Hunted Demo

Game description:

In Hunted, the player needs to survive in the forest while restoring his house and uncovering the curse of the forest and surrounding area. Every night player is hunted by the Werewolf while by the day he must hunt and earn money to restore house

Features

Atmosphere: Game features day/night cycle and based on time of day players will have different gameplay. Game is not scripted and there is no focus on jump scares but on lighting and sounds during night as well as the feeling of being hunted and not having a safe place. Stay in one place and the werewolf will smell you and hunt you down. We feel that the fear of not knowing what is out there and is he hunting you is much scarier than a loud sound that lasts for seconds compared to 10 minutes of walking through dark forest now knowing what is out there. There are also sound effects to make night sound scary or day sound feel more relaxed. Mix of day and night also proved to make people more afraid. Sound is an important part of the atmosphere, during night you can hear werewolf howling or moving through forest. Players can also locate him by listening to how far the howl is. At night and during the day you can also hear sounds of animals such as owls or wolves.

Day/Night gameplay loop : During the day the player would go hunting and exploring. Looting through abandoned houses and buildings that can be found through the forest. There are many hints on what happened in those houses too. Players can also use daylight to buy and place furniture in their  house. Only danger players can find during the day is wolves, but they can be killed by the gun. Players can kill them and skin them just like deers/foxes and get money for skins.

During the night the werewolf would come out and start hunting the player. Player can not kill the werewolf but only escape from him and avoid him until morning. Player can use fire and gun to make the werewolf run away for a short amount of time. There is fire system in game that would make fire spread, or follow a gas trail. Using this players can create a small safe zone but only for a certain amount of time.

Enemy AI: Enemy AI is the main focus of this game as we feel that it is the most important element of the horror game next to atmosphere. The werewolf has multiple different options on what to do depending on the situation. He can hunt the player, stalk him for some time and then decide for instance will he charge and attack him or lay ambush and wait. Player is not able to kill him but can use fire and silver bullets to make him run away for some time and give the player a chance to escape. He is faster than a player and can see better during the night which makes him really dangerous. Also he can hear really well so the player must be careful not to attract him. He can also climb roofs and destroy doors to get to players.  The Planned feature is to make him able to hunt other animals in the forest too. This would make unique scenarios where the player would find him feeding on deers or other animals.

House upgrades: Money earned from hunting and exploring will be used by the player to upgrade his house and buy furniture for it. There will be a wide choice of furniture for players to choose from. After buying an item from the store it would be delivered in front of the house and the player would need to physically bring it in and place it where he wants to. Players would also be able to invest in house to unlock new rooms with new story clues to discover.

What makes this game different

What makes this game different in a well established genre of horror games is the fact that this game is not scripted. There are no predictable scenarios that players can get used to. One night might pass quietly while the next one can be chaotic. We took great inspiration from Minecraft when it first came out. First time playing that game and seeing night falling and knowing monsters will come is a unique feeling that disappears later and not many games have tried to do anything with that idea. There are many great games with good atmospheres like Outlast for instance but what we feel that game misses is once you get used to how AI works it is easy to chease way past it unlike in this game.

All things are subject to change:

Feel free to say what you think!