This is a puzzle game that focus on manipulating the targets, making the most efficient play out of the given resources.
This game is a grid based puzzle game that the player plays as a demon, terrifying villagers and consume them. There will be skills for the player to cast to manipulate the villagers by terrifying them, makes them turn around, run away or lure as the players pleases. At the same time, the demon is afraid of light. It is also crucial to remain in stealth and not be seen by the villagers.
⬆️ A screenshot from the game Fear Harvester.
The main feel of the game should be the player feeling a sense of achievement from controlling the villagers making them panic and flee until the player ultimately end their sufferings and harvest resource from them. The difficulty will steadily go up, it will more and more become a min-max of Fear as a resource and the game become very challenging.
The idea of the main mechanic is about Harvest Fear. The player will have a initial points of Fear to start with. The skills will consume Fear and most of them will generates Fear counters on the villagers. With a efficient combination of skills, the player can generate more Fear on the villagers and finally Harvest the fear the player put on the villagers to do more skills.
Another main part of the game is the lighting system. Since the demon cannot be hit by any light source, there will also be skills to manipulate that aspect. Using skills or hiding in natural terrains is another layer of strategy that players have to consider.
The main inspiration of the game came from a game, League of Legends, and for sure I’m talking about FIDDLESTICKS. The thought came to me from the class exercise of assembling random words. The words I choose are KNIGHT, HARVEST, FEAR, which took me back to the fiddlesticks rework. Fiddlesticks fear the knights and then kill them, or “HARVEST” them.
I really like the feel of torture the prey before you finally kill them. I plan to do many mechanics similar to him. The passive effigy will lure or make villagers want to run, hiding in the brush to scare the prey. Something like that. It is a fun concept for me.
The initial thought of what challenges might occur is to accomplish the system for the game, especially the skill and Fear cost system. I expect it will be the first thing to abandon in terms of scaling down the concept. The second challenge I think of is the visuals, I’m not from a artist background and not really good at making sprites or 3D assets. I need to find a way to mitigate this problem or find a way for me to do visuals. Then if I managed to finish everything above, the biggest problem will be create a challenging but not too steep of a learning curve for the players to learn the interactions. It is always the hardest part I can imagine no matter the scale of mechanics I implemented.