Pacify Her
‘ A house in the forest, a radio host, and … a baby! ‘
— An emotional journey of a woman with 30-year-old anxiety
Genre
3D Horror Exploration Game
Team Size
5
Duration
3 months
State
Demo
Contributions
System Design
Art Direction
Environment Art
Narrative Design
Keywords
Surrealism
Environment Storytelling
Extending Level
Pacify Her is a first-person exploration game with horror elements, focusing on demonstrating story through level design and puzzles. Player will ride through an emotional journey of a 30-year-old woman, who just quitted her job and ended a 2-year relationship with her girlfriend, struggling to get back on her feet.
Table of Contents
System Design
1. Main Game Loop
2. Why Make the Game?
Life Crises
Life crises can occur at various times in a lifetime. The most common ones are midlife crisis, 30-year-old anxiety, and more recently the quarter-life crisis. When people encounter life crises, we question all of our life decisions and feel extra hard to bounce back from major setbacks when we encounter one. Through this game, we want to convey that it’s perfectly fine to hit the pause button anytime in life. Spend time with ourselves to figure out who we are, what we really want, and how to make peace with ourselves. There might be frustration, remorse, and fear throughout the process, but all negative emotions emerged are normal and also conquerable through patience and care.
3. Creative Challenges
- Can we create a horror game that uses humor to add texture to fear?
- How do we create a balance between absurdity and sensibility?
- Is it possible to make a player feel both scared and happy?
4. Mechanics & Design Intentions
Mechanism 1:
'Changes'
The scene and the characters (baby, radio host, ghost) change along with the game progression. These changes represent the psychological process of the protagonist trying to reconcile with herself. We tried to design these changes in a comedic way.
Mechanism 2:
Level Expansion
After the player completes the tasks of the current level. the level expands on the basis of the original scene (the hut). It represents the protagonist’s state of mind entering a new stage. To create a sense of absurdity and humor, we chose this abstract expression to visualize the mental changes of the protagonist.
Mechanism 3:
Narrative Puzzles
All the interaction designs are aimed to narrate the recent events that the protagonist has gone through, that is, the causes of her 30-year-old anxiety. We chose textless narrative techniques like voice and environment storytelling to create a sense of immersion and enhance the horror atmosphere.