Hey!
I would like to introduce you to a project that is already five years old, The Gray Man. It's a surreal point&click adventure game from the point of view of a serial killer. I'm also bringing the first demo version available on Steam-> wishlist it up!
Adventure?! A serial killer?!
The player will follow a serial killer through the eyes of his own conscience. He will become a spectator to his horrific acts of murder and loss of control. You are also confronted with different perceptions and interpretations of the killer's inner world, but he is struggling to understand what is happening around him. You, as the conscience, will have a limited area of control at first, but due to the "right" choices you may (or may not!) make, you will be much freer.
There are three character roles - the conscience, the serial killer character and the inner voice, ie. The Whisperer. Each role will in its own way control the game - its mechanics, the main character's actions and direction in the story going forward, while also uncovering specific memories and traumas. The Whisperer is the killer's manipulator.
Game endings and bad decisions
The story points to a single endgame - because the more you get to your the end, the more you hurt the people around you. Therefore, if you weaken the main character, you will be free to make decisions and thus commit suicide, which equals an alternate ending. However, by doing so you will lose a lot of game content. In addition to the right decisions, there are also the "wrong" ones. Choosing the wrong game path ( meaning that you aid the Whisperer in its deeper manipulation) makes the overall gameplay of the game slightly more difficult for the player. It becomes more difficult to help the main character, and this is especially intensified towards the end of the story in the battle for the killer's soul.
The conscience is essentially the spectator of all this happening, observing the different variations of interaction, puzzles, searching for memories and answers in this surrealist approach in the subconscious. This introduces two main visual styles – Being Awake and the Subconscious.
In both styles, the orientation in space is conditioned by the character's actions within the pointing and clicking interaction, so that it is also possible to click on various objects and other game elements to explore the closed world and its dark corners. In Being Awake the player perceives the real time and place, whereas the Subconscious one is the inner world of the killer with many fantasies, escaping from this claustrophobic reality into the comfortable one.
The main purpose is to force the serial killer to self-realization of doing evil. With the help of various subconscious puzzles, environments with the search for various objects, fragments of memories that represent specific motives in his life. Thus defeating the Whisperer.
- I calculated the game time to be 4-6 hours.
- I offer plenty of alternate endings, however, it all boils down to a single game ending.
- Minor side paths to solve specific segments of the game.
- Certain game segments can even be skipped at the cost of harder gameplay difficulty.
- Many optional interaction in environments with various hidden locations, informations and so on.
- Bonus content in the game settings will offer other interesting tidbits and trivia to add variety.
- The game contains violent scenes, murder and suicide themes, dead bodies and light nudity.
- All in English and Czech language.
The game is almost finished. I'm debugging a lot of stuff, trying to be more player-friendly and want to add a few more helpers for orientation and text readability. I plan to release around mid 2023!
If you're interested in the game, you can throw it on your wishlist on Steam, or Twitter profile, Youtube channel or subreddit for more various stuff!
Thank you for your attention!
