WARNING: Beware of Crumbs

Team 1 unveils tasty new horror, survival, game!

Team 1: Jason Hu (Engineer), Jun Jeong (Artist), JoJo Mejias (Designer), 

Arthur Wang (Producer), Wyatt Williams (UX)

Written by JoJo Mejias

Greetings, brave adventurers, sugar enthusiasts, and aficionados of the absurd! 

For our project, we were tasked with creating a game with the concepts of horror, survival, and… cookie clicking? Surely we got that part wrong? Nope, that is in fact the trifecta of concepts we were oh so graciously given by the spinner. Fret not, for we have found a way to incorporate all three into a deliciously, terrifying horror game. Behold: 

The Lethal Cookie Rooms Project - Official Game Name TBD

(Lovingly Dubbed Five Nights of Observation Duty: Lethal Iron Rooms)

This game draws inspiration from many indie horror games – as you can tell from the project title – including Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria Simulator, Lethal Company, the Backrooms, Inscription, Iron Lung, and I'm on Observation Duty. This genre is one we unconsciously found ourselves referencing a lot during the brainstorming process, so we decided to lean into it. Quite hard in fact.

How We Came to This Idea

Day one we got straight to brainstorming. Two things were clear: this was NOT going to be a mobile game and we were determined to incorporate some aspect of cookie clicker. Aside from that, we took turns throwing our ideas out and taking aspects we liked from each. 

Some of the main ones from that original brainstorm were:

• Different iterations of survival horror games. Some take place in specific environments like the forest, underwater, or in a wasteland. Some hinged on specific mechanics such as sound-based or light-based gameplay.
• Play as a cookie (named Gingy), get chased – perhaps by some clickers, don’t get eaten
• Cookie clicker-esque factory resource management
• Security/maintenance worker at a cookie factory 

Surprisingly, it didn’t take us long to land on the security/maintenance worker at a cookie factory, but we made sure to keep aspects from other concepts for potential mechanics – such as light-based and sound-based events – and easter eggs; LONG LIVE GINGY!

Figure 1: Pictures of Our Original Brainstorm on Whiteboard

Figure 2: Snapshot of Digitized Ideas Board - Living document

Storyline

Then we began to think of the plot. Was our main character going to be a worker exploring the cookie factory at night? Were they going to be confined to an office? Were they going to be chased around by some unholy cookie monstrosity? We came to the conclusion that our MC was going to be a maintenance worker tasked with overseeing a cookie factory overnight from the comfort of a dingy office, unknowingly trying to fight off an evil entity.

Picture this: You’re sitting in front of a derelict 90s computer, eyes glued to the screen as you flip through cameras scanning for any signs of malfunction or disrepair. Suddenly, you spot it. A dark mass on camera 4. That wasn’t there before… At first, you take it for a glitch in the camera, but as you continue to look at the mass it begins to pulsate and shift. Bewildered, you look up at the guide posted on the wall behind your monitor, unsure how to respond. All your cameras go out and you have to wait as they reboot. Somehow you feel that this event will make your night shift harder…

Gameplay Mechanics

Drawing much inspiration from Cookie Clicker, the main controls of the game are through a point-and-click interface. The player will use the mouse to click through cameras and on objects. We hope that this choice will make the game accessible to all skill levels and add to the retro feel of our game.

The main game loop is akin to I’m on Observation duty, with flipping through the cameras and spotting anomalies/events; however, the player is also tasked with responding to these events in real-time,  i.e. turn a valve to stop the steam, restart a failing generator, or turn a glitchy camera on and off. Failure to do so in a timely manner only makes the situation worse for the player. For example, not responding to a failing generator results in dimmer lights making it harder to see events on the camera. 

The timing of each response differs as well. Turning the valve fully may take 10 seconds, while restarting the generator may take 30 seconds. Failure to do either results in time results in different consequences that will impact the player for the rest of the night. This requires the player to prioritize and time how they respond to each event.  

The player will be able to traverse and interact with this office similar to how the player interacts with the room around them in Inscryption and Iron Lung, having to step away from the monitor and turn around to interact with objects behind the player. Note: For the first iteration of the game, we plan on putting the objects that need to be interacted with solely in front of the player, i.e. behind the monitor or next to it. 

The win condition (for now) is time-based, similar to the FNAF series. The player has a successful night by surviving until a set time. Each night will have a programmed series of events, meaning the events are not randomized. We may potentially add this as a feature later on. If too many malfunctions/anomalies occur, the player loses. Everything shuts down – the machines, the cameras, the lights. The player is left to sit in the dark as their mind begins to play tricks on them. Dissonant whispers. A ringing in the ears. A door opening? Maybe it isn’t all in your mind…

Visuals

For the visuals of the office space, we took inspiration from Freddy Fazbear's Pizzeria and I’m on Observation Duty. The office space itself will be industrial and dingy yet cheeky, like the office spaces in many FNAF games, featuring an old-school monitor and colorful posters (see below). We plan on putting a clipboard behind the monitor to help the player react to certain events.

Figure 3: Freddy Fazbear’s Pizzeria Simulator Computer

Figure 4: Wyatt’s (UX) Storyboard of the Cameras and Office

The cameras the player interacts with are reminiscent of FNAF and I’m on Observation Duty, as they flip through grainy, monochromatic feeds overlaid with a retro camcorder interface displaying the time and location of each camera. Our visuals will also draw inspiration from analog horror, evoking the eerie aesthetic of Youtube series like The Mandela Catalogue and The Backrooms, with the aim of creating an atmosphere that is low-fidelity, cryptic, and wholly uncomfortable.

What do we hope to accomplish? What makes it different?

“Isn’t this just bootleg FNAF?”

Our game draws from tropes featured in existing indie horror games. In all honesty, it is a shuffling of our favorite mechanics and aesthetics stuffed into some sort of ungodly Franken Cookie. The goal of this project is to create a game that serves as a tribute to our favorite aspects from other games in the genre. Rather than a rehash of previous games, we aim to make a game that celebrates the indie horror genre – with all its quirks and tropes. Drawing inspiration from games we played in our youth as well as in recent years and the genre of analog horror, we hope to weave together elements that resonated with us the most to create an experience that feels both familiar yet new. Above all else, our goal is simply to make a game that we are proud of <3

Thank you for reading! We hope that this has piqued your interest in our game. Please support our development, and stay tuned for more.

Well, that's all from me, folks! And remember: Stay curious. Stay funky. But most importantly, stay vigilant.