Remember how I wasn't sure I liked the logo? I changed it. Here's the new title screen.
This still isn't exactly how I want it to look, but this thing is going to be stuffed full of placeholder assets anyway. I got them working as intended, but don't have the assets for things like readying weapons or aiming, so to stop this project from taking another three weeks, I'm just accepting that a lot of things won't look the way I want them to. Some things don't work quite how I want them to, either. It does all work, though. That alone is a huge step compared to all the struggling I've been doing until now. But enough of that - the demo has very few things left to do before it enters final testing. Onto the good stuff.
I mentioned in last week's post that this is heavily inspired by Sweet Home. If you're familiar with that, a lot of what I'm about to say might sound familiar. The setting for the game is vaguely contemporary and in a haunted mansion deep in the countryside. There's not much more to say about the setting than that - it's pretty standard horror genre fare. So, let's talk about the story.
The mansion was built by a wealthy businessman who had recently married for himself and his wife. While they did throw a few lavish parties - they certainly had the space for it - the two slowly became more and more withdrawn. Over a couple decades, it became normal that no one would see either the husband or the wife for months at a time. There wasn't much to think about it - his wife was beautiful, and they had more than enough money and space to spend the rest of their lives together without either of them working a single day.
Then, the husband started to reappear. Not at work - he was effectively retired - but he was seen in the city again. Usually with new women. He never said why, but when he was asked, he'd say his wife was in good health and waiting for him back at home. Was he bored? Had the marriage become stale? Was it something else? Maybe he was bringing them home for his wife. No one knew, but he'd keep finding new women to take home.
Until that suddenly stopped, too. A few weeks went by, and a jealous boyfriend found out his girlfriend was one of the women the husband had brought home. They fought for a week before she went silent. He thought she went back to him. He wasn't having it. The husband was once a high-profile man, so the house wasn't hard to find. When he got there, the door was already open. Walking in, there was no one to be found. Determined to confront the man who destroyed his relationship, he kept looking until he stumbled into the couple's marital bedroom, finding the wife laying seemingly peacefully with her throat slit, the sheets dyed red.
The man fled the house and informed the authorities. It turns out the wife knew about the husband's affairs, but didn't approve. The husband had died under "mysterious circumstances" which was later ruled to be a murder. The wife had played the grieving widow and quietly built a crypt on the property, burying her husband inside. One by one, she lured in her husband's mistresses, informed them of his death, and kept them in the crypt with him. When she was done, she went to the bed that only she and her husband were meant to share, and ended her own life.
That was roughly 50 years ago.
In the time since, the mansion has become a typical local legend. The occasional homeless person used it to keep a roof over their head, and groups of teenagers dared themselves to spend the night. What made it less typical is that people kept going missing. Of course, it's hard for the authorities to do much about one homeless person saying another disappeared, or some kid going somewhere they weren't supposed to and not coming back. They'd check the house when they were pressured to, but it was always unsettling. Furniture seemed to move after going from one room to the next. Odd noises were heard that weren't just the bones of the old house settling. Loose diary pages from the dead wife showing up with vaguely threatening prose penned onto them. Never any evidence of the missing people.
The game starts with a movie crew arriving with the intention of proving the supernatural really exists. They each have their own reasons for being there, but a handful have already been through an experience of their own that has them committed to proving the truth to the world. With all the rumors, this house seems to be the best place to do it. With a moving company having already brought all their equipment there, all that's left to do is to make their movie, find their evidence, and leave.
Unfortunately for them, it's that last step that's the hardest.
The demo for Saccharine Soil will be available exclusively to Patrons this Friday, December 1st.
