Development diary of an indie horror about the terrible secret of children and their games: Beginning of development
Hi all! I'm Egor, I'm 30 years old and I'm an interface designer. I love horror and games. My long-time dream is to make my own horror game. What we do together with the team, I called “Children's Temple».
Some general information
This will be a classic quest in the horror genre, but not Point&Click, but with direct control of the character using the keyboard or gamepad. We are developing the game in Unity and will release it on Steam and VK Play, and if successful, we will make a port to consoles and mobile phones.
What is this game about?
Temple of Children is a horror adventure in the setting of a Russian province, with many riddles and puzzles, a stalking monster and a deep intriguing plot that will keep you in suspense until the very end, and the secret will be revealed only at the end. The game tells the story of an ordinary girl, Nastya, who will have to face terrifying events and go through tests that no adult can handle. And you can only cope if you remember that we were all children.
Why do children play hopscotch and what are they hiding? What is the Children's Temple and who oversees it? This is a story about children, their strange games and their great God.
The Children's Temple is a children's horror story for stories in the dark, a terrible mystical fairy tale. The Children's Temple is my statement, my story about childhood, the story that we forgot something important when we grew up.
How did it all start?
I've loved horror films since childhood. I like the universe “SCP», “Backrooms» and other Internet creativity, analog horror and mockumentaries. One day I decided to listen to scary stories on YouTube and got hooked. It turned out that the horror genre in literature is thriving; there are a lot of talented authors in Russia and the CIS, such as Vlad Raiber, Roman Chainsaw Black, Key Krestovsky and many others. I spent a lot of time listening to different stories, and they were my main source of inspiration. I wanted to write my own!
The first thing I did was come up with a monster. A terrifying, grotesque child abductor, he came from my nightmares. Everything else came after him. It became the center of the game and my starting point.
Script writing
In addition to me, a talented horror writer and screenwriter, Vlad Raiber, worked on the game script. I'm happy that I was able to work with him, because he is one of those people whose stories I listened to while drawing the game at night.
Before we started working with Vlad, I worked on the script alone, and all I had was the beginning of the plot and the quest script for the puzzles in the first chapter, a bunch of ideas and a complete lack of understanding of how it should all develop and what it was all about will be my game. I didn’t know where the story would begin or how it would end. I didn't even have a clear vision of the idea. Although by that time a lot of things had already been drawn and invented. I realized that I needed help.
Vlad and I spent a lot of time in discussions, and it was thanks to him that we were able to put everything together, combine all my and his ideas and come up with a complete story that intrigues, fascinates and keeps us in suspense until the very end.
It was Vlad who came up with the phrase “Children's Temple». At first it was just our conventional working designation, but eventually it became the official name of the future game.
One of Vlad’s ideas, expressed by him at our first call, formed the backbone of the plot and became one of the defining ones in the script. Now work on the script is still underway, but only by me. The skeleton of the script is ready and it is growing meat – this is Vlad’s merit.
I'm trying not to talk too much about the game's plot because I don't want to spoil it, and I'll keep things interesting until the very end. Even my team doesn’t know everything)
Plot structure
The game will consist of 3 chapters. We haven't decided yet, but perhaps we will release it in episodes, like Bunny. The level of madness will increase in each chapter. The scenario is structured in such a way that the game first asks questions, throws out scenario hooks, and in order to find out the answers to them, the player must reach the very end. The desire to solve the mystery is the main motivator in the passage.
Setting and atmosphere
I love Russian settings in games, and especially horror in this setting. It seems to me that developers from Russia should popularize the Russian flavor. Which, by the way, is what’s been happening lately—let’s remember Atomic Heart or the Black Book.
The locations of the Children's Temple will be close to everyone who grew up in the Russian province, and horror seems more real and tangible when it takes place in familiar places. The grayness and melancholy of the outback of Russia, the aesthetics of abandoned places and basements – these are my references.
This is a game about childhood. And there is nothing closer than the city in which you spent it. I grew up in the city of Galich in the Kostroma region with a population of 13 thousand people and transferred the places and objects that surrounded me into the game. Galich is a good city, but if you know which places to go, you can be completely imbued with Russian melancholy.
Many locations of the game, its characters and events will reflect the story of my life. One of the locations almost completely replicates the apartment in which we lived, and the main character’s toys sitting by her bed in the trailer are my toys that used to haunt me in nightmares. A lot of the game consists of details taken from real life, and specifically from my life. Not only is it personal to me, but it also brings life to the locations. I don't need to invent them, I just need to look around.
I love to invent worlds and stories, I love to fantasize, I love to draw, I love when fog falls on the city, I love to walk through the dark, empty and quiet corridors of the school on a winter evening during a school disco, listening to every rustle. I want to feel these moments again, bring them into reality, and let others feel at least a little.
Game references
Fran Bow is the closest reference to the game in terms of gameplay and concept. Fran Bow is one of the best quests I've played. This game perfectly weaves puzzles into the narrative, and in this regard I want to take an example from it.
Distraint and Distraint 2 are simple horror quests, but with a very exciting and dramatic plot that raises perhaps simple, but serious and interestingly presented topics, such as the question of what is more important: money or your conscience. “What goes around comes around. Fuck it!”
Silent Hill has been my favorite since childhood and has inspired me throughout my life. The sound and perfectly conveyed atmosphere of loneliness is what I want to take from the foggy town into my game.
Lost in Vivo is a small but very atmospheric indie horror game, the spiritual successor to Silent Hill, and also the scariest game I've ever played. Like all the games in the list above, this game does not rely on darkness and jump scares, it frightens with a sense of the unknown, increasing the player's anxiety with every minute.
Other sources
Since I love the SCP universe, some characters and places refer to some SCP objects. For example, in the second chapter of the game there will be a living tree, the creation of which was inspired by me SCP-2571 – Cragglewood Park, the creepiest SCP that gives me goosebumps. At the initial stages of development, I even thought about making a game about him, but in the end I left this idea for future projects)
My wife was and remains my muse. Initially, the main character's name was Olya, but my wife Nastya jokingly told me “So, I didn’t understand, why not Nastya?»
and I absolutely not jokingly renamed Olya to Nastya. The heroine also got her face from my wife. When I painted her portrait, I wanted to do something beautiful and my wife’s face came out somehow naturally. Nastya got her last name from my mother. Sudakova is her maiden name.
Nastya, despite the fact that she is the main character of the game, does not have any distinctive features in appearance. I wanted to create the impression that she was an ordinary girl like millions, and the story that happened to her could happen to anyone. And perhaps it even happened to one of you in childhood, you just forgot about it.
Visual
The game's visuals are limited to three primary colors: black, white and red. There are several reasons for this:
Initially, I planned to make the game two-color: black outlines on a white background or vice versa. But as a result, I added other shades because I wanted to give it more volume and realism. But the main reason that the game is mostly black and white remains the same – it’s easier) You can draw locations and animations much faster if you don’t have to think about and waste time on color.
I wanted the game to look somewhat analogue, like a black and white photograph. I wanted to convey an atmosphere of melancholy, loneliness and hidden horror. Take any photo of a Russian entrance, convert it to black and white, increase the contrast, making the shadows deeper, add noise – now the photo looks alarming.
This was also necessary in order to show the contrast of the two realities intertwined in the game. Gradually, everything in the game will begin to change before our eyes. Locations, events and characters will become increasingly crazier, and more and more will begin to leak through the black and white fabric of reality. red. Water pipes, intertwined with each other, will turn into vessels, and the walls and floor will replace bones and meat.
Animation
The game combines bone and frame-by-frame animation, but still the main tool is classic frame-by-frame animation. I'm not a professional animator, but I had to study all this. It's a very labor-intensive process, but I enjoy it. And most importantly, I like the result)
For example, for just one face melting animation, about 360 frame layers had to be drawn (separately for the background, outline, shadow and highlight). And all this for 6 seconds)
And the animations for killing Nastya and turning the centipede took me 3 days each. They already use a combination of stop motion and bone animation.
Hide and seek games with a monster
In addition to the standard puzzles and object searches for the quest genre, the game will have another important mechanic – a stalking monster that will accompany the player throughout the plot and not let him relax. Essentially, he will perform the same functions as the Tyrant in Resident Evil 2. The player will be able to hide, but he will not be able to do this forever. Therefore, even when playing hide and seek, you will have to use your head and constantly move or run away.
Team and development
Initially, I made the game alone (except for co-writing the script with Vlad Raiber), but the project quite quickly began to attract people with similar interests. So Alina joined me and began helping me with social networks, bloggers and other marketing activities. And also with the help of our community, I found a programmer – Aigerim.
Other artists also began to help me, and I continue to build collaborations with them.
We are currently working hard on creating a demo of the Children's Temple, and the game already has a page on Steam, add it to “Wishful». The temple needs your blood!
Conclusion
The Children's Temple is open and waiting for its faithful parishioners! Come to our social networks to chat about the game, your fears, toy altars, or just chat!
Add the game to your Wishlist on Steam:
In contact with: https://vk.com/hramdetey_game
Telegram: https://t.me/hramdetey
