Hey gang!
I was wondering if anyone would be willing to go over the plot for my game, and offer some constructive criticism and other feedback!
Now, it's kinda hard to detatch the plot from the style of game-play, so I'll just say now that it's a rouge-like set in around about the 11th century. There's magic and gods, and some of the gods make all the others look like ants, because they're pretty much lovecraftian elder gods. Also, the game is kinda mysterious, due to it's "fear of the unknown" theme, so I think we should start where the player starts and go from there.
The opening cutscene depicts a princess sending a distress call. She appears to be communicating with our protagonist via their dreams. The message is brief, she's tells that she's a princess, that she's been locked in a room by the emporer of the ocean, and that her captor is the one with the key. She says that her homeland is in peril and that you must slay the emporer of the ocean to get her cell key. Then, she provides directions to the tower (think the spire of the corpse city of ryleigh) which allows access to the ocean depths, and the dream ends.
There are multiple different player characters, but our default protag simply accepts this quest with no questions asked and the next scene shows them getting off a boat and entering the upper layer of this tower. They find a journal of somebody who found this tower long ago and made records of what strange things lurked down there in the depths. Reading this journal is how I deliver the tutorial to the player. Once they reach the final few pages, they learn of the author's horrid fate (he starts going mad), and how the ladder that led down into the tower was burned in order to keep the monsters trapped down there. Jumping down the hole is now a one way trip.
This is where standard play begins. Our hero fights their way down into the abyss through fish-folk, haunted paintings of royalty long-gone, and vicious maritime monstrocities, and eventually (assuming they don't stop playing) they find the princess in a cell. She warns that a huge monster guards the emporer and that it would be foolish to fight it without first receiving a blessing from her to bolster your strength. The player gets to choose whether to take the blessing or not, and if they do, the fight is much easier.
If they take the blessing and win the fight with the beast, they reach the emporer. Then they learn that the emporer is a normal human, like they are. Then the emporer attacks. It's a false fight, as the player attacks once and insta-kills the old man. Then the princess walks into the throne room and shuts the door behind her. She's holding a trident and wearing a sadistic smile. Try as they might, the player is somehow unable to fight back as the princess murders them in cold blood. Game Over. But then a new character unlocks. The player, upon starting a new run as this character, learns that this new character worships an evil god who guards their mind against psychic attacks, but that they have been having the dreams about the princess anyway. They set off to the tower to learn who this princess really is, to be able to out-power a god.
Suppose that player doesn't take the blessing. If not, the fight with the beast is much, much harder, but they can still survive and get to the throne room. Everything plays out the same until the point where the princess walks in, because she actually runs in, holding the trident like a lance, and tries to ambush the player. The fight begins, and this time the player can actually fight and damage the princess. If they win, then the princess throws them back against a wall with a blast of magic, and creates a shield around themself. Then, they begin a prayer to something called "The Formlessness." At the end of this prayer, a wormhole opens above the player and an inky black figure reaches out and engulfs them. Game Over.
But the player has a name now. "The Formlessness." And the princess isn't the only one who can pray to a god. Throughout the runs down the tower, the player will have encountered the occasional prayer shrine, where the can contact and make pacts with gods. If they speak this new name at one of these shrines, another wormhole opens, and a voice pours out, screaming something unintelligable. The player is now a disciple of the formlessness, and when they reach the jail cell, the princess isn't even in there. Cue the beast fight and emporer one-hit-kill, and then the princess finally shows up. She explains to the player that they both worship the same god, and that the player has done them a great service.
She spills the beans. She is the princess of the ocean, and the player just murdered her father. She explains that she was physically prevented from doing so by her deceased mother, who was a fishfolk. She then explains the spell she had used in prior runs is actually a curse, that gives something powerful in exchange for the target's freedom. It was this very spell that prevented her from slaying her father directly. She offers to use the spell to turn the player into a fishfolk, that they might live on in the oceanic society, and serve her forever.
If the player accepts, Game Over. You turn into a fishfolk and survive the ordeal, now a common member of the new society ruled by the princess. If not, you fight to the death. This time, the fight has two phases, one with her more humanoid form and one where she takes her true, half human, half fish hybrid form. She cannot call upon her god for help because it has no reason to help either of you more that the other. Win or lose, this is the last fight. If you win, you become the new ruler of the ocean by conquest, but you're a puppet of the formlessness, so it's kind of a pyrrhic victory. If you lose, it's just a typical you died game over.
There are various ways that the player can learn some of this information outside of the game endings and final boss fights. The player can find several books around the tower that provide story info without explicitly saying that that's what they're doing. Also, as the player starts to go madder and madder, npc's and enemies will occasionally provide certain snippets of info in strange utterances as part of the game's madness side-effects.
Well, that was a novel and a half, wasn't it? Hope you're still awake! What did you think? As I said before, constructive criticism would be appreciated! And don't feel the need to sugar-coat it! If you need to be a little rude to convey what you're thinking, then I'd rather you do over deciding not to raise a valid concern.
As always, thanks for reading (even if you were skim reading near the end) and have a nice day!