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## Brief One - Palace Intrigue

### Art Style

The art style for Dynasty:Rising will be dark and gritty, to reflect the overall tone of the story and the audience the game is aimed at. The main hub will contain various different areas corresponding to each faction's district, so they will all contain different colour palettes. For example, House Legius (the military faction) will have a very structured layout, and will consist of various earthy tones. House Siren on the other hand will have a brighter and more lustrous look, with a more vivid colour palette containing yellows, greens, and whites. Buildings in this area will be made out of polished concrete, which will continue the clean aesthetic provided by the colour palette.

### Main Hub

Our game will have a main hub area where the player can access missions and upgrades, and their reputation with each game faction. This hub will be a giant city split into five regions, one for each faction. Each area will have it's own different colour palette and aesthetic to show the player what their different paths will look like.

The main story missions will be accessed through a mission board found in the protagonist's home in the hub. Using this board the player can choose between each type of story mission such as diplomatic, action, or stealth missions. This allows players to choose missions depending on how they want the game to pan out, but also limits the amount of factions a player can associate themselves with. For example, House Argent missions will mainly contain diplomatic aspects, which will add an RPG element to Dynasty: Rising. On the other hand, House Legis will send the player on action missions, and House Ferrus will send the player on gathering missions for materials and important information. The game will implement a reputation system for this, where doing certain missions for a house can raise the reputation the player has with them, but can also simultaneously lower the reputation they have with a rival house.

The hub will also contain stores for the player to access where they can upgrade their skills, weapons, and gear, their cosmetic items, and additional side missions and collectables. Players will be able to access these after the initial tutorial, and more will unlock as they progress through the game. Depending on the path the player will take, different side missions and cosmetic items will be available to continue the choices of the player.

### Tutorial

The first part of the game will act as a tutorial while also providing important story elements, and setting up the tone of the game for the player. The playable character will be the protagonist and his brother will be the main antagonist. This beginning scenario will give the player small snippets of multiple mission types to show them how the game will be played. It will also introduce character's, such as the protagonists brother, that will be of great importance to the game as a whole.

The tutorial will start with the main character in a high ranking position in the governmental faction. The two main brother's have always been in a fight for power, however this time the fight will have gone too far. A quarrel will break out between them causing the antagonist to betray his brother. The protagonist will fall from his high rank both socially and physically, and will be given the choice to join another faction but at one of the lowest ranks. This is where the player will get to choose how they want the game to play out.

This tutorial will show the player how to carry out diplomatic conversations and how to use both stealthy and loud combat so they understand how to play each mission type, and so that they can decide pre-game how they want to play it. It will also include small parts displaying each house's hub in the city and the personalities found in those houses, helping the player make an informed decision on who to side with during the main campaign.

## Brief Two - Urban Legends

### Minigame Art Style

While the main section of the game will have a consistent art style, each minigame will very in appearance depending on the character it is focused on, and the general tone of the story.

For example, the story of Spring-Heeled Jack will be set at night over the rooftops of the city, so the colours will be mainly dark. Snow will be added to the scene to make it more visually interesting. The camera view will be of a 2D side-scroller showing a large row of houses. The roofs and the top floor windows will be show on screen, and each window will have a different person in it. The windows will have a brighter, more home-like appearance to contrast with the cold blues and whites outside.

Charlie No-Face is another of these minigames that will be set at night due to the story. Playing as Charlie, you will have to navigate densely packed areas without stepping in areas of light while in 3rd person. For this game, the areas of light could be a bright warning-red colour, and they could move like spotlights across the path. The rest of the colours will be toned down or slightly desaturated to put emphasis on avoiding the light.

The minigames mentioned above are not the most violent ones featured in the game, however there are minigames that involve murder and other similar topics. We do not want these parts to be so violent that they deter the audience, so by default there will be no blood shown, however there will be an option to turn that on.

There will be points during the minigame where the game will freeze and a text box will pop up. This will be the therapist talking to their patient. These small segments of discussion will provide a small break from the minigame and allow the players to get more involved in the story. When this occurs, the screen will go from full colour to greyscale, and a textbox will appear, similar to the style of textboxes from Hotline Miami, and Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number (a plain box with an icon of whoever is speaking at the time).

### Therapist Office Art Style

The office will be very average looking in both colour and contents. The colour palette will contain varying beiges, browns, whites, and other neutral and simple colours as not to distract the player from the characters. Despite this, there will be certain isolated patches of colour around the room that will be windows, paintings, and stationary. The objects that can be interacted with will also be coloured brighter, so that the player understands they can interact with that object.

The text box that will appear to display dialogue will once again be similar to the textboxes in Hotline Miami. This will bring attention to the dialogue but not so much attention that the background is ignored. Each character will also have an idle/speaking animation to help with this.

## Brief Three - Thought Experiments (Group X)

This game was inspired by the Stanford Prison Experiment, a well known psychology experiment that deals with societal roles and authority. 24 students of Stanford University volunteered to take part in a simulation of a real prison environment, and were randomly assigned the role of a prisoner or a guard. This experiment was done as the researchers wanted to monitor the psychological changes of each person over the role of the experiment.

Our game aims to take some aspects of the initial experiment, modify them, and integrate them into a multiplayer game.

### Gameplay

Our game will be set in a small town recently founded by settlers of a previous oppressive regime. Each player will take on a randomised role in this town and will have to face many events and challenges over the duration of the game. The roles will range from leadership roles such as the mayor of the town, to roles lower down the social ladder such as a blacksmith. These roles will be randomly assigned before the start of each game along with three laws taken from a list. Every game will last a total of twelve rounds with four rounds per year. At the end of each year the roles will be randomised again. After the randomisation, the new mayor will have to opportunity to choose a law and have it replaced by another random law from the list, which will reintroduce the theme of the veil of ignorance.

Each round, every player will take part in an event specific to their role. These events could have a small impact on the person themselves, or a large impact on the town as a whole. The way they respond to these events will be recorded and shown to them at the end of the game so they can look back on their decisions, and think about if they did the right thing or not.