Design concept

The Hunter Hunted

Game Concept Document

Platform

PC

Presentation

Isometric 2d

Genre

PvP oriented multiplayer RPG

High Concept

In a modern city vampires and mortal hunters hunt each other -  as mortals are no match for the undead in open combat and vampires become helpless during the day - the struggle is a contest of whoever can find out first the identity of the other.

Main Features:

-        Open world with emergent gameplay.

-        PvP mechanics that encourage players to hide their identity from each other and try to pass as mere NPCs.

-        Game is about planning, tracking, investigating and not about waging open combat.

-        Mechanics of conducting investigations is based on the idea of a „trace” – a web of connections between victim, crime scene, witness and the perpetrator.

-        Character creation and progression spiced up with permanent death hardcorness.

-        Dream World mechanics that encourages vampire players to stay in game while their avatars sleep during the day.

Vampires

Vampires are powerful undead beings who have only one, but otherwise deadly weakness – the sun. They feast on the blood of mortals to sustain themselves and on the blood of their kindred to become more powerful. By devouring the essence of other vampires of greater or equal strength, they become stronger themselves. Players choosing the vampire role will experience more of open combat against other vampires, while still being challenged with the fact that they are stalked by hunters or weaker vampires that wish to ambush them... or perhaps they too will try to hunt a more powerful brethren of theirs?

Hunters

Vampire hunters are mere mortals with no special powers. They stalk and hunt the undead, discover their havens and while the vampires slumber – they destroy them. By choosing the role of a hunter, player takes upon a daunting task of tracking down and destroying a powerful undead and all this without revealing his own identity. Playing as the hunter is all about skillfully “playing” other players and not about “number crunching” of your character. By killing vampires, hunter earns trophies which he can showcase to other players and resources that he can use to his advantage.

Invisible war

Outcome of an open combat almost always belongs to the player on whose conditions it comes to it. During the night vampires have an immense advantage over mortals, while during the day the tables are turned – hunters become hunted. All this encourages players to hide their identity “as players” and stalk others until they find out their base of operation.

Investigation

One of the ways of finding out the identity of a vampire and location of his haven is investigation. Vampires, through their sinister activity leave a trace of victims, forensic evidence and witness testimonies - all interweaved to create a “trace”. Through this chain of relations hunter can track his prey without really getting close to it until the final blow.

Dream World

To encourage players to stay in game while their avatars slumber during the day or become vulnerable to an attack during the night – and therefore give players of opposing faction an opportunity to strike – players can enter Dream World. In this grotesque and dark version of the main game world sun never comes up and no death is permanent – its a perfect place for a player to test out the game without the threat of losing his character to permadeath and a great opportunity to improve his character skills through practice.

Summary

The Hunter Hunted is a game inspired by success of games like Project Zomboid and DayZ modification for ARMA 2, where emergent gameplay, sandboxed game world and players freedom are pillars on which stands one of the most invigorating and fresh experience a mature and demanding player can get from a multiplayer game today.