Section 1: Reawakening (Opening scene)
The game begins with a slow light up of an object in roughly the middle of the screen. It’s an Egyptian sarcophagus, the bottom part of it buried in the sand at an angle, with a sandstorm raging on over it, and audibly blowing all around. The light around the object is only visible in a small circle around it. Then, it starts to shake. At this point, a symbol for the movement keys appears on screen, prompting the player to mash them back and forth, before eventually, the coffin opens, and out of it pops a mummy, visibly female in shape, and all of her limbs bound together, like a straight jacket.
She emerges from it kneeling, but trying to stand up straight. The movement keys are still visible. When one is pressed, the mummy immediately tumbles over onto a somewhat sharp rock that became visible when the player fell out. Luckily for her, it lands right between her legs. Control is the character lands, it a ripping sound is heard, as she slowly tries to get up, which drags her bandages into the rock, ripping them further. Meaning that the moment the mummy tries to get up, she is able to rip through the torn bandages, freeing her legs. The mummy tries to pull apart her arms, but to no avail. It’s as this point the player is given back control as the movement keys pop up again.
The player can move left or right at a slow walking speed. The field of vision is also restricted to a small circle around the player. All that is shown is the character, the ground directly under their feet, and the background, albeit heavily darkened. The player can move either left or right, but while both paths will lead to the same outcome and feature similar scenery, the left path will end in a dead end. As the player walks forwards, the ground becomes one filled with debris, as you see the hints of objects around you like broken clay pots, pillars jutting out of the ground, among other details. As you reach a certain point while walking right, the screen begins to shake. Whichever way the player goes, shortly afterwards, a giant scorpion tail emerges from the ground, right in your little vision circle, cutting the mummy upwards, which slices away her eye and arm bindings. The circle of vision completely disappears as the player is giving full vision of the screen once again.
The scorpion tail gets into position right in front of your character. A symbol pops up on screen, which is the attack button. Pressing it however, will have the mummy perform an animation where she makes a sweeping motion, but nothing happens, as she looks at her hand, shocked. (Animation time: 5 sec) Performing it leaves you vulnerable as the stinger strikes you, sending you tumbling back right next to the coffin.
With the mummy slumped down before the coffin, the scorpion tail pops in and out of the ground to get closer to her, as it reels back for a killing blow. It’s at this moment the action slows down as the attack button comes up again. Pressing it this time however, will result in the mummy sending out a bandage from her arm, that ties around the pincer, and holds it back. She gets up from the ground amazed, as the button prompt for Attack + Direction comes up. In this case, right. Do the command, and the tail gets smashed into the sarcophagus, breaking it apart and making the tail writhe around in pain before disappearing back under the ground.
The mummy stands up, as she looks at her hands. She then says her very first words of the game, via a dialogue box:
“What… Why am I a mummy?! Where am I? What happened to me?!”
Commentary:
The intention and theme I have with this whole sequence, is to at first make the player feel like they’ve been dumped into a hostile, mysterious location where they feel helpless at first, being literally kept in the dark as much as the main character, then make them come to grips with what they are. Hence why I made the player’s movement and vision restricted at first. It’s also to focus the player on how to move alone, though making all other actions logically sealed off. Originally, I had the player stuck in their bound up state, and they could only move while jumping, in a very similar way to the Spider encounter in Limbo, where the protagonist gets cocooned, and can only hop forward to move. However, I changed this because making the player move by hopping is something they never do in the game itself, and it would be better to give them a movement style they will be using throughout the entire game.
Another thing I want to change is that I planned that trying to walk past the coffin would result in an invisible wall, or an animation of the mummy shaking her head to indicate she didn’t want to go back there. It stretches the suspension of disbelief too much when she could simply walk past the coffin and I can’t convey to the player why she doesn’t want to go back there through her gestures alone. So, my intention would be to have a large enough stretch from left to right for the atmosphere to build up, and to pay off the next bit. Most players would move right, since they’re facing right. But I would like it if more adventurous players can get validated if they move left. If it proves too technologically difficult (Would require specific use of triggers), then I may have to result to the shaking animation to at least give some context.
The scorpion tail encounter is also something that has been added very recently. For the longest time, it was a large Anubis themed living statue. Body of a man, head of a Jackal, and wielding a massive halberd. It would only appear then, and without further context or appearances (He’s an artefact from far earlier drafts), he’s out of place. The scorpion, I plan to be the stage boss, so I had him appear at the start for the sake of foreshadowing and build up to what you’ll face at the end. It will also be more involved in the level itself.
The buildup to the Scorpion Tail is something that would involve sound more than anything. The loud footstep sounds echoing alongside ambient noises from places you can’t see, like the earth softly shaking, stones falling across other stones, ect. When the rumbling really begins, I suspect the player might want to run the other way, rather than advance further, so I would really like it if I could make it so the encounter can trigger in either direction, whether they run or move forwards.
With the tail attack, I did want to reflect a mind of the protagonist’s mind in the player. That this is the moment they can finally fight back, use their abilities to fight off this monster… And nothing happens. The animation taking a while to complete, longer than the stinger strike, would be a good way to have it look more cinematic without fully making it a cutscene. With the mummy being knocked back near the sarcophagus, I have that as a bit of symbolism that she’s about to be put back into the grave. It being shattered on the counter attack symbolises how she isn’t going to die yet.
On the note of that counter attack, I intended it to show how the player can attack, throw and also a little hint towards the mechanic of attacking enemies during their wind up to grapple them. It’s very cinematic in nature, and it does get explained later on, but it does make things fit together.
I wanted the protagonist, Cleo’s final line to be one that would set up the premise of the whole game. That’s why it’s expressing disbelief that she’s a mummy and she doesn’t know where she is.
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