Trapdoor

Jeremy is a character that does not have much character explanation initially in the story, and the reader learns more about him as they progress through the story. Jeremy finds himself in an odd and foreign situation by finding this trapdoor in the park. This presents Jeremy with a want to discover more about the tunnel system he has gone into, but a need to escape as soon as possible. I came up with this character by thinking of a scenario for the protagonist to escape from. Initially, I was not thinking about the character as much as the world itself because I felt that in this story the setting is much more important than the character. The story is intended to be about both the character and the setting. Both have equal importance in this case.

As Jeremy begins the story, his want to discover more about the trapdoor and the tunnel system is very apparent. His curiosity gets the best of him, causing him to descend down the trapdoor stairs without too much thought. Once he is inside of the tunnel system, his need is the need to escape the situation he is in. As the story progresses, Jeremy begins to lose sanity ever so slowly, but it becomes apparent when his needs and wants start to swap with each other. As he spends more time down in the tunnel, he goes more and more insane. As a result, he is less interested in escaping the tunnel, and more interested in learning more about its meaning and origin. He needs to discover more about the tunnel before he eventually escapes, and he wants to do so because he realizes that he will need to in order to escape.

The decisions and branches in the story address these wants and needs by presenting the player with several opportunities to learn more about the situation at hand before advancing in the story. While most of these decisions are not crucial to the eventual end of the story, they give information that provides the reader with a unique experience. Several of these decisions prompt cards that inform the reader that Jeremy is beginning to lose his sanity down in the tunnels. There are a few decisions that let the player choose whether or not Jeremy decides to run and panic in the moment, or stay put and think. Generally, staying in the same location causes Jeremy to overthink things, losing more and more sanity as the story progresses. Eventually, he will continue on the same path he was originally, but the player is more aware of the fact that Jeremy is beginning to lose sanity.  The decision points throughout the story give the player options that can change the outcome of the story and the fate of Jeremy.

I came up with the beat for this story by brainstorming ideas for a horror story and deciding that I wanted to create a story with one character who is trapped in a foreign scenario and his main goal is to escape. The beat for this story is “person discovers new location, gets trapped, devises a plan to escape said scenario”. I saw this as a story that could have many different potential outcomes, while also giving the player options throughout the story that slightly change the story-line. Not all of the options that are presented to the player are crucial to the end of the story, but they provide extra information to the reader along the way.

The most difficult part of coming up with this story was thinking of different unique outcomes to the story, as well as creating sub stories to these outcomes that are all equally interesting to the player. The initial idea was easy to come up with, but making an interesting and compelling story out of the idea was a challenge. Jeremy is not a very complex character at first glance, but the player learns more about him and his wants/ needs throughout the story. We know that he is a very adventurous and daring person for even entering the trapdoor and walking down the tunnel in the first place, but there is not much else the player learns about him initially. As Jeremy progresses through the labyrinth he gains information about the tunnels he is exploring, encountering new characters along the way. As he begins to lose his sanity, the player begins to learn more about Jeremy and what kind of a person he is. Through this experience that Jeremy is faced with, he discovers new things about the tunnels and what they might mean. There is never an explanation as to what exactly the trapdoor was, and why Jeremy was lured towards it. This is intended to give the player room to interpret what the labyrinth might be, who it was created by, and what it’s purpose may be. I intended the story to be this way for a couple of reasons. Giving an explanation of what the trapdoor and tunnel systems mean is a way of humanizing the entity that may have created this labyrinth, making it much less unsettling for the player. In my opinion, leaving this up for interpretation was the best decision for this story.

Throughout the story, it was not very difficult to align the reader’s interests with the motivations of the main character in this story. The reader has no reason to wish any harm upon Jeremy, so their thoughts will coincide with Jeremy’s thoughts. Jeremy needs to escape the labyrinth he has gotten stuck in, and he wants to learn more about where he is. The scenario that Jeremy has found himself in is very unrealistic, but anyone would agree that it would be very terrifying. The reader sympathizes with Jeremy, leading them to want him to escape the tunnels eventually. The reader will naturally have the common interest of getting Jeremy to escape the tunnel system. The characters outcome will be determined by the decisions that are made by the player, and as Jeremy loses sanity the decisions the player is presented with become more crucial to the outcome of the story.