The game Soulful follows a player who has died and traveled to the Underworld. They must retrieve six pieces of their soul scattered across the land by finding meaningful items from their life. Flashbacks reveal how they died. Players battle shades and gain strength by collecting soul items. The pixel art style mixes color and darkness. The goal is to regain the soul, become human again, and learn what caused the player's death through full flashbacks unlocked by the final soul item.

1. Soulful
By Lucy Price
Return alive or die trying.

2. Game Presentation
Game name; Soulful
Game Platform; PC Exclusive
The game's USP is the mystery aspect of the game as the player is
thrust into the game with no idea about what's going on.
I think my idea isn't 100% original as there are a couple elements
of my idea have stemmed from other games (Mainly the art style
and the flashbacks)

3. Soulful's
Summary
The player has died and travelled to The Underworld, The Land of
the Dead or whatever you want to call it. The thing is, the player
wants to go back. In order to traverse from The Underworld to The
Overworld is that they need to retrieve pieces their soul- which was
split into 6 pieces upon the player's death.

4. The Plot
The whole ordeal is explained to the player from other husks and the player
experiences messy sepia tone flashbacks that become clearer as the game
progresses. During their adventure, the player will meet a few characters here and
there, including fellow husks that will help the player out by giving them advice,
healing them, exchanging their memories so far and even helping them out in
battle from time to time, of course, they'll be in different stages of "Humanization",
so some will look more human while some aren't. To picture an empty husk, picture
the image provided in a rough human form.
During the game, the player must find certain items that they held close to in life to
regain a part of their soul (can be chosen at the start of the game) and the more
items they find the stronger they get- and the stronger the enemies get.

5. Style
The style of the game will be in
mostly pixel and of style where it's
both colourful and dark at the
same time, like Earthbound. The
flashbacks will start out in a Sepia
tone, foggy and a bit messy and
will gradually become clearer as
the game progresses. (See
background for reference)

6. Soulful's Presentation
The genre for Soulful will be an emotional
storyteller thriller.
Soulful's game world will vary; it will probably
contain forests, plains to dark twisted woods. The
characters it will be- for the most part –
nameless, apart from the character. The interface
used will be either aerial or God view (Like
Earthbound's). The game will contain cutscenes in
the form of Flashbacks, like the ones shown in the
first Bioshock.

7. Gameplay Features
The controls for Soulful for Pc would pretty much be what you'd
expect- I won't get too into it- and the same is said for Console.
Soulful, without a shadow of a doubt, will be a single player
experience.
The setting of the game would be emotional, light hearted yet
has some dark themes here and there.
The Ultimate goal is to reclaim your goal and the main
challenge will be to reclaim the items the main character held
close in life and the rewards would be the main character
becoming more human and stronger as a result.
It should be noted that every time you regain a "Soul Item" or

8. Saving and Health
Health is something you "regain" every time you
level up or retrieve a "Soul Item" so if you when
you level up the shades will get a bit stronger too to
keep things interesting and challenging. You can
also heal at campfires.
Saving is quite interesting as you'll need to find
a campfire which usually in quite a secluded area
like in a cave or deep in a grove. Campfires
are typically where you find fellow Husks and a few
other NPC's as it's where it's considered safe for
Husk to chill out, exchange words of advice, sing,
dance and chat! (And, of course heal without the
threat of getting ambushed by Shades)

9. (Above) Keeper
(Below, Left to right)
Archer, Assassin, Barbarian
Shades
Shades are the basic enemies of the game and are sort of the Guardians
of the souls of the dead. ​As mentioned before, they are relentless and
ruthless hunters that will stop at nothing for a husk to remain dead.
They generally match the player's skill level, so they get a little bit
stronger every time the player levels up, but there's a catch- the catch is,
is that every time the player regains a part of their soul and gets a
major health boost, the Shades will also get a huge health boost too.​ As
the player progresses, different and stronger variants of Shades will start
to appear (As provided by the images to the left) to prevent the player
from leaving.

10. Shades (Continued)
Regular shades are your stereotypical enemies using dark and enchanted swords. The Archer is a
type of shade that will typically hide where there is lots of cover or from a distance
(Thickets, Underbrush, the side of a cliff or on top of rocks etc.) though they can be seen right
before they let an arrow loose or via the streaks from their arrows. The Assassin will probably be
one of the more annoying enemies as they will often ambush the player by hiding in the tops or
from behind trees at close range, use a variety of skills and they are extremely agile with their
choice of weapons being daggers (obviously) but can be avoided via the shadow that almost give
away their hiding spot. Barbarians are what I would consider the "Absolute Tanks" as they are a
slightly harder to get rid of than other Shades and are heavy damage dealers though they
are quite cumbersome, so you can easily outrun and / or counter their attacks.
Keepers on the other hand are completely passive towards the player- despite their
intimidating features- so instead of killing the player on sight, they'll help the player by letting
them into the area where the soul item is kept although it should be noted that they will refuse
entry if they sense that the player is under leveled and give them advice on what to do and where
to go next.

11. Level design
The type of design the "level" that the game will have
is that there is only one real way to die and that's to
lose all your HP in a fight. If that happens, you'll wake
up at the last campfire you saved at- having been
found and rescued by some of your Husk friends.
There will also be areas that will be blocked off by a
row of Keepers and will speak in a cryptic manner
until the player has collected a certain amount of
Soul Items.

12. Target audience
My target audience would be for people
over the aged 15 and over because with the
way the Keepers would speak would
possibly confuse some young children.

13. Combat
The combat would be similar to most RPG games (Such as Undertale or the Pokémon
games) where the battles will be turn-based depending on who attacks first.

14. Story Arc
The story arc for the game is that at the
start of the game after the run in with the
Shades, the player is given the rundown by
a husk and will set them on their way to a
certain place to which they will fight many
Shades and level up. During their journey,
the player would experience flashbacks
that will eventually reveal how they died by
the very end when they obtain their final
soul item, which is a gold heart shaped
locket with an engraving from your
character's daughter.

15. How the game would be
promoted and sold.
The game would be promoted via a successful
Kickstarter campaign and through adverts on
YouTube, Twitch, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram and
Amazon. My reasoning on using Kickstarter is
because it's probably the best way for new
developers to promote their games and get funding
to produce the game and social media

16. Levels to build.
Explanation of the level – Since I'm planning on having this game solely as a
Playable Tester, I'm thinking of having the ending level (so far) where the player
retrieves the core of their soul (A.k.a The final Soul Item) and have the player
experience the flashbacks in their entirety which'll fully explain how the main
character died and when that's finished, the player will teleport back to the very
start of the game with the exception that they're human and that they're in the
Over-World/Land of the Living and have it revealed by a nearby officer that
they've been missing for 4 months and how everyone had long since lost hope
of ever finding him alive.
Goal – The ultimate goal is to figure out what happened to the character and to
finally put things to rest (pun not intended) when you retrieve the final Soul
Item.
Obstacles – The way I picture it, the place where Soul Items are kept are in dark
(like, seriously dark) ancient maze-like ruins where Shades run wild. The main
obstacles would to try and navigate the ruins while running into the odd shade
usp- genre, platform. (already have), gameplay (need to add/add to), Visual
style (add to), Moodboard (Add)