Game interface UI
Game Start Screen
Evidence Book
Shows the items the player has collected on the map and explains their detailed information and usage.
HUD
Game World Background
The story of ‘Residual Fear’ takes place in a closed old mansion. The explanation of this has always been vague rumours, such as “haunted”, “family scandal” and “disappearance”. Many supernatural lovers came here to explore out of curiosity, but they were interrupted by the frequent crazy cries of women in the manor.
The story of ‘Residual Fear’ takes place in a closed old mansion. The explanation of this has always been vague rumours, such as “haunted”, “family scandal” and “disappearance”. Many supernatural lovers came here to explore out of curiosity, but they were interrupted by the frequent crazy cries of women in the manor.
Narrative Setting
A mother has been addicted to stocks for a long time, immersed in this “remedial control”, but ignores the most important thing: she focusses all her attention on quantifiable and chasable stocks, neglecting her love and companionship for her son. Her son’s initial confusion eventually turned into resentment. He did a lot of absurd and extreme things to attract his mother’s attention, but he still failed to achieve the expected effect, so he turned to drugs to seek psychological comfort. He was confused day after day, and finally died of a drug overdose. After the death of her son, the mother was full of guilt and mental disorder, unable to bear the consequences. But it was too late. She tried to face her son’s death with her psychological model of stock trading. She believes that by increasing the stakes and paying the price, and combining all the chips, there will eventually be a “miracle of returning to the past”. She inquired around and learned about the ancient black magic. She decided to perform a witchcraft ritual in the mansion, trying to exchange her life for the resurrection of her son, but the result of the ceremony was still unknown. The stock market may give you short-term signals to induce you to keep increasing the code, but those “people and things you miss” may never be undone. The protagonist is a horror novelist who makes a living by plagiarism. After one of his works was suddenly a great success, he was pushed into the public spotlight because he could not produce a sequel. Under pressure, he went to this remote old house alone, hoping to get inspiration to create sequels to save his career, but in the mansion, he found many scary things………
Character Design
Mother
- Core characteristics: strong desire for control and remedial impulse; take “plus code” as a way to repair the world
- Narrative presentation: gradually manifested through ledger/transaction records, purchase list, ceremonial text, and three recordings (denial → remedy → sacrifice)
- Emotional trend: busyness and neglect → regret and collapse → treat life as the last “plus code”
Son
- Core characteristics: emptiness and self-paralysis after being ignored; the desire to “be seen”.
- Narrative presentation: through room relics, unsent text messages, prescriptions/reports, words on the back of the photo, short message recording.
- Key role: His traces constitute the “Ritual Anchor” (Anchor), which is also the core of the player’s reasoning chain.
AUDIO LOGS
Mother Audio 1
I just… I want to get things back on track.
Do you know? A little more, you can make money.
I’ve seen it too many times–
Fall, make up for it, wait for the moment it will come back.
It’s enough for it to come back at that moment.
I only need that moment.
He was crying upstairs, and I heard him.
At that time, I thought…” I’ll go when I’m done with this.”
Wait until I finish this. Wait until I finish this.
I take this sentence as a talisman.
But it turned into a curse.
The door is locked. I remember clearly that the door was open.
The lights should not flicker like this.
This house… Remind me.
Or is it laughing at me?
It doesn’t matter.
I will do things well.
Mother Audio 3
I tore up the account book.
Page by page is “do it again”.
It’s all about the idea of “it will be better next time”.
I write like a prayer.
Like a spell.
Did you hear that?
I’m not calling you.
It is this house that is calling me.
It says:
“Do you want to get up again in Dongshan? Then pay the price.”
I paid for it.
I will give everything.
Blood is more honest than ink.
The name on the paper is like opening a door.
The door opened.
I saw… I saw…
No – I only saw half of it.
That’s enough.
Half a side face is enough.
As long as it can prove that he still exists.
As long as it makes me believe that I didn’t miss it in vain.
The bell rang again.
The second time.
The third time.
(Laughter)
It won’t fall again this time.
I won’t miss it again this time.
I bet everything.
All.
If you come back…
Please don’t ask me what I have paid for.
Don’t look at me.
No… I regret it.
Mother Audio 2
You all said stop.
You all say “enough”
But you don’t understand–
It will never be enough.
When he left, I was still staring at the numbers.
The line cut him like a knife.
I said to myself:
“As long as I can earn back what I lost, tomorrow will be different.”
Tomorrow will be different.
It will rebound tomorrow.
Now I understand.
Getting back together does not mean returning to the original place.
A composite… Deceiving you to double the bet.
Salt on the threshold.
The flame of the candle swayed.
The corn room in the mirror is darker than in the room.
I heard the ringtone for the second time.
I know you are waiting for me.
Also waiting for me to make the last bet.
I am also willing to risk my life.
Then it will definitely come back, right?
It will definitely… Come back.
Son Audio 3
Mom.
I know you’re busy.
You always say, “Just this once.”
You speak so fluently that it’s like you’re memorising lines.
I don’t want to disturb you.
It’s just.. sometimes the house is suffocatingly empty.
Even if you are here, it is still empty.
You looked at me, but your eyes seemed to penetrate me, as if I had never existed.
I don’t want money.
I don’t even ask you to win.
I just want you to… come back.
Back to the past.
While you were still there.
Forget it.
Go on with your life.
I will find a way to stop hurting myself.
Narrative Level Design
Each door adopts a 2/3 evidence trigger mechanism: collect any two clues in the corresponding area to advance, avoiding players being blocked by missing a single key item.
The First Gate
(West Warehouse): Negligence and Cracks
Sample evidence:
– Account book/record page (traces of mother’s anxious “remedial efforts”)
– No text message sent (son’s cry for help/despair of being ignored)
Mother Recording 1
Reward: Unlock the warehouse → hub shortcut; the hub shows subtle changes for the first time (lights flashing, low-frequency noise, stains aggravated)
The evidence board infers: “This is not an isolated incident, which involves long-term negligence and concealment.”
The Second Gate (East Hall): Ceremonial Enlightenment and “Once Again”
Sample evidence:
– Ceremony Procurement List/Sacrifice Preparation
– Mother Recording 2
– Son’s relics (as an anchor point)
Reward: Unlock the second shortcut; environmental clue enhancement (ringtone/sound source seems to be closer).
Evidence board inference: “Changes in the structure of the manor are related to the process of the ceremony.”
The Third Gate (Basement):
Price and Irreversibility
Sample evidence:
– Blood Alliance Contract/Sacrifice Text (Clarify the Price)
– Final recording (blank after the second bell rings)
Ending: The truth is revealed – the son was never resurrected, and everything was the mother’s obsession. Players face the results after completing the reasoning.
Three visual pillars: claustrophobic pressure, decay & damp, and directed fear through lighting.
Artistic style
from the white box to the final visual direction
Residual Fear aims to create a sense of fear through spatial, atmospheric and environmental narratives, rather than relying on scary monsters. The white box stage focusses on verifying spatial readability: a narrow corridor with a strong vanishing point, and the hidden door at the end establishes a clear sense of direction and “unknown fear”. In the final art iteration, the corridor turned into a damp and rotten indoor space. Mould spots and peeling walls spread to the ceiling and walls, and cracked floors and dirt strengthen the atmosphere of long-term abandonment and hidden history.
The lighting design adopts high contrast and limited field of view: the edge of the shadow frames the field of view, which leads the eyes to the weak light source in the depths, and stimulates the fear of expectation and imagination. This style supports three major visual pillars: claustrophobia, decay and dampness, and fear guided by light and shadow. The subsequent iteration will achieve a balance between atmosphere creation and game readability by optimising local light and shadow rhythm, roughness/humidity changes and environmental details, and improve the sense of reality and narrative density.