Mythos: The Beginning

[Dark Gaia]

Dark Gaia decides to attempt to make a good game in a month. What could possibly go wrong?
 
                                                                     

 
Introduction
 
Mythos: The Beginning is a survival horror/adventure role playing game based on the pulp-horror and monster movies of the 1930s. Set in London in 1934, Mythos tasks you with creating your own paranormal investigator from scratch and guiding them through a frightening exploration of the infamous Harborough Asylum. Three young university students have vanished while attempting to conduct a scientific survey of this dreaded place, and it's up to you to find them! Throughout the night you'll discover that Harborough Asylum's reputation is more than an urban legend, and you'll have to fight for your life against otherworldly Lovecraftian foes.
 
Story
 
Harborough Asylum is an abandoned mental hospital located on the outskirts of London. It was established in 1882 and soon built up a reputation as London's harshest institution thanks to its brutal and controversial treatments. After a string of mysterious patient deaths, said to number more than 40 victims, it was finally closed down during World War I and has been disused ever since. Despite this turn of events, Harborough Asylum remained one of England's most infamous sites, soon becoming the subject of an alarming number of local ghost stories. Now Harborough Asylum is a place where only the most bravest (or foolish) men would dare to tread.

You play as a renowned paranormal investigator, best known for solving a famous missing persons case several years ago. Tonight, Professor Harrison Blacktail, a mysterious academic somehow connected to the asylum's past, has turned up in your hotel room at the Imperial Arms. He has commissioned you for the most dangerous case of your career: search for three missing students inside Harborough Asylum, and discover whether the terrifying legends are true.

Characters
 

You - You're a paranormal investigator of some renown. Now you're about to face the most frightening case of your career.

  Professor Blacktail - A mysterious demonology professor with some connection to Harborough Asylum.

  Peter - A famous American cat burglar who came for the antique furniture and got much more than he bargained for.

  Luana - A terrified psychic trapped in her worst nightmare.

  Night Watchman - Guards the asylum from trespassers. How has he even survived for this long?

Features

• Blends traditional survival horror gameplay with a "true" tabletop-style RPG experience, complete with dialogue trees, non-combat skills and dice rolls.
• Create your character from scratch. Choose their gender, background and profession, and then role play them. Will you be a square jawed investigator, or an intrepid journalist?
• Pen and paper RPG inspired character advancement system. Levels are gone forever! Spend EXP directly to buy stats and skill increases.
• Multiple ways to play the game! Don't want to fight the enemies? You don't have to! Gain EXP for correctly utilising non-combat skills such as Persuade and Occult Lore.
• Fully voice acted dialogue -- a first for a Dark Gaia game!
• Utilises the fantastic Mythos Graphics Pack by PV Games to create an immersive horror experience.
• Completely custom soundtrack exclusive to Mythos.

Screenshots
 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Coming soon to an Indie Game Making Contest near you!

 

[valkill101]

Darn it, you beat me to the punch! LoL

Looks good so far, can't wait to try it out.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #1:

As of today, I completed the game's first "area" and finished the database. Upon arriving at Harborough Asylum, the player's first objective is to unlock the main entrance. They can get the key either by convincing the night watchman to give it to them (bypassing this area entirely) or they can search for a spare in the Children's Ward. The player has to solve a puzzle to get inside the Children's Ward, and another one once inside to get to the room where the key is found. The Children's Ward introduces wandering monsters and the battle system to the player, and also contains the first Save Room where the player can spend their EXP on new abilities and stat increases. After finding the key, the player meets Orson, a cat-burglar, on the way out. If the player has the Persuade skill, they can convince him to join up with them to help defeat the first boss. If they don't convince him to join them, they'll have to wait to pick him up again in a later area.

I also finalised the battle mechanics and how the stats work. The game uses a standard Conditional Turn Battle (it's actually the same one as in Legionwood 2, as I'm using LW2's project folder with all the maps stripped out as a basis for Mythos), but with some twists. Each action the player performs uses a certain amount of Stamina Points, which are gradually recovered at the beginning of each turn. The main gimmick of the battle system is having to balance your Stamina: do you use a basic attack and conserve Stamina, or do you perform your Scatter Shot skill to poison the enemy and risk having no Stamina next turn? The player regains Stamina during battle at a rate determined by their Guts attribute.

The game uses six main stats:

Combat represents your skill with their equipped firearm. When you attack an enemy, your Combat score determines the base amount of damage you will deal. It also determines your base chance of hitting an enemy. The damage formula is based on simple dice roll with a d10.

Guts represents your character's vitality and their will to survive. The Guts attribute is used to reduce the amount of damage you receive from enemy attacks.
It also determines the rate at which you recover Stamina.

Intelligence represents your character's brainpower and logic.This attribute determines the base damage you will deal with psychic attacks. The damage formula is the same as the one for physical attacks, except that it uses Intelligence as a modifier instead of Combat. A high Intelligence score also allows you to bypass certain puzzles without solving them.

Sense represents your character's general awareness and willpower. This attribute reduces damage you receive from psychic attacks. A high Sense score also allows you to detect items hidden around the environment.

Agility represents your character's speed and motor skills. It determines how many turns you get to take in combat, and how often you will be successful at fleeing.
High Agility also increases the accuracy of your attacks.

Luck represents how often fate smiles upon your character. A high Luckattribute increases your chances of inflicting a critical hit, and also helps to prevent you from sustaining negative status conditions.

The player can increase any of these attributes by spending EXP in a Save Room. They can earn EXP from defeating enemies, but it is also earned by successfully using their non-combat skills -- Persuade, Subterfuge, Occult Lore and Investigate.

 

[kartersaint]

I like the concept of the game, RPG game with modern background gives me feel good, it adds the point if the genre of the game is horror! I will be the one of people who is going to play your game after the game has been announced. 

 

[Dark Gaia]

I'm glad you like it kartersaint! It seems to be heading more towards being a horror game than an RPG (I've really put lots of attention into the puzzles and scares) but it's still very much an RPG as well. It's turning out to be something like what would happen if you combined One Night and Legionwood together.

Update #2:

I don't have a lot of time to work on the game today as I'm not at home for most of the day, but my goal is to polish the events in the first area of the asylum and make sure the two picture-based puzzles are working correctly. I also need to do the databasing for the first boss and make sure the fight is balanced for each of the three character classes. He's pretty tough for a first boss, but there are tricks to defeat him. The Priest class begins with a vial of Holy Water as its class-specific item that can destroy any enemy, and the Journalist begins with the Persuade skill, which can convince an NPC to join you for the fight.

There are three classes to choose during character creation. They determine your starting stats and skills, but you're not locked into them by any means; just because you picked a Detective doesn't mean you can't increase your Intelligence and learn psychic attacks

Detective: This class is geared towards being a skilled fighter, with high starting scores in Combat and Guts. The Detective starts with the Stimulant, a special item that can boost all stats in battle once, and begins the game with the Investigate non-combat skill.

Journalist: This class is intended to be agile and stealthy, with high starting scores in Agility and Sense. The Journalist starts with the Master Key, a key which can open any lock, and begins the game with the Persuade non-combat skill.

Priest: This class is intended to be the "magic-user" class, with a high starting score in Intelligence, but also a decent score in Guts to make it a worthy defender as well. The Priest starts with the Holy Water, which can destroy any enemy, and begins the game with the Occult Lore skill.

There are also the Cat Burglar and Psychic classes, though these are restricted to NPCs only.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #3:

I've finished polishing the first area of the game (which is roughly about 20 minutes of gameplay) and now it's time to move onto the asylum proper. The first two bosses have been databased and balanced, and several branching player decisions have already been implemented. Here are some screenshots of Harborough Asylum:

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #4:

With the first two areas (children's ward and first floor) of the Asylum completed, I've begun polishing them and adding opportunities for the player to use their non-combat skills. Here's a screenshot of the main asylum area:

The smashed bottle on the floor contains a mysterious black liquid. If the player character has the Occult Lore non-combat skill, they can identify it and maybe even use it to help them survive. There are four non-combat skills in Mythos, and each one allows you to enhance your exploration of Harborough Asylum. Each skill has three levels that can be built up over the course of the game -- each level allows you to perform progressively harder tasks.

Persuade enables you to convince NPCs to help you or to divulge information. If you can use this skill, additional dialogue options will appear during conversations.

Subterfuge allows you to pick simple locks without having to find the key. These locks can be entrances to new areas, supply caches, or puzzle elements.

Occult Lore allows you to decipher occult writings and identify mysterious objects.

Investigate grants you the ability to conduct in depth examinations of certain objects, yielding extra clues or hidden items.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #5: I didn't make a whole lot of progress tonight. I continued making rooms in the main area of the asylum. The player's goal here is to unlock the stairwell to the second floor. To do this, they need to collect a number of crests and insert them into a plaque, Resident Evil style. Each crest is obtained by solving the puzzle, but the puzzles are also trapped (for example, in one room poison gas leaks in if you get the puzzle wrong, and in another, taking the crest makes the roof start to descend). The player can use their Investigate skill or a high Intelligence score to either find out what kind of trap they're up against or bypass the puzzle entirely.

In this area the first additional character, Peter, meets up with the player if they didn't already convince him to join them in the children's ward. This time, he'll join the player no matter what. Once he's following you around, he acts just like your own character -- you can use items on him in the menu or even spend EXP on him at the save points. The only difference is that he's unable to learn non-combat skills, as those are exclusive to the player character.

The visual style of the main asylum building is quite different from the children's ward. While the children's ward resembled a dark, worn out hospital, the actual asylum itself is intended to be more reminiscent of the inside of a gothic mansion, kind of like Resident Evil 2's police station.

 

[valkill101]

Can't wait to try this out, I've been  having a hard time mapping with the Gothic pack, so I'd like to see how you did.

 

[Dark Gaia]

To be honest, I'm having a little trouble with it myself, just because the art style is so different to what I'm used to. I find that having the game appear very dimly lit (just like I usually do in the One Night games) helps as it obscures some of the lack of detail or tiles that I haven't used correctly. I don't think the pack is really geared towards tile mapping; PV Games is using it for parallax mapping in his/her own project.

Still, there are some very good pieces in this pack, and it's still pretty easy to give each area of the asylum its own distinct look.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #6:

I decided to take a break from working on the survival horror/exploration half of the game today and worked on the RPG part instead, namely the battle mechanics. I spent most of the day working out and fine tuning the hit and damage formulas and balancing the EXP cost of attribute boosts. I encountered a massive problem: the Game_Battler class conflicted with my custom written character progression, and started crashing the game each time I purchased an attribute boost. Thankfully, I managed to fix it (the line in question dealt with updating the TP meter, which isn't even used in the game, so all I had to do was comment it out).

Here's some screenshots of the battle screen and the character sheet:

I've been playing a lot of Vampire: The Masquerade with my friends lately, so the RPG mechanics of Mythos mainly draw from pen and paper games and C-RPGs like Fallout and Baldur's Gate rather than the J-RPGs that RPG Maker is geared towards, so it took quite a bit of work figuring out formulas to mimic dice rolls and the like.

Because of this tabletop RPG influence, the battles can be fast and fierce -- critical hits can wipe a combatant out in one go, or finishing moves can miss on a dime, thanks to the fact that it's handled through a dice roll like function. The battles are designed to be dangerous enough to make you fear the enemies and avoid constantly fighting with them, but they''re also very winnable if you fight smartly and pay attention to what's happening. Of course, nobody can account for the whims of the dice gods; just like in a pen and paper game, it's possible to have a run of bad luck and miss three times in a row

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #7:

Pretty uneventful day today. I worked on polishing the areas of the game that are already complete, writing the files that the player will find and eventing the few cutscenes that occur throughout the game. Mythos seems to be heavily drawing from the first Resident Evil game in terms of how the story progresses. For most of the game, the story isn't really spoon fed to the player or divulged in the cutscenes. Most of the story is revealed in files, diaries and memos that the player finds scattered around Harborough Asylum. Some of these files are hidden and can only be uncovered through the Investigate and Occult Lore skills, and some additional details are only revealed through dialogue options tied to the Persuade skill, so it's unlikely that the player will get the full story in one playthrough.

As part of making the cutscenes, I've also begun recording the voice acting for the dialogue. I voice one of the characters myself, but the rest of the characters are played by different people, so it's "interesting" trying to work out a schedule that suits everyone.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #8:

I finalised the title screen today:

It's not much, but with only 13 days left until the deadline, I don't really have time to commission proper artwork and a logo and everything. I figured the main "star" of the game is Harborough Asylum so I decided to make a title screen based around a shot of the asylum's front entrance.

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

It gets the job done man, that's the important part and honestly, it looks good. Part of what makes this contest so fun, for me anyway, is the fact that there are only 30 days - one lesson I sorely needed was to learn what to trim from a game and this forces me to make those decisions - do I want to spend my time making something look fancy or make it functional? It's a tradeoff. 

What I am most interested in is the voiceover work you are doing. Is there a lot of dialogue to voice? Are you finding it to be a challenge to do it in the 30 day period? 

Keep up the fantastic work!

 

[Dark Gaia]

Thanks, PV Games! I'm actually enjoying the challenge. I was going to take a long break from RPG Maker after Legionwood 2 but when I noticed this contest I was drawn back in! It's quite fun to work to a deadline. I don't have to worry about padding the gameplay out or endlessly tweaking the game -- I can just enjoy making something.

Re: the voice acting, it's turning out to be less of a challenge than I thought it would be. There's not a whole lot of dialogue in this game (well, there's an average amount of dialogue for an RPG that's a few hours long, but there are only four characters that have dialogue) so it's pretty easy for the two other voice actors to just record a line and send it to me via Facebook or Skype. The main hassle is that because the game is driven by dialogue trees like in a C-RPG, there are many different variations of the same lines to record. There's quite a bit of dialogue that the player won't actually hear. I am getting around it a little bit by having many of the choices defined beforehand, and also re-using some of the generic lines ("yes, good idea", "no, I can't do that" etc.) to stand in for some of the responses.

To be honest, most of the voice acting is pretty awful. None of us are professional actors, and the dialogue sounds like something out of a B-movie. That's intentional though; Mythos is chock full of references to the older Resident Evil games, and it's also trying to emulate the old shlock-horror films of the 1930s, and they usually had pretty flat acting too

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #9:

I've begun work on the Catacombs, the penultimate area of the game. The player gains access to the Catacombs after searching the main asylum building and eventually activating a secret door in the head psychiatrist's office. The Catacombs is a dark, decaying series of tunnels that have been disused for decades. When Harborough Asylum was operational, the doctors used these tunnels to house the patients they were conducting experiments on.

Having recently played Resident Evil 6, the Catacombs kind of draw from the tunnels Leon explores underneath Tall Oakes and, in true survival horror fashion, there are even zombies to fight.

Here are some screenshots:

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #10:

I don't have too much to report today as I haven't had much of a chance to work on the game over the weekend, but I'm still making steady progress. At this point, I have everything up until the final area of the game fully complete and playable. The story, cutscenes, puzzles, events and database entries for the first three areas of the game are all done. Now all I have to do is map the final area and create the events that go along with it. After that, the game will be ready to playtest, and I'll devote the rest of the time up until the contest deadline on polishing the game and making sure everything works as intended.

Interestingly, even though I've only been working on the game for two weeks, it's turning out to be quite a sizable adventure. I originally intended for it to be about an hour in length to match the contest guidelines, but it's now about 2-3 hours long, roughly the same as my One Night games. I know this means that the judges won't get to experience the full game, but as there's a chance that I might expand Mythos into a commercial project following the contest, this length provides a good foundation for a "proper" length game to follow on from.

 

[Jesse - PVGames]

I am finding myself in a similar place myself game-length wise. My intention is a one-hour game, but I had a friend test play it tonight and it took him about 30-40 minutes to do what I test-run in about 5-10 minutes. So if it takes me about 30 minutes to speed run my own game without any of the sanity effects, combat, etc... I think it is safe to assume that someone picking it up for the first time and exploring and experiencing what it has to offer will certainly take more than hour. As such, I was thinking of probing the idea of making a commercial title maybe afterwards. I guess we will see.

On a related note, last night I downloaded One Night (the first one) again. I'll admit, I wanted to see how you handled some of the things in terms of atmosphere and see if I could dissect the eventing you used for certain effects (like the bottle that falls off the shelf). I figure I should learn from the master

At any rate, Mythos is certainly shaping up. Out of curiosity, and feel free to not answer if it spoils things, what kind of monsters/creatures were you planning on using? I know your description says otherworldly lovecraftian foes - any info on that?

 

[Dark Gaia]

I am finding myself in a similar place myself game-length wise. My intention is a one-hour game, but I had a friend test play it tonight and it took him about 30-40 minutes to do what I test-run in about 5-10 minutes. So if it takes me about 30 minutes to speed run my own game without any of the sanity effects, combat, etc... I think it is safe to assume that someone picking it up for the first time and exploring and experiencing what it has to offer will certainly take more than hour. As such, I was thinking of probing the idea of making a commercial title maybe afterwards. I guess we will see.

I haven't yet had anyone else play Mythos, and I probably won't get a chance to, but I always assume that a player will take at least double the time I myself take to the play the game. I found with the One Night games (and even with Legionwood, to an extent), people tend to take quite a lot of time with the puzzles, so where an area may take me 20 minutes to complete, it may take up to an hour for someone else who has to actually work out how to solve the puzzles. As such, what I'm thinking is that what I'm submitting to the contest is a prototype for a "proper" commercial game. So far, there are four main "areas" to explore: the children's ward, the first floor, the catacombs and the second floor. I did plan to include two more areas (set in the Old Ones' world) which I can't due to time constraints, so a commercial version of this game would incorporate those and a lot more polish and it would be 1-2 hours longer than it currently is. I think 5 bucks for a 4-5 hour long RPG/survival horror hybrid is not bad.

That said, I'm not exactly sure when I'd set out to actually expand Mythos into a commercial project. I'm still trying to finish my second novel, and RPG Maker was meant to go on the backburner until that's done

On a related note, last night I downloaded One Night (the first one) again. I'll admit, I wanted to see how you handled some of the things in terms of atmosphere and see if I could dissect the eventing you used for certain effects (like the bottle that falls off the shelf). I figure I should learn from the master

Funnily enough, I'm kind of treating Mythos as a spiritual successor to the first One Night (except for the obvious fact that Mythos is a C-RPG moreso than a straight horror game) and so there are many references and nods to it. The old bottle scare is even in the game

Out of curiosity, and feel free to not answer if it spoils things, what kind of monsters/creatures were you planning on using? I know your description says otherworldly lovecraftian foes - any info on that?

Okay, so here's what I'm comfortable with sharing: the main "enemies" of the game are called the Old Ones, and they're pretty stereotypical Lovecraftian monsters, with tentacles, body horror, oddly proportioned limbs etc. The premise of the game is that the main antagonist serves these Old Ones, and so he has performed a Summoning Ritual that has brought them into our world, and from there they've taken over Harborough Asylum. As such, the vast majority of the enemies are demonic and/or alien entities. However, Mythos is meant to emulate the pulp-horror monster movies of the 1930s, so there are also generic horror monsters such as zombies, mad doctors, asylum patients etc. The entire Catacombs segment of the game is meant to be a massive shout-out to old B-movies. You're running around crumbling Gothic-style tunnels, dodging brain-eating zombies through a series of labs, torture chambers and crematoriums.

I've tried to establish a Lovecraftian tone with the enemies, but in no way are they really meant to be mysterious or all powerful. The player is entirely capable of fighting and killing them, and in fact there are several points where you're forced to fight them. You learn of their origins during the game and ultimately your goal is to stop them. They are a clear and present threat that can be stopped, not something that lurks on the edge of human consciousness. It's definitely not cosmic horror in the sense that the player feels that the enemies are greater than they are -- it's more along the lines of you being in a dangerous situation that you must survive.

 

[Dark Gaia]

Update #11:

Hopefully this will be one of the last updates I'll make. As of today, Mythos is completely playable from start to finish and all three of the game's endings are implemented and working. The database, skills and enemies are all finished (sans minor tweaks for balancing) and the cutscenes are all functional.

What remains at this point is to finish off the voice acting. Currently, I have about 50% of the game's voices done and inserted into the game, leaving the second half of the game's cutscenes completely silent. There's not a whole lot of dialogue to do -- in fact, one character has even been killed off at this point -- but I still have to make sure I arrange some recording sessions with my voice actors well before the submission deadline.

I also intend to spend this weekend and all of next week playtesting, which will give me a more definite estimate of the final playtime. I hope the judges get the chance to play all of the scariest parts!