Below you can watch the final gameplay footage for Ritual.
In September of 2014 I saw a lack of 2D horror games on the market and wanted to know why. I knew I wanted to make a 2D horror game and I knew I wanted to help get rid of the stigma that suggested they couldn't be scary. The result was a short prototype for a 2D horror game entitled Ritual where the player takes on the persona of a sister looking for a little brother in a haunted school. To get him back she must undertake a ritual that opens three portals to a demon realm that must be closed within a short period of time - whilst being pursued by the game's antagonist.
What Went Right
1. Art Direction
The art direction contributed to the horror atmosphere - a gritty colour palette, the use of overlays that created visual obscurity, the use of art assets conveying environmental storytelling and the incorporation of uncomfortable, saturated colours to represent danger. To ensure an effective art direction, the general art style was developed via the creation of "art prototypes" consisting of a tree asset rendered in a variety of distinct art styles. Viewers were asked which styles they felt were most suited to a horror atmosphere and this process was repeated with further iterations until the current art style was chosen.
2. Merging of art and game design
After playing a lot of horror games and reading lots of academic literature on the subject, I concluded horror atmosphere is key in inducing fear in a player. This is due to the cognitive science theory of the Two-Factor Theory of Emotion which, when applied to horror games, states that when a player feels stress in a horror game - usually due to jump scares or a high difficulty level - the surrounding horror imagery/atmosphere causes them to mislabel this stress as fear. In Ritual this stress is evoked through the implementation of timed gameplay sequences where the player must close portals to a demon dimension within a short time limit. Aside from an appropriate horror art direction, horror atmosphere is evoked through triggered events (animations, sounds, jump scares) strategically placed throughout the environment (see the purple rectangles in the screen cap shown below). These arguably successfully conveyed appropriate levels of tension as having images unaccompanied by sound and vice versa sets the player on edge for faster paced areas of gameplay i.e. scares such as the chase scene.
3. Scope
At the beginning of the year I was extremely ambitious and the following diagram was created to represent the initial level layout:
Whereas the current level layout is represented here:
Knowing when to scale back was invaluable. It left three weeks for the polishing of art assets and condensed gameplay down to less than five minutes, a convenient amount of time for the showcase which also depicts how horror atmosphere can be created in 2D games even in a condensed environment,
What Went Wrong
1. Not enough focus on promoting the game/myself as an artist
Throughout the project I didn't have much of an online presence for the game, failing to take advantage of popular online game development trends such as the #screenshotsaturdays hashtag on Twitter. Whenever I did I failed to communicate what exactly the screenshot was of or what it was for (I had quite a few people contact me who were interested in the project but couldn't tell what it was about!) In retrospect having the game logo or my website URL overlaid on released screenshots would have been very beneficial. Developing a self-brand further would have also likely have aided my online presence.
2. Technical Limitations
Halfway through the project I was no longer able to work with the initial programmer and "recruiting" a new programmer who had not been as involved was difficult as time had to be spent going over ideas. Having an audio designer and programmer who were essentially working for free was also problematic as I felt I didn't want to take more time from them than necessary which hindered iterative development in game design. For instance I really wanted to play with the idea of breaking the fourth wall in the climatic event for the game however I was more concerned with having a playable prototype than experimenting with gameplay elements that would have required further time-consuming outsourcing. For this reason there are also still a couple of (non-game breaking at least) bugs in the final build that in a regular development team environment would have likely been fixed.
Conclusion
I feel Ritual had a lot of potential that I couldn't reach as I have only just begun to scratch the surface of this topic and I would love to work on a 2D horror game again with an actual team behind me in order to fully utilise all the techniques I have learned this year in horror atmosphere creation. It's a really exciting time to be a 2D artist in games as we are seeing the likes of games such as The Banner Saga, Child of Light and Rayman Legends that truly harness the raw horsepower of high fidelity visuals and smoother frame rates that 2D development allows for. These attributes to a game development pipeline result in shorter game art time-frames and allow for extra time that can be used for artists to truly utilise and develop the a games art styles. Developers of 2D horror games- who typically stick to a standard pixel art style- can make use of this and it is hoped that more professionals will become invested in this area of game development and create successful, truly atmospheric 2D horror titles. As a result fans of horror games will have a larger variety of horror games to engage with and the creation of “scary” 2D horror games will no longer be viewed as “impressive” by critics- It will simply become the norm.
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