Aysa Atalay

Contribution Colour-Coding Key

Aysa / Camilla / Combined

Logline

A 2.5D choice-driven visual novel that puts players in the life of a streamer facing daily struggles – and the escalating threat of an online incel group.

Title

User_Unknown

We chose this name for the game because it provides hints to the storyline and setting. It intertwines the mystery of the storyline, where the incel group interacts with the main character through the stream chat, with the ‘unknowingness’ of the entire situation, including who is behind it. The formatting of the title is similar to how people socially structure their gamertags and social handles in modern times, portrayed through the intentional usage of the underscore within the title.

Game Idea Summary

‘You are an up-and-coming female streamer with a newfound fanbase. One day, whilst live, you receive a menacing donation. A message threatening to ‘dox’ and reveal your location. Are these threats real? How will you respond?’

User_Unknown will be a narrative-driven psychological thriller game where your choices shape the outcome. A visual novel-esqe game with an unconventional way of portraying horror, focusing on text-based interactive drama that creates suspense. Navigate escalating tension where the narrative responds to your actions. The result is a journey that explores the darker aspects of human nature that is often ignored.

USP

2.5D artstyle production, this is relatively uncommon and hopefully will give our game a unique and distinctive look. The game will shift between 3D and 2D sections, with some moments where the lines blur between the two.

During moments where the MC is moving to and from the computer, the game will shift to a 3D isometric perspective of her bedroom. While it will still be 3D, the visual style of the room will be more 2.5D, as we don’t want the difference to be too stark when playing, as it may reduce immersion. While the MC is on her computer, the game will shift to 2D, allowing for easier and more immersive gameplay during the main events of the day. We chose to do this as we wanted to include 3D in our game, but also to challenge ourselves with a 2.5D perspective, as that’s something that we haven’t produced within a game so far.

We are also choosing to produce this with a low-poly style with a lot of grainy textures to give an unsettling but visually stunning product that mirrors our narrative-device. To achieve this, we will aim to produce low-poly models and simplistic but intentionally unique concepts to push this view. We are also exploring the potential to render using a grain/static effect to give a unique rendering style to the game, pushing these design choices even further.

These choices help the game stand out visually, whilst also keeping the focus on the intense narrative. Unique and interesting visuals are typically one of the most marketable components of a game, as it is the player’s first impression of a game when quickly browsing, hence why it will be one of our main selling points.

Setting

The game will be set in 2020, as during this time, there was a rapid growth in the popularity of online streaming due to the COVID outbreak. With global lockdowns keeping everyone inside and almost forcing them into digital spaces, online interactions became more common and more important in daily life during this time. It was because of this that streaming platforms grew so much in popularity, making it the perfect time setting for our game.

As well as this, 2020 saw an increased appearance of chronically online communities, including more extremes such as incels. Isolation, being forced online, and the overall uncertainty of the state of the world most certainly contributed to the normalisation of these harmful ideologies within online spaces. 

The overall gameplay setting for the game will mostly be on a computer, also including sections of the game where you are able to explore the player character’s bedroom before going to bed each night. 

The game will also be set in the MC’s bedroom and will be the only environment that they can travel and interact in. It will be set in their bedroom as it is a familiar space for many people who play games or have any sort of routine in their life, as that is where everyone goes to sleep at night, being deemed as everyone’s ‘ritual space’. By placing this story within a place that people go to relax and use every day, it will make the experience more interpersonal and most likely increase the player’s susceptibility to the storyline as it will feel closer to home.

The game is set in Canada. In 2020, a terrorist case resulted in the murder of a young woman, as well as another person being seriously hurt. During this investigation, the law enforcement attributed these murders to the direct cause of incel ideology ( E.D.F.P.D, 2020). Whilst our game does not aim to retell this event directly, its setting in Canada will be more impressionable as they have been influenced by a real-life incident that has occurred there, therefore they will take it more seriously than other places, giving a good fit for our setting. Drawing from reality enforces the serious tone and highlights the realistic effects of extremist misogyny online.

Our main character will also be female, as this gender has endured a lot of online harassment, as shown by studies into this matter. 38% of women had reported personal experiences with online violence, 65% reported knowing other women who had been targeted online, and 85% witnessed online violence against other women. The prevalence rate for online violence against women in Europe was 74%, with the most frequently reported form of online abuse being misinformation and defamation (67%). (Greig, 2025) This study also states that there is a trend of under-reporting on topics like this, assuming that these numbers are higher than shown. This study further solidifies the need for representation for this intense matter that is occurring in our modern-day society. Without material that tries to challenge this matter, it will only continue to rise. Media as influential as games should be utilised to try and inform people, which we are aiming to do with our game in semester two.

Game Scope

Intended Scope

The game is a short, narrative-driven experience focused on choice, with two different endings branching off depending on a hidden point-system determined by player performance during the minigames. 

A single playthrough will be approximately 15 to 20 minutes long, with 30 minutes of unique gameplay resulting from the choices and endings. By implementing the possibility of different endings, this will improve the game’s overall replayability without having an unrealistic amount of workload on our part. 

We intend to produce at least two different endings, with them being opposite ends of the spectrum: morally good and bad outcomes. These will be dictated by the previously mentioned Hidden-Point System (H-PS), which will be influenced by the players’ interactions and decisions during the game’s playthrough, such as mini-game performance and storyline choices. 

We aim to have the narrative play out for 4 in-game days with 3 different difficulties of mini-games (MG): Easy(E), Medium(M), Hard(H). These will all be unique. The fourth and final day will include a new difficulty, an amalgamation of all three of those mini-games as the final challenge to the player (Insane mode, I). In between the mini-games, we aim to have a storyline which will weave all these different game aspects into a flowing narrative game. 

During the moment-to-moment gameplay, the player will be streaming to their viewers, where they will have to aim to keep the stream morale (SM) up while dealing with the incel group. The game’s day will begin and end with the main character making their way in/out of their bed, showcasing their living situation. As the story progresses, the main character’s room will become increasingly disrupted and messy to represent their current mental health while enduring the incel groups persistant harassment, giving insight into how many people become during mental health crises.

Because our project consists of a two-person team, keeping the scope manageable is a main priority when thinking about how long the game will actually be. For now, our basic goal is to simply produce a finished game with these two endings and four unique minigames. 

Plans for the future

If time allows or if our initial scope becomes too small, we have several ideas to expand upon the game. We intend to include more than one unique minigame per day, as well as making the gameplay during in-between moments intensified by adding more unique and in-depth interactions with the chat and incel group. These new interactions would further affect the H-PS, allowing the player to have a stronger effect on the overall narrative.

The most important potential expansion would be the addition of more different endings. Instead of having just a good or bad ending, these endings would reflect the players behavior when interacting with chat and the incel group, creating different morally viewed standpoints. By giving each ending its own personality and different emotional tones, the game would have a much greater narrative with more thought-provoking points and higher replayability.

Harvard References

• Executive Director Federal Policing Strategic Direction, Deputy Commissioner. ( 2020). Terrorism Charges Laid in Ideologically Motivated Homicide. [Online]. Public Safety Canada. Last Updated: 20th May. Available at: https://www.publicsafety.gc.ca/cnt/trnsprnc/brfng-mtrls/prlmntry-bndrs/20200831/062/index-en.aspx?wb [Accessed 8 December 2025].
• Greig, M. (2025). Digital spaces, real harm: Tackling online violence against women and girls – Research Matters. [online] Research Matters. Available at: https://www.assemblyresearchmatters.org/2025/12/09/digital-spaces-real-harm-tackling-online-violence-against-women-and-girls/ [Accessed 12 Jan. 2026].