Whisper House: Introduction to Game Design Project 2
Authors: Emily Schooley, Jenny Wang, Jackie Yang, Gloria Liu, Olga Campos Saadi
Artist’s Statement
Whisper house is a third-person sensorial escape room game based on PC. We wanted to build a sensorial three-dimensional space that would guide our player in the narrative and create a unique gaming experience.
Sound and music are a crucial part of any experience, be it gaming, movies, sitting on the grass… but oftentimes it is kept in the background; enhancing yet supporting. In Whisper house we decided to invert that order and bring sound and auditory cues to the forefront while tampering visual stimuli.
The player’s vision is extremely limited as they wander the dark halls of the Bittencourt Mansion, but the walls are scared by the secrets they once helped keep from the world.
Humans are very visual creatures. Most of us rely a lot on that sense so not only limiting it but going as far as inverting the reliance from visual to auditory while playing Whisper House contributes greatly to the eerie and uncomfortable ambiance of the game and overarching narrative. We wanted to have a constant layer of tension and terror that despite having a supernatural element was still very human. The house is only the medium through which this family tells their story and the gamer becomes a witness to the complex familial dynamics that once inhabited these halls.
Concept Map
The general game mechanics is a walking simulation guided by music and visual cues. Sound plays differently for left and right ears, with the louder sound indicating the direction of the clues. As the player gets closer to the clue, the volume also increases. There are also visual cues confirming the sound loudness and they further support users to walk in the right direction. By accessing the clues, the player uncovers pieces of information regarding the mysterious murder that took place in the haunted house.
The game aims to create a scary vibe and a lonely yet breathtaking solo haunted house investigation experience. Below is a mood board for materials that convey the scary, mystery and creepy feelings.
Formal Elements
Player
You as the player of the game is a stranger walking by the house. You feel a strange and unavailable pull to go into the haunted house and examine what happened there. There is no opponent in the game. This is a solo exploration.
Objective/Outcome
Your goal is to discover the mystery of the house. The early clues will tell you a murder took place, and you would updated your objective to look for clues to find out who is the murder, and why the murder took place.
Rules/Procedures
As you walk in the house, you discover clues that point out important information of who the murderer is. You would need to use a headphone, mouse and keyboard to navigate through the house. The music and visual clues will help guide you towards the clues. There is an order of discovering the clues, a new clue is open for exploration after the previous is found. Once all the clues are found, the player would have all the information to decide who is the murderer, and exit the game.
Resources
Loudness of music and sprinkling lights help guide players to the clues. There are various types of clues including newspaper, audio, family tree, letters, and etc. There are also text clues that help guide the player to start the game.
Interaction History and Playtests
Once we settled on a narrative built around sound and puzzles, we wanted to jump right into testing these core elements. Our first playtest consisted of two pieces. First, we had a set of puzzles ranging from a letter scramble to a logic puzzle where we gave one to each of the four players and asked them to solve the murder. We also created a Unity built cliff edge where the player follows a sound to a specific spot.
We decided to test each element separately to get clearer feedback on what works and doesn’t work, and we’re glad we did. Our players were quite confused by the puzzles and were unsure if their puzzles were solvable on their own or if they all needed to be solved together. There was also a decent amount of frustration about the varying difficulty of the puzzles. Most importantly though, is that the player who was the murder never figured out that he was the murder so was very frustrated at the end because he had been unknowingly working against his own self-interest. This helped shape the direction of our game by steering us away from a group game where one person was the killer and towards a single player game. On the flip side, the Unity soundscape was very well-received and impressive to players. There seemed to be a little confusion, but it looked very promising. This helped us cement our decision to try to use sound as the primary guide.
From here on out, our playtests and iterations focused on cementing the storyline and clues, refining the sound guide, and creating a cohesive and clear onboarding experience. In terms of the storyline and clues, we decided to create a complex murder storyline even though our slice only consists of four clues. We thought about trying to reduce the entire plot to only three or four clues but decided that we didn’t want to make the story as simplistic as that would require. Therefore, we embraced the fact that we’re creating a slice and not the full game. Of course, this made it difficult to test the puzzle of putting together the clues. However, we are confident that it would be easy to modify the clues later in development to respond to any issues with solving the puzzle.
Refining the sound guide was a bit more challenging. The first major issue we ran into was lag causing confusion on the directionality of the sound. Players were also looking for visual clues so much so that they assumed the lighting was leading them somewhere when, in fact, the lighting was just scene lighting and nothing else. Even when we specifically asked players to follow the sound, there was still a desire for a visual clue. This was most apparent when the player was in the room with the clue, and they couldn’t find the clue. To address this, we added a visual “glitter” to the clue which helped lead players directly to it in the room. This desire for visuals and confusion with the sound guide heavily influenced the onboarding/tutorial process we designed too.
It quickly became apparent that we would need to have a clear onboarding process for the player to help them understand what was going on and what we were asking of them. Through our playtests, we saw a strong desire to have some sort of visual guide in addition to the auditory one, so we corporated the same sort of glitter that we used to highlight the clues to help guide the player. Sometimes the glitter guide would get a little bit ahead of the player, and they would be asked to follow the sound to find the glitter. This seemed to be a good way to help transition players to following the sound. Additionally, we made the first two clues much easier to find which gives the player a few easy wins.
One of the other big things we integrated into the onboarding process was the story opener. Our first few playtests just dropped the player into the house without any background, and we heard a lot of confusion about why they were in that house. We then added some narrative text but that was still confusing to the players. For our final iteration, we added a few images that represent a short cut scene that would play at the start. This helps to ground the player and allows them to continue on with fewer questions.
Overall, by playtesting early and iterating quickly, we kept a clear idea of what needed improving and where to focus next. This allowed us to create a really cool slice of a game with a somewhat unique element of sound following. We know this element still needs more testing and might end up becoming a little more secondary to visuals. However, we are hopeful that the visuals can remain a sort of adaptive messaging for those who are struggling while the sound remains the primary guide. Finding the balance that we created has only been possible through playtesting.
Game
A playable slice of the game is available for download. The game is built via Unity. The demo video as well as playable download links are below.
Video of Final Play: https://youtu.be/_iqV6VNPHik
Game for download
- Build for Windows: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1q2iRdPkkHdNTkOR52Hwt6AEjdA0Op6tD/view?usp=sharing
- Build for macOS: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1E4hz1ThIOlH2u7cGPB-6Akw9tJtXAqTc/view?usp=sharing
Demonstration of playtest experience: https://youtu.be/kzDPOLsGcuo
Game Clues — Contain Spoilers!
First Clue: Newspaper
[Player hears loud music and sees a glowing book on the small table in the entryway. A newspaper is glowing on the table. Player interacts with it and the music stops. Newspaper article text below.]
Player: Hello? Hello?? Who’s playing that music? I thought this place was abandoned years ago…
Second Clue: Family Tree
[Player hears quiet music again which gets louder as they get closer to the next clue. Music leads the player to the sitting room. Walks up to it and clicks it to interact with it. Music stops once the clue is clicked. Book is a family tree with a little bit of description for each character and shows the relationships between them.]
Third Clue: Letter
[Player hears quiet music which gets louder as they get closer to the next clue. Music leads them to the master bedroom. There’s a glowing letter on the table. Player interacts with it and the music stops. Letter text below.]
My Dearest Alfred,
As I lay on my deathbed reflecting on my life, one major regret weighs on my soul. My wonderful son, Jacob, who was the light of my life was in fact our son. I never told you this as I was afraid of what your brother would do if he ever found out that we had an affair.
As the years passed, I thought this secret would die with me, but now, with my precocious departure and your brother’s death last spring, I cannot fathom the idea of leaving Jacob in this world without you knowing the truth.
What I have to ask of you is no trivial task however I see no other alternative. I want you to take care of dear Jacob once I leave this world and love him for the son he is.
With all my love,
Amelia
Fourth Clue: Audio Recording
[Player hears quiet music again which gets louder as they get closer to the next clue. Music leads the player to the twin’s bedroom. Engraved heart on the wall is glowing. Player interacts with it and the music stops. Audio recording starts playing.]
