Concept Statement
A new carnival has come to the town of McCoy, Wisconsin, and a group of teenage friends decide to go for a fun night out. After watching the show in the main tent, the group decides to check out the funhouse. While navigating the maze inside, our protagonist (the player) gets separated from her friends. As she tries to reunite with them, she discovers the carnival's alternate, wicked world. What started off as a fun night takes a sinister turn as our protagonist realizes that there is more to this carnival than meets the eye.
Description, Challenges, Objectives
This is a first-person, semi-open world game based on immersive storytelling through exploration. The objective of the game is to escape and/or hide from enemy AI that chase the player while exploring the map in order to find clues/objects of interest that lead the player to repair rides, ushering in the alternate, normal-space world of the map. The alternate world changes key elements of the map, eventually allowing the player to escape with all, some, or none of their friends depending on how much time the player spends in the dark world.
All versions of the map (entry map, dark map, end-level map) are fully explorable and are intended to be explored by the player who is able to climb on top of stalls and tents and can play carnival games. Notes and features throughout the map point to deeper lore of the world intended to get the player to think and wonder about Darkside's story.
Characters
Macy (Main Character)
Macy is fascinated by the supernatural and is unknowingly attuned to it. She is a small-town southern girl of McCoy who enjoys the outdoors, books, and dabbling in painting and drawing. Macy mostly keeps to herself unless she's with the few friends and family she doesn't mind being around. One weekend, her friends try to convince her to join them at the fair. She has done research on the new carnival at the edge of town and is hesitant to join due to its history, but finally her friends convince her. Her attunement to the supernatural allows her to slip into the carnival's dark world mostly unharmed, but not without a few hurdles. It is up to her to save her friends and escape.
Edward
Edward has lived in McCoy his entire life. He and Macy have been neighbors for as long as he can remember. Edward enjoys acting and has recently taken a liking to cooking; he has started helping around in the kitchen with his newly learned knife skills. He loves Macy like a sister and would do anything to protect her. Macy can find and help Edward by looking for the mime (enemy AI) and reading knife-pinned notes inside the park.
Caleb
In order to escape the stress of city life, Caleb's family moved to McCoy when he was a toddler. Although his parents recently divorced, Caleb finds the change to be enlightening. Caleb enjoys skateboarding and spends most of his time outdoors. Macy and Caleb have become closer within the past couple of months after his parent's separation and consider each other "bros." Macy can find and help Caleb by looking for the teddy bear (enemy AI) and reading notes with crudely drawn broken hearts at the top.
Lucy
Lucy is originally from a large city, similarly to Caleb, but relocated to McCoy with her family after her dad lost his job. She likes to play video games and loves murder mystery novels. Lucy has gone through the most hardship within her friend group but retains her dignity. She is assertive and is very protective of anyone who she considers a friend. Macy can find and help Lucy by looking for the ringmaster and reading heavily torn notes.
Enemies
Who They Are
The antagonists are the circus performers. Macy may discover clues that unveil the true nature of these performers; they have been sequestered and brainwashed to perform for the circus. Their goal is to capture and brainwash more people in order to keep the circus thriving. One performer in particular, Happy the Clown, managed to snap out of their hypnotized state and although their body is forever trapped and transformed by the circus, Happy attempts to communicate with and help those who slip into their dark domain by leaving aforementioned notes and clues around the park.
Behavior
Each enemy has a specified district of the carnival grounds in which they roam. When in range, enemies target the player and when they get close enough, they do damage to their health pool and a special animation specific to that enemy may play. When the player climbs up onto stalls or leaves a district that an enemy belongs to, the enemy will stop tracking the player and return to roaming the district.
Ringmaster
The ringmaster roams both the main tent and the stage area next to the main tent. This NPC guards Lucy's prison and an important objective item.
Mime
The mime roams the games district. This NPC guards Edward's prison.
Doll
The doll appears as jump scares to the player
Third Brother
The third Darxeid brother makes appearances as jump scares inside the funhouse and roams the entirety of the carnival grounds.
Lovely Assistant
The lovely assistant roams the main tent and the grounds in front. This NPC guards an important objective item.
Teddy Bear
The teddy bear roams the dark district and restroom grounds. This NPC guards Caleb's prison.
Happy the Clown
Happy the Clown may appear as an enemy to the player at first, but Happy helps the player by making unnerving appearances at important locations throughout the funhouse and the carnival grounds.
Project Goals
Main Goal
We want the world to captivate the player with a story that is not directly told to the player and is instead told via the game's world. The player may choose to take part in filling in the gaps of the world's story by seeking out as many notes and clues as they can, or the player may choose not to do this and play through the game without much thought for the world's lore, however we want each aspect of the world to feel cohesive and strongly attached to the story, down to the walls and the floors
Early Concept
While brainstorming game ideas for a pitch document, we wanted to move forward with the recently released Unreal 5 and take advantage of its new features, specifically Lumen and Nanite. We eventually landed on working on a project that takes place inside of a carnival because we knew that Lumen would do a lot for the myriad lights on the carnival grounds. This project was also a great fit for us because at the time, each member of the team had only ever worked on mostly linear gameplay experiences, and a carnival allowed for all of us to get some precious experience working on a (miniaturized) open-world game. As we moved forward with our concept, we came up with what we wanted the player to feel as they play Darkside.
Carousel
The carousel is one of the earliest things I created for Darkside. As one of the main attractions, it was an important piece to get in so we could start grounding ourselves on what Darkside was going to look like. We knew it would also be the most colorful and because the carousel would have many organically shaped parts, it was clear that this piece would be one of the more difficult models to get game-ready. Getting it finished and ready early on worked well for us because it filled a considerable portion of the map and helped facilitate a homogenous vision for the game.
Ferris Wheel
As the centerpiece of the carnival, the Ferris wheel was an extremely important asset to get right. This piece took a few days of modeling, texturing, and animating to get into a good place for Darkside. I also returned to readjust the light blueprint on the wheel several times before I became happy with the pattern. As an aside, this asset was the first file I ever had get corrupted. Fortunately, I had a backup saved and the source control already had the full wheel.
