Traum

Traum takes us on the journey of our protagonist coming face to face with the embodiment of her trauma through surreal and dangerous environments.

We hope you enjoy this morbid game of ours, made with love and despair.

Play our game here! → https://k0ded.itch.io/traum

- Morbid Games

Traum was developed over 12 weeks half-time for a platform game project by first-year students at The Game Assembly. While brainstorming we gravitated toward a more slow-paced story rich side scroller, with metrics and mood heavily inspired by Playdead’s ‘Limbo.’ We were warned that creating a slow-paced horror experience relies heavily on several factors being in harmony of each other. Audio, timing and visuals were crucial in order for our vision to come alive.

We settled on simple mechanics: running, jumping,climbing and pushing/pulling, wanting a game that challenges the player’s mind rather than their mechanical prowess. To bring the game world to life and organically unravel the story, we established a common vision of the game through communication between graphic artists, level designers and animators.

- Development Progress -

Asylum Concept Sketch

This is the first sketch of Traum. It was used to set the style for the entire project. At this point in the development process light was supposed to be a prevalent mechanic but this was quickly scrapped due to limitations with time. The Player had not been designed yet, only their values and colors had been decided on.

Mockups

Below is a mockup made towards the end of the first sprint. At this point some enemy design choices had been made. The antagonist would be entirely black and often obscured in the shadows of the background. Their presence would encompass big parts of the levels in the form of hands and stringy black ichor hanging from the ceilings.

In the second mockup we experimented with bigger spaces were the background parallax had more space to move around. At this point in development a robust physics system had been made for boxes to be pushed, pulled and tumble around. This system unfortunately had to be replaced with more basic physics because some puzzles became overly complicated when boxes could get stuck in strange sideways positions.

The third mockup explores the final act and environment of Traum where the player's world and sanity is literally crumbling away around them.

This is an early concept of our second environment, the forest. At this point, we were still exploring the light as a core game mechanic.

This was the early version of a photoshop file that was shared and used amongst the graphic artists, so that we could create new assets while seeing the environment it was supposed to inhabit, thus keeping a consistent style throughout our assets. A similar file was made shortly after for our first environment, the asylum.

Player Concept Designs

When looking for inspiration for the main character we were drawn to especially older children's books, such as Brothers Grimm books - A playful and childlike style but in a horrifying environment. We wanted to make a character that looked very fragile and innocent to fit in with the run-down environment she wakes up from. Additionally, we gave the character older-looking mental hospital clothes, with a slight "over-sized" look to further emphasize the thin and pitiful silhouette of the protagonist, hopefully spurring more empathy from the player, making them want to save the protagonist from the desolate and dangerous environment around them.

We started with different iterations of the player, drawing them directly into the environments using our shared photoshop files to ensure that they fit our already established style and mood. It was important for us to make sure that the character looked believable in the environment, and to see if there perhaps was anything missing from the design and if something needed to be added. After picking the final silhouette it was time to make her playable, leaving it up to our hard working animators to make her come to life.

Enemy Concept Designs

Once we had decided on a theme and rough draft of our story, we began designing the player and enemy. The enemy design was heavily influenced by the backstory of our player character, as it was the embodiment of a traumatic moment in her life. Therefore we tried to incorporate elements of the traumatic event into the design itself, as seen with the animal traits and the emphasis on hands and arms.

Once our group decided on which design they liked the most, it was polished upon. A teammate came with the idea of the enemy using its' arms to drag itself forward, and it was tested and later implemented. In order to make life less miserable for our animators who animated everything by hand, we scrapped the upper arms coming out of its' chest to instead keep only the arms that propels it forward.

Storytelling

We wanted the game’s narrative to unfold gradually, leaving breadcrumbs here and there and allowing for it all to come together with the end cinematic. A storyboard over the entire player experience detailing story progression, scripted events, puzzles and environment changes was created in order to visualize the timeline and pacing of the game. Below is one of those storyboard images, used to guide everyone in the team to a cohesive vision so that everyone knew what we were working towards and what the final scene should encompass. Below that image is the final product.

In order to explain the events of our protagonist's scarring moment, we made a cinematic showing what transpired on that unfortunate day. A rough draft consisting of the necessary frames was made early on and implemented into the game so that play testing with the players understanding the narrative could be done. Then throughout the project, the frames were polished where possible.

Puzzle Design

Our level designers and programmers worked in collaboration to design and implement the puzzles and scripted events that together with visuals and carefully curated audio design enhanced the atmosphere of the game while simultaneously challenging the player as they progressed.

Ideas of puzzles were discussed between the level designers and graphic artists to ensure that they enforced the worldbuilding of the game, such as the animal head trohpy puzzle that hints to the player character’s past. The two disciplines worked closely together to create a world that felt alive and built upon the story through environmental storytelling.

Audio Design

A crucial part of the game’s eerie feel was fulfilled thanks to our two graphic designers and programmers who also worked to create and implement the game’s audio design.

The audio was an important part for creating the atmosphere of Traum. Reverbs were chosen to be long but also roomy and enclosed to make the player feel small but still trapped inside the asylum. The sounds were designed to be either heavy and dark or high pitched and shrill. This can be heard from the bassy vent footsteps to the shrieking sounds of the corpse raven. The player character's footsteps were also designed to adapt to the material they walked on to further immerse them in the world.

When it comes to music we chose to exclude it from most playable events and only use it to heighten specific moments. Otherwise the game is filled with different ambiences depending on the player's location with hidden layers of dissonance to constantly stay oppressive.

The audio helped create moments of heightened anxiety and tension, as well as mystery, such as in the scene below where the player can hear fast paced footsteps running up to one of the celldoors and banging on them furiously. Who is it that's making that noise? Why are they here? Do they want to hurt me? Questions such as these help make the player more invested in the world. The sound design also helped create further stress during the chase scenes with the antagonist as well, making you feel as if you are truly running for your life.

Thank you for taking the time to read about our beloved game! We had a lot of fun making it, and we hope that it can be felt through the screen as you play our game.

All the best,

Morbid Games