting things first: Warren Spector got back to me! He was very encouraging, despite saying that our project sounded “somewhere between insanely hard an impossible”. That said, he gave a lot of great suggestions that we can use, as well as some that we’re already incorporating to an extent, which has made us pretty sure we’re moving in the right direction with the Shock game. We’ve dubbed it (perhaps temporarily) “Strange Faces”.

This has also been a tremendous week in terms of developing the narrative for this game. It’s undergone a few iterations, but we’re pretty happy with our final premise. The idea is that this otherwise abandoned hotel that the player is in is populated with these mask creatures, masks with a somewhat amorphous shape for a body.

The player has a mask of their own, and quickly learns that the masks grants supernatural powers. As the game goes on the player explores the environment of the hotel, perhaps finding some audio diaries, and learns the story of what happened there, that there was a grand event to unveil an exceptional version of the masks to the public for commercial use, and it malfunctioned horribly corrupting most of the guests into the enemies in the hotel. Those that weren’t overtaken by the masks at the event were trapped in the hotel, where the inventor of the masks began his insane quest to fix the masks by using the trapped inhabitants as his test subjects. The player must make choices about how to responsibly use the power of the mask as they explore the hotel and uncover the mystery.

We really like this story, because it gives us a lot of excuses for interesting levels, i.e. the inventor is using the player as their final test subject, and has set up this arrangement of dangerous enemies for them to overcome. We’re also kind of exciting for the idea of the enemies being created because the masks themselves have a consciousness, and the conflict between them and their wearer creates these creates. This lets us deal with whatever is alive in the player’s mask, perhaps speaking to them directly or broadcasting visual messages into the player’s sight.

It’s been sort of a crazy week, getting everything together for Deep Dive, but I’m quite confident we can move forward this week. We’re very done with the other prototypes, and a lot of hype is building for Strange Faces, both with us and our playtesters, who are really enjoying the absorbing mechanic we’ve gotten working. Next step is getting all the powers to work together. Or just work.