- Role: creative director
- Platform: PC and Mac
- Development tool: Unity
-Development time: 9 Months
Finalist for the 2017 CHI Play Game Design Competition
What Lurks in the Dark is a Twitch-based horror game that allows participation by audience members while streamers play. The streamer takes on the role of a ghost hunter trapped in a house with a malicious spirit, and viewers take on the role of fellow ghost hunters that are watching the action unfold from cameras setup inside the house. The audience can decide if they want to help or hurt the streamer and plan their actions accordingly. The game explores themes such as viewer sympathy, the challenges of teamwork in online spaces, and the balance of power between streamer and audience.
What makes the game unique is not just the implementation of a player role for the audience, but it is also the asymmetric player experience between the streamer and their audience. Audience members are given more information about the game space than the streamer in the form of the placed cameras throughout the house, and are given creative control over what they do with that information. They can vote to help the streamer locate and avoid the ghost, or they can actively work against them through deception and jump scares. We are interested to observe the unique play styles and types of relationships that are created in the game space of What Lurks, and to in turn discover new creative opportunities in the medium.
What Lurks in the Dark was created as a prototype for the Twitch Plays Game Design course at Carnegie Mellon University. Students were given an open-ended prompt to pitch ideas for Twitch-based games that could be created or prototyped in 3 weeks and the class chose 8 ideas that they were passionate about to be implemented for the final course project. This project was among those chosen. Having pitched the original idea, I was considered the project champion, which entailed taking on a leadership role for the final assignment.
As lead designer and writer for the project, I was responsible for deciding on the core interactions for the game. Since we were making a horror game, we didn't want to have combat in the game. I decided on the simple interactions of interacting with objects, turning your flash light on and off, and pulling up your ghost radar. I wanted players to have useful resources, but also knew that the key to successful horror is to make your player feel vulnerable. I think that we ultimately struck a good balance between these things in the game.
I was also responsible for designing the layout of the house and the look of the individual rooms. I did this through pencil and paper sketches that the artists used to design art assets for the house. As the writer on the project, I was responsible for writing the story as well as all in game text. As the sole sound designer, I was responsible for creating all of the sound effects and music for the game.
Another exciting thing about this project is that it has been a research tool and source of inspiration for research at the University of California Santa Cruz's Social Emotional Technology Lab conducted by researcher Raquel Robinson. She is looking at biometric data and emotional responses in the spectator experience, and is looking at streaming platforms, including Twitch. She was particularly interested in spectator activity of horror games, so What Lurks in the Dark was a great fit for her research. The team was very pleased to have our game contribute to academic research, and we hope that it can continue to be used as a research tool and source of inspiration for both researchers and game designers.