Death Leaves Scars

That's gonna leave a mark.

Image credit: stock image by Unsplash (Lina White)

Infinite Level game discussed: What Hides in Dreams

You might have noticed that I have a new horror game called What Hides in Dreams in the works. Between the site images, previous dev blog, and copious amount of social media posts telling the world about this, I've been trying as best as I know how to make that fact hard to ignore. And now I'm doing it again in this here dev blog. You may also notice that I keep repeating the phrase “death leaves scars” (or some variation of this phrase). In my previous dev blog I had given a brief overview of what this means. To recap it in a nutshell, “death leaves scars” means that What Hides in Dreams has a pseudo permadeath system where, rather than being transported to a previous checkpoint and forced to retry a section, you instead completely fail that level and the story reacts to your death. This system extends to monster deaths as well. Since the player will be able to kill monsters in my game, I wanted the story to also be able to react to that outcome. But for the most part, “death leaves scars” is focused primarily on what happens when the player dies in this game. For this month's dev blog, I wanted to go into further detail on how this mechanic works and the ways it affects the game as you play it.

But first, you need to know how progression works in What Hides in Dreams. The player will always start inside the dream house, a place much like the protagonist's real home but with a heavy layer of distortion. In this house there are several doors, and opening one transports you into one of the game's levels. There is no set order to the levels, so the player is free to face the various nightmares in the order they desire. Of course, there's no telling what lies behind each door before going in, but I trust you're the adaptable sort who can think on their feet. The levels themselves are self contained, meaning you won't start in one only to suddenly find yourself in another and no elements like monsters or items get transferred between levels. What brings everything together is you, the player. Whether you get through the level unscathed, get killed by a monster, or kill the monster yourself, the narrative will have an answer for that.

All the ways to show an encounter reached a conclusion (Alpha screenshots - visuals not final)

What you do in each individual level varies from one level to the next, and I anticipate I'll do some break downs of levels in the future. Regardless of the content of an individual level, each one has three possible endings. You die, the monster dies, or no one dies and you make it back to the dream house. While I am attempting to keep the story neutral by avoiding strictly good or bad endings, player death is the one area that will consistently be labeled as the bad outcome. All roads lead back to the dream house eventually, and once you return to select another level, you'll notice that the last door you walked through has changed. If you find the door boarded up and impossible to open, it means you escaped the nightmare and sealed it away. Meanwhile, a black void appears if you kill a monster, and walking through it will send you right back to the bedroom where you always begin. And finally, a bloodied door shows that the player was killed by a monster. Each of these visuals is pictured in the screenshot above (be aware that the game is still in the alpha stages, so the exact visuals shown are prone to change).

Seems simple enough. Time to end the blog, right? Well, not exactly. As established, player death is reflected in the game's narrative, but not just as a hidden number that decides what ending you get. The intent is to feel the death throughout the game. Let's use a monster known as The Wife as an example, whom you catch a glimpse of at the end of the game's trailer. You can probably guess what this monster represents, but in case it isn't obvious it's a twisted version of the protagonist's real wife. Should the player be killed by this monster, the game can change certain items and notes found to reflect this outcome. In the starting bedroom, for instance, there is a picture of the real wife on our protagonist's desk. At the start of the game, examining it reveals a neutral comment on the wife. In fact, the current message as currently written is this...

"It would be comforting if you were in here."

But after being killed by The Wife monster, examining that same photo will reveal a different message.

"I knew it."

Ooooh, what did he know, I wonder? I'll let you debate that. The point is, the result of the encounter with The Wife has clearly affected the way the protagonist perceives her, and will likely continue to perceive her long after he's woken up from this nightmare. And I'm only listing one small example of how things change. There will certainly be more where that came from.

Don't forget that death leaving scars applies to monsters too. All monsters can be killed in What Hides in Dreams using a method unique to them. Sometimes that's with a weapon and the player is charged with being aggressive with the monster, while other times the player has to use deceit. In all cases the player is expected to make a conscious decision about what to do with the monster. After all, you might easily find a weapon that could kill the monster, but nobody says you have to use it. Should you do the deed, the game responds to those outcomes as well. Using The Wife example from earlier, killing her would naturally mean that the protagonist's feelings towards her have soured, though evidently he feels some remorse for that because the photo from our earlier example will now read “I'm sorry”. As stated earlier, the story's intent isn't necessarily to say what is the good or bad outcome. You might think of it more as the game exploring various possibilities. What happens if this thing in the protagonist's life seizes control of him? How about if the protagonist snaps back? Even with just a few outcomes per level, the possibilities are plentiful.

I've focused largely on the narrative aspects of death leaving scars, but there is a light gameplay element to it too. I'm still in the business of trying to blend gameplay and narrative after all, so I want something like death leaving scars to have a dual purpose. The scars in question are of course left during normal gameplay. They are the results of simply playing the game. But how many deaths you've had does adjust the levels slightly. Something I wanted to avoid was having players die repeatedly due to being blindsided by a monster's appearance or having trouble figuring out a puzzle while dodging a monster. To alleviate this, I utilize adaptive difficulty. The game will start at a base level of challenge that is then adjusted if you die a lot or kill other monsters. So, if you die multiple times, then the next level you play through will hold off on spawning the monster for a bit, allowing you more time to familiarize yourself with the level and what you need to do to progress. Meanwhile, if you kill a lot of monsters, then later monsters will be a bit more aggressive. This is of course meant to help keep players engaged without getting overly frustrated. After all, even in a game like this where there are no traditional checkpoints and restarting parts of the game over and over, you really don't want players dying too much. Plus, I'm also aiming for an average playthrough to have a healthy balance of escapes, monster kills, and player deaths, so adjusting the difficulty on the fly is expected to help a lot with that. Of course, I fully expect some players will play through the game managing feats like killing every monster, which is fine too! I hope to at least say that I kept you on your toes as you did so.

Careful with that axe, Eugene…

Okay, now we can end the blog. That should cover just about everything you need to know about death leaving scars. It is the selling point of the game, more than even the scary bits themselves, so it only made sense to cover this topic early on. And don't get me wrong, the scares are also important, but any game can be scary. It's far more interesting to tie an interesting gameplay element to the fear. And in this case, the horror can be heightened more easily in What Hides in Dreams because there are permanent consequences for death. The scares don't have to stop when you die and restart from your last save. If anything, they can grow. At least, that's the philosophy behind it. It's been a fun concept to explore, and a horror game that takes place in a literal nightmare felt like the perfect place to explore the concept. I just now hope that I ultimately do it justice...so I guess that means I better get back to it.

Until next time!

-Lance T.