Design principles of Vessel

Until now we only have talked about Vessel narrative design and concept. I think it’s the time we dive a little bit more into how the player will feel playing Vessel and how we are intending to achieve it. Let’s begin!

Game feel

Vessel lives on the edge of two different genres in terms of evoked feelings: action and horror. Both have in common one thing though, tension. In action you need to be focused to follow the fast pace, and in horror you hold that focus out of the fear to be scared. Therefore our main goal is to make the player feel tense in both ways during the experience.

Building tension

There are a lot of ways to build tension but we need to find what will suit our story and characters the best. After some consideration we decided to build tension through character and resource erosion. Think about it as a slow, crippling, anxiety induced by a situation that goes worse over time.

Lucas is a fighter, a really good one in fact. He isn’t helpless at all and is more than able to beat the horrors that live in Gemino. Our goal is to design situations where the player survives but ends in a worse condition. The equilibrium point is the player engaging in a combat that he wishes to avoid to save resources for the unknown situations he will face. 

Outside of the fights, the tension will be built through a fast paced exploration where the player needs to react quickly to avoid dying. In other words we want the player to expect the unexpected. The concept is the gameplay equivalent to a jumpscare, our goal is to make the player think twice before relaxing and dropping the controller because he knows something will require attention sooner than later.

Our design principles

• Our player should feel at the edge of barely surviving, not dying and retrying.

• Fights aren’t scary because they are difficult but because they are taxative.

• There is no room to breathe, the player needs to keep moving and being constantly vigilant.

Stay tuned

This post has been short but it’s the funding ground for a series of design posts. Next week I will talk about combat design specifically and how we are designing it to suit this cosmic horror experience. Please share, drop a comment, and consider donating in Ko-fi to help me keep this blog alive!