Game Design Document

Game Design Document

Cthulhu 2D Action Platformer

= Game Overview =

Game Concept
Völgarr the Viking meets Cthulhu Universe.



Genre
2D Action Horror Platformer

Target Audience
Male and females aged between 16 to 30.

Game Flow Summary
Players navigate in a 2D world horizontally and vertically and fight, interact with or run away from encounters. There is a boss fight at the end of each area that must be won in order to advance in the game. Taking damage decreases the player power, eventually leading to game over; whereas, collecting items increases their power.

Look and Feel
The game looks dark, scary and enormous which makes players feel insignificant, confused and terrified. The game gets darker as the player advances. The environment changes to a worse state level by level, reflecting players degrading psychological state.

= Gameplay and Mechanics =

Game Progression
Game progresses as the player reaches the end of the level and beats the boss if there is one.

Movement
The character can walk, run and jump. So can its encounters.

Objects
The player can pick up objects by interacting with them. These objects add up to the character’s health and combat power.

Actions
Move right and left, jump, attack, interact.

= Story, Setting and Character =

Story
1946, England. War veteran, now poor and alcoholic, finds himself on a street in the evening, drinking from the bottle. It lightly rains and he sees that the city is now crawling man-fish. As he is trying to survive, the city gets darker, the rain gets heavier and his sanity level descends. To the near ends of the game, he only then realizes that the monsters he was encountering were no monsters, but humans.

Areas

 * Streets: First encounters. Easy relative to the rest of the game. Main objective is getting home and running away.
 * Sewers: More morphed and uncanny encounters. Stronger weapons. Main objective is getting out of the city.
 * Suburbs: Hardest bit of the game. Very tough encounters, strongest weapons. Main objective is still getting away until the player realizes that the encounters were only humans.
 * Sea: The most aquatic parts of the game. Main objective is responding to the call of Cthulhu.

Each area consists of approximately 5 levels.

= Technical =

User Interface
Dialogs, help/tutorial text, main menu, pause menu.

Target Hardware
Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4

= Game Art = Character Designs for the playable character

Enemy NPC designs

Sketch for an ingame image