Lead Designer blogpost 1

Hello Everyone,

My name is Cody Philbrook. I am the lead designer of Menacing Mansion. In Menacing Mansion an old mansion has been left to you, Paschal, from relatives that disappeared overnight. Curious about the nature of their disappearance you seek out answers from the many rooms and corridors of the mansion.

 The development team is composed of ten members in total headed by our producer Justin Amian. If you would like more information on our team and what they are doing I recommend checking out his blog Here. As the lead designer my focus for this blog will be on the overall design of the game and the process of leading this talented team and ensuring that my vision is correctly articulated.

I spent a lot of time on the pre-production for Menacing Mansion. I wanted everything to be as clear as possible for my team and thus I made a very detailed Game Design Document (GDD) if you would like to check out the document click here:MenacingMansion GDD. From different props, systems and enemies, I developed a document that contained a lot of information and so far it has helped me articulate my vision to my team as well as those around me. I found that visuals helped me flush out my ideas as well as assists in explaining those ideas to my team.

I created this game loop example (seen above) to help visualize the flow I had in mind for the game. While I have since iterated on its design to pare down the loop into its base components and flush out the more complex elements, it still stands as a great example of what I had in mind for the game at the start of the design process.

The Core Idea of Menacing Mansion is a haunted house. I envisioned a procedural generated maze of rooms that will thrill and scare the player. I wanted to focus on the game's replayability allowing players to collect items, avoid monsters, and run into horrifying apparitions while maintaining a fresh experience as long as possible. 

In order to achieve this while still adhering to scope, I have tasked my 3D artists to create a prop with 3 or more textures of that same prop allowing us to have multiple variations of those props. Simultaneously I tasked my programmer with creating a system that will swap out the texture on those props when the maze is instantiated. This will allow the design and look of the game to vary increasing the amount of replayability for the player as they will see different combinations of textures in every room.

The art style of Menacing Mansion is a combination of realism and Edwardian era interior. This creates a more elegant yet subtle art style that is a normal part of mansions decor. I decided that a more modern decor wouldn’t look accurate for the style of a haunted mansion. 

With the team's work underway and being handled by my producer, I have been able to focus on flushing out a more detailed example of the different boss interaction that I have envisioned for the player. (As seen below)

The first boss will be the living statue, A creature that is unable to move when in contact with light. This will allow the player to use their flash light and its limited batteries to keep themselves safe while they try to fix the fuse boxes to restore the lights.

The second boss, the Librarian, is obsessed with knowledge but insists on complete silence. The player must return all 6 of the missing books, without making a sound. There will be traps throughout the room that will make noise if the player is not careful and thus directing the boss to the player. If you want to see more specific about these interactions feel free to check out the full game loop here: Greater Loop

As we work towards our first playable prototype I plan to have a single room using the props that have been completed.  Two scare events; one triggered by the area, and the other an interaction scare to be tested. Additionally I want to see the flashlight being implemented. This will allow me to test and see if simple scares will work in getting reactions from the player that I want. Specifically we are planning on testing how the player enters the room and if a specific trigger such as the lights going out or a shadow appearing will scare the player. Alternatively the player should be able to interact with an object and cause another scare.

In conclusion the development of Menacing Mansion is off to a great start, we have a long way to go but I know that we will be successful!