Static Paradox blog post #4 - Game is done

Final puzzle

The final puzzle has very limited changes.  It will always start with a main timer that when it reaches 0, will send the player back to the start. It has 666 seconds. Good amount of buffer time.

The main idea is seeing a door that requires to be opened and finding a way to open it.

The main puzzles requires the player to find two out of four keys to open a door to get a gun and to shoot a lever. The lever opens a door for a keycard room which opens a room full of keys. The keys have to be used to open the first exit door and to open a room with four levers and an alien inside. One lever will open one of the final doors. Then a door to another keycard has to be opened to open another room full of keys. One of these keys goes to the last final door for opening it. 

The fake keys mostly exist to slow the player down with paranoia, and they built up over time as more are collected to waste more time.

The announcer repeats his words constantly and mocks the player. 

Final choice and endings

The final choice leads into a room with the announcer revealing himself to be an AI speaking to the player the whole time, which is all for a game for himself to see how much the player can suffer. Also that the world takes place in a pocket dimension. He gives the player a choice.

1. Choose to take a portal behind him, leaving everything open for things to leave like the monsters and the AI alive, and not know where it leads.

2. Pressing a button to shut the AI down, which removes the portals to the real world. Leaving the MC in a barren wasteland forever.

Pressing the button leaves to a bad ending. Choosing the portal gives one of the 6 other endings.

There is a chance it leads back to the first area, ultimately mocking the player.

The endings are varied, somethings ending in a hospital locked shut, a containment zone, Egypt, a TV show floor, and a place where the AI shows what could have been.

The more interesting ending is the "what could have been" ending, since the AI implies that everybody in the real world is dead and the only reason they exist was to provide entertainment through the MC's suffering. That leads to the loop happening again "to give purpose" where the real world had nothing.

There is a lot to interpret. 

Mythology/ideas/lore

The game uses a bunch of the Osiris Myth and the myth of the fountain of youth. The Ai is also based on the deity Gaunab. Everything having to do with water as the game's static and name is based on water. 

There is a lot up to interpretation of who the MC actually is. Are they just some guy or Osiris? What is the AI? What is the outside world like? Is what the AI saying is real, even though he has lied before? Are any of the endings real?

It's fully made that it can be interpreted in any way, or that each ending happens in a certain order, ending with the death of the AI. The AI can be interpretated as other things, being something that forces a loop of suffering.

Mythology wise, Gaunab plays games with people's lives and Osiris can be considered to be the same as Gamab in Khoekhoen mythology. Much of the sound design can imply it takes place in water as well.  

There is also some philosophy put into the game with Master/Slave that Nietzsche and Hegel made. Where they ultimately define each other, and without one the other is undefined and has no meaning, and the morality of both is defined by their status. Gaunab/AI could also be lying, that there is no people watching or were people watching, and only as a way to justify the player not shutting him down or leaving when put in a false ending.

Anything else?

Have to figure out the trailer and cover art, probably do something simple for it. Then I'll figure out a steam page. This game didn't actually take too long to make which was nice. I might eventually do the OG game idea I had for this, but when I'm better at making 3D models or find some good free assets. I might make this 9.99 or something, not really sure. But there is still a lot to learn with Unreal in general.  Not sure what to do after this. Maybe I'll figure out what seems like the best idea. Hopefully.  But I did learn a lot about how horror game AI works which is really good for future projects.