The player and ghost NPCs interact with one person and wreak havoc in their life and around them. (It can be a certain person/group of people for each level or one person for the entire game to have a complete story and increased engagement.)
For the purpose of this writing sample, this person is Noah, a game developer in his late twenties, a geeky guy who can’t figure out his life (ask for a raise/ask a girl out/stand up for himself and his opinions, make decisions). Though the ghosts who compete for causing chaos around him make tons of problems for Noah, they also push him towards making decisions and taking control of his life.
Character and NPCs
The player can be one of these characters (the others will be NPCs). For this sample, we’re playing Rocky.
1) Rocky, a cute fluffy goggle-eyed creature with furry tentacles. No ghost takes him seriously, so he wants to prove he’s worthy and cause as much mayhem as he can. He seems harmless at first sight but is full of surprises.
2) Lisa, a girl without a face (a dark empty spot instead of her face), sweet and melancholic, but can get murderous when it comes to competing for the chance to wreak havoc. Doesn’t like to see others’ faces (especially human, and especially with cheerful expressions). [strength:2]
3) Steve, a tall lean punk, always enraged, chaos is his element, and he wants chaos to rule everything. [strength:2]
4) …, a blood-chilling embodiment of horror – just the feeling, no visible form, only a monstrous shadow. We don’t know what it wants, and we don’t want to: it must be too horrible. (It wants to erase the very notion of humanity and turn this world into a world of shadows.) [strength:3]
Noah’s incidents for the first level
For each incident, you get a trigger message that there’s an opening for you to cause mayhem. This is when the aura of the space changes, and you see a pulsing purple (Lisa), acid-green (Steve) and steel-grey (…) “bubbles”. To have a chance to cause chaos, you have to fight the other ghosts (pullback-and-release style). If you win, you get wreckage points (depending on the defeated NPC’s strength) that you can save at certain spots (see below).
Roadmap
Focus on Noah
It’s night. Noah is the last one leaving the office, he pauses at the door to think, and…
[1 Mess with his memory]
… and locks it. Then he slaps himself on the head: he forgot the car keys on his desk (he can’t get inside without setting off the alarm.)
He doesn’t want to deal with the police tonight, so he sighs and walks home.
Focus on the girl riding a bike, a block away from Noah.
[2 Mess with the bike brakes]
The bike slams into Noah, and both he and the girl fall on the ground. She pulls him up from the ground and apologizes. Noah stands in shock, rubbing his shoulder: it hurts, madly, but the girl is really sweet and pretty. She waves a hand in front of him, gets no reaction, writes her number on a scrap of paper and puts it in his pocket. The girl leaves, worried.
Focus on Noah
[3 Cause a blackout!]
Save your progress
The streetlights switch off, and the world plunges into pitch-black darkness. Noah stumbles and falls.
Focus on the girl
[4 Mugging]
A thug-like voice in the darkness demands she gave it her purse. She replies something indefinite…
Focus on Noah
…which is heard by Noah, who recognizes her voice and sees his chance to finally do something worthy this crappy night. He launches forward, hero-like, but…
[5 Put something under his feet]
…stumbles again and falls right on the thug. A gunshot fires; the streetlights turn back on. The thug’s knocked out, no one’s injured. Noah scrambles to his feet, he and the girl stare at each other, then run away from there.
[6 Steal the scrap of paper with the girl’s number]
Saving point
When Noah gets home, he is about to text the girl, but he finds out he lost the paper.
Saving points: Whirlwinds of Chaos – the little black whirlwinds where you can save your progress within the level.
The “seriousness” of the ghost’s actions can increase throughout the game (start at small tricks, then have something more serious, move to life-threatening and then to global).