Empath

This game was designed for my Computer Science Studio class, in which we had to make a small project and implement it from week to week. I was the sole coder and director and editor of the project, with the original design document written by Keith J. and most of the art by Noah S. I also wrote all the music for this game, and recorded all the sound effects.

It was developed in a studio called Adventure Game Studio.

The game took place in an asylum, in which presumably insane people with super-powers are stored.The main character

The plot of the game was going to be that the main character was going to find his cell or opened, with a scene of carnage outside. The player's aparently power is that of some sort of ESP link, where he can see events related to people, places, and things by looking at them, that he had no way to see.

The main character was going to go through the place in a straightjacket the entire game, and as such, wouldn't have use of his hands or an inventory to speak of.

To get around this, the player could converse with several NPCs who were all a mix of dangerous and crazy as they all had an unidentified superpower and reason for being there.

The player would also be able to use his mouth to bite something, if necessary, i.e. biting a pen to enter a passcode on a terminal with it.

The cast the player would interact with were X-Ray, a girl who had " X-ray " vision in her eyepatched eye, who was going to be a major companion of the character.

There was going to be an unnamed 'guard' character who was actually an noticably crazy inmate with the power to knock other people unconscious with his mind.

There was also going to be a helpful nurse character who only appeared while the character wasn't with any other NPC.

The other main character was the 'Slasher' who was causing all the carnage in the asylum, who is never directly seen by the main character before the final confrontation.

There were several other characters who were described in the design document that we roughly made, but were never fleshed out to a larger degree or drawn, due to time constraints.

As the game would have gone on, you would wound your way through the asylum, as the military are called in, and you eventually end up in the director's room, for the main showdown of the game.

He would then reveal to you, or find in his office after his death that you were there as part of a black ops project studying your use as a sort of 'bait' as a POW against foreign governments. The reason for this, which the player can figure out to help with the best ending, is that the killer stalking the asylum was actually the main character's power, a subconscious killing force in the shape of a human, and that the flashbacks that the main character had were actually just memories of 'the slasher.'

The game was going to end in one of several ways, after the encounter with the administrator. The player and Xray get into a car, and find the slasher with them.

If the player tried to attack him, it would have no effect, Xray would die, and the main character ends up in a coma while the slasher gets free reign.

If the player instead realized this earlier and attacked himself with the gun, the player would die, xray would get away, and the PC would be remembered as the man who stopped the slaughter.

For the third option, if the player acquired a psychic inhibitor from the 'nurse' character who was actually just a weak manifestation of the PC's power who was less id driven, the main character would lose his power, but be able to live a relatively normal life and escape with x-ray for the 'happy ending.'

The 'final' build of the game does not encompass nearly the scope of the above, but only a beginning playable demo of the first two rooms, with an example of a 'flashback' on Xray, some dialogue, and a death animation, as well as the 'verb coin' that I programmed for the interface.

The project stalled when the primary artist left the project, and has been at it's present state since May 2007.

Here is the slightly edited and annotated design document.

Here's the demo If you have any questions or comments, or are interested in the sourcefiles or images or music in this game, email me.