Edouard Imbert - Game design

Knockin'Dead

Knockin'Dead is a soloplayer management game for the PC. Four survivors, trapped in a building surrounded by undead creatures, must use whatever means they have to slow the attackers so they have enough time to get their objectives done. The problem being that the four characters don't know each other and must cope with everyone's temper, convictions and dreads, to survive... One important point is that there's no stopping the invasion: the undead will, shall, enter the building. All the player can do is delay the inevitable. The game judges the player's following skills: abilities to think fast under pressure, take the right decisions, adapt and manage.

Indeed, the point with Knockin'Dead is to make the player take risks following a logic of investments: "pay" twenty seconds to barricade a door in order to "buy" sixty seconds of relative peace to proceed towards the resolution of the problematic. "Pay" thirty seconds to reassure one of them to "buy" two minutes during which they are not going to become crazy with fear and thus can go on with their tasks. It's triangularity (Jesse Schell): making the player choose between a low risk and a low reward, or a big risk and a big reward. This also creates the opportunity of meaningful choice (also Jesse Schell), creating (amongst others) player's implication, immersion and creating rewarding opportunities.

    So we here have a core gameplay that allows the player to move their 4 characters around the level, barricading doors and interacting with the scenery. We also present a secondary gameplay feature that works as follows: each character has their own way of reacting to stress and can become uncontrollable if the player does not manage them carefully. There's no numeral interface in Knockin'Dead: everything can be read through the character's facial or body animations (which is as much an interface feedback that it is a reward: the player is flattered through their own ability to read their character's facial expression - plus, the characters smile to him if they're relaxed ("Nintendo praise"). So if someone's walking faster than usual, or starting to make unpleasant faces to the camera, well, the player knows it is time to send another character over so they can calm each other.

    But of course, all the characters are different, and there are several ways of making the characters interact with each other (friendly or harshly). Each character's temper is briefly - but legibly - introduced during the level's cinematics, cinematics the player must watch carefully in order to get clues about how to manage the four survivors. With this mechanic, we get immersion and judge the player's ability to focus and understand (and draw conclusions from) social situations.

    Although I have said that it was important to make sure the characters do not "panic", it might be interesting to maintain them in a state of fear so they walk and act quicker (triangularity).

Knockin'Dead is all about a strong, constant system, with a blend of social simulation mechanics inside a dangerous, closed environment. If you want to give it a try, the Knockin'Dead prototype is available for download. Do not try to launch the tutorial though, for it is still under construction; simply launch a "new game". And remember all this was developed in nine months with a team of seven students that could neither draw, nor use 3DSMax properly (but who had an exceptional programer)! You can download the Knockin'Dead installer here. If you wish to read more, the Knockin'Dead official website is available here.