Metamorphosis

Alright guys and gals, I would like to present my game project: Metamorphosis.

Note: If this reminds you of Silent Hill, I'm not surprised. The first idea of Metamorphosis was it to be a Silent Hill fangame, but I decided to try and branch it out more. I still want to use the idea of psychologically based monsters, however, so that will stay in the final product.

This is a Survival Horror

Synopsis



The story focuses on the journey of a woman through a demented and twisted version of her hometown. The player takes control of Sarah Goodman, a 26 year old renowned nature photographer who has been asked by her estranged grandmother to spotlight the local forest in her next project. Confused by her grandmother's first attempt of communication in a decade, Sarah decides to take her up on the offer. The first night camping in the forest, however, is disastrous. What starts a simple supply run to town turns into a fight for her life as she seeks to unravel the mystery of the town and the trauma of her past.

Features

• Limited active battle system combat, focused more on hiding from enemies than confronting them.
• Multiple endings, depending on the player's choices throughout the game
• An amount of puzzles, hopefully not enough to make the player very frustrated
• A journal with entries from Sarah herself and objectives for the player to follow
• A story that takes the player through the psychological problems of Sarah
• Explores issues that aren't dealt with in mainstream games often
• Strategic saving, meaning one cannot save from the main menu but only from specific points

Characters





Sarah Goodman, the main character. I can't spoil much about her, but the parts that can be told are that she is a hard worker, a practical person who tries to be upfront with her problems.



Samuel. a mysterious boy that keeps appearing wherever Sarah goes in the town...



Screenshots





A school area



More school area! But also cutscene?



Sarah's campsite

Monsters



Concept sketches from my art thread



This game is very early in development as I have been working on it for less than a month now, but it's coming along very nicely. The demo for this won't be up for a pretty long time, so apologies for that. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! 

If you're going to give me some feedback, I'd love for people to tell me what scares them most in videogames. For example, certain mechanics that make you jump or certain kinds of sequences that scare you. It'd really help in me designing the game!!

Thank you very much for reading! 

Bumping this, feedback would be super nice!!

Included: a dumb picture of Sarah I drew in paint

Here's my two cents
Personally, I'd say the story and dialogue is where you can get the most scares/creeps out of such limited graphics, and by that, I mean being very descriptive of your creepy events' narration/dialogue. One game that I can think of that was very descriptive by the use of dialogue was Corpse Party, a lot of the scenes there where someone dies(leading to a bad end) is mostly pitch black or just pictures that weren't really scary but the way the characters describe how they die was enough to give me the chills. Ofcourse, music and sfx is a really great partner for story telling.


Jump scares, although considered to be cheap, if well placed can be a huge asset for your game. I think what makes jumpscares cheap is that some people would just slap those in randomly anywhere in their game hoping to freak out the player every single time. If that's the case, then the player would be too focused on expecting scares like "OMG, it's another corridor...time to remove the headphones" or "Woah, random dead guy on a chair alert! I'll just squint my eyes so I won't see his ugly face", and with the player expecting scares every single time he turns to a corner, then it won't be an immersive experience which in my opinion is what makes good if not great horror games. So, yeah, make sure to immerse your player before giving him the scare.


Oh yeah, your sketches look really great! Really, Silent Hill-esque monsters that make you go "WTF?!