Fear Scene:

Point of view:
Either a forest spirt or belle dreaming.

Objective:
Belle's father is lost and you must guide him safely to the castle.

Gameplay:
At the start you have only one forest effect "moon glow" mapped to the 5 key, which breifly illuminates the correct path in the forest causing Belle's father to take it if he sees it in time. As the sequence progresses the speed increases giving you less and less time to press a button, th number of forest effects you have to use also increases. Until you no longer have to press a single button but a series of buttons. If Belle's father becomes confused and disorented all buttons are randomly reassigned.

Forest effects:
1 - lightning strike - horse turns sharply right.
2 - rock in the road- causes father to fall backwards.
3 - right wolf heel - causes a wolf right of father to reel.
4 - Owl hoot - scare father away from his current path.
5 - moon Glow - lure father to the right path.
6 - twig snap - cause father to turn horse around.
7 - left wolf heel - causes a wolf left of father to reel.
8 - hee yaa - causes horse to speed up and if going faster enough leap obstacles.
9 - sudden gust - horse turns left sharply.

Dangers:
Wolves
Low branches,
steep drops,
fallen trees,
wrong paths.


Questions:
How is success/failure determined?
What is the result of failure?

The fear scene is rather challenging. The ideas are interesting. For the forest effects, the principle behind is to introduce chaos through by introducing distrubance in the control. Chaos does not represent to fear, but it is part of it. The principle behind this, again, is to bring the player out of the comfort zone.

The most ancient implementation is probably simply having the father keep running forward non-stop, where the player can only just the jump button. You must have encountered scenarios like this before, and when were they used? There is a principle behind this gameplay too. By allowing only a very small set of options, in this case only the jump button, you limit the player's thought on the alternatives. You don't want the player to plan. You don't want the player to think rationally. You just want the player to react quickly and focus on the situation.

If you stick to the old implementation, there is a set path where the father will have to hop through. If the father is able to survive through that, he will end up at the front gate of the castle. Failure can correspond to a gameover. It can be quite frustrating gameplay. Or the Beast can pick him up in the forest. The fear scene is one of those scenes where having a variable outcome does not mean much for the story.

For the point of view, I was thinking more of a radar or a gps that belle might have, since the father is an inventor. If the father carried a radar and succeeded in the chase sequence, then Belle would know the location where she was supposed to find the father. Otherwise, Belle will find the emittor in the forest. As she get off from the horse to pick it up, the wolves starts chasing her and she has to finish the run to the castle.

Alternatively, we can have the player skip the part where the father is actually being chased. Instead, we say that after Belle noticed that the horse came back, she checked the radar and the dot was moving around in the forest. Belle goes to the forest to chase the dot, only to find a pack of wolves there. From there she get chased into the castle.


I don't get how the moon glow effect is introducing fear through gameplay.

Other thoughts about fear: When was the last time playing a symbolic game (such as tetris) in which you feel fear? What is it that allows a symbolic game to induce fear in the player?

Since obviously, Beauty and the Beast is NOT a Survival Horror game, then fear must be dosed adequately to its aimed audience, that is children that have seen the movie. In disney movies, true fear scarcely happens. Most of the Fear effects are based on chases and/or surprises. And ingame, for a game that is aimed t young children, fear can't be aimed at them, then the fear must be aimed at the characters, in order for the game to be fun. Therefore, the moon glow can only act as a relieve from fear in the character, a glow of hope in a stressing place: the forest.

But that's only my opinion...

Yours faithfully,
nicolas FOURNIALS