What is Forgotten? 1. Complete suspension of disbelief. I am aiming to do everything I can to allow this game to pull you in deep enough for you to forget the real world exists during gameplay. 2. Emotion, emotion, emotion. At the end of the day, the games, media, or art that people remember most always comes down to whatever brought the most emotion out of them. Emotion is the very thing that makes us feel alive. Through suspension of disbelief and psychological manipulation, I want to draw strong emotion from the player. I want this game to be memorable. Memories, by no coincidence, being a core theme of the game's story. 3. Personal. So what makes the game more emotional? If it's personal. What if when you look down at your avatar's torso, or his arms, you saw every mark, scar, and deformity that you've left him with? Dynamic and persistent character damage is just one way that I plan on making this game a personal experience.
The gameplay in this game is completely based on exploration and puzzle-solving: Every level holds a story that unfolds as you explore, and exploring isn't easy. There are rooms that need certain keys to get into, and there are demons who lurk, always ready to rob you of your precious memories and remove purpose from your life, in the dark.
So what happens if one of these so-called demons attacks you? They're not after your life, just your memories. Memories which are anchored to physical entities, mementos, that you carry around with you. You're not sure why these demons want your memories exactly, and you're not sure why it is you're collecting them. But they're very important, perhaps essential. Maybe, the outcome of everything you do depends on these mementos, and perhaps more terrifying than that: once you've lost one, it is never, ever coming back.
The game aims to make the terrifying experiences all the more terrifying by essentially rewarding the player for his hard work with a memento: each memento has a subtle effect on your in-game abilities, can be looked at, read about, admired, and is important to the ending you get. Naturally, this means when encountering an enemy is a risk of permanently screwing up your game, there's a deeper fear than just the typical "lost time" one. The fear is much more akin to how doing something dangerous in real life feels.
Of course, getting the perfect ending is pretty much near impossible. But winning and enjoying the game is so easy that practically anyone can do it. Because of this, it's an experience that will impact everybody who plays it on a deep, emotional level, but it will not scare off players who hate challenges, nor will it scare off players who crave challenges. The mechanics boil down to one purpose: make this experience terrifying. They serve this purpose above and beyond.
Note: Enemies are completed only in code, with no graphics or animations. Because of this, they are not in the game yet.