Spin Doctor: Collectibles

Journal extracts from Reeves' diary can be collected and are spread out around the facility, in no particular order. Once these are found, the can be taken to the hub world and placed on the wall and read. Corpses can be found in traps, and in the medical zone in Reeves' laboratory. These corpses have previously been experimented on, and one man can be found at a table with his driver's license in his pocket, this way the player can identify him. A few select corpses, including the man on the table and the couple, were invited to a masquerade ball Reeves had set up in order to easily distract the crowd while he could sneak in and drag a few carefully chosen victims into his facility to experiment on.  The medical zone will also have machinery, syringes and ingredients/tools to create barbiturate, blueprints of the mechanical heart along with the plans of the facility, and there will be a dying man the player can interact with before he dies. No corpses will be found in the study room as Harland is the first subject to get that far. The front page of a newspaper with the headline "Doctor Reeves is wanted for questioning after the discovery of illegal substances in his house and attempted assault", with a photograph of Reeves, can be found in all zones except for the last section of the study zone. The newspaper can't be read, the text below the headline is blurred out but there for the aesthetics and immersion. Unfortunate subjects carved or painted with their own blood, messages on walls crying for help. "Help me!", "I don't want to die..." etc. These will be in the medical and industrial zone. Near the ending of the game story-wise, in the living quarters and study area in general, portraits of Reeves and his wife, and general belongings can be found. Fragments of a comic book among notes can be found, these are not in order, together they can make a puzzle in the hub world that will reveal the comic book. 

Spin Doctor: Timeline

1850-1851 – Dr. Reeves, a respected and brilliant physician, realises something is not quite right with his wife Elizabeth. During this time he is doing research and examining her. In 1851 he has come to a conclusion. Late 1851 he plans to build her a mechanical heart, which will fully replace her real heart. He planned to harvest epinephrine from living people.

1852 -  Lacking volunteers he decided the only way would be to create a custom tailored barbiturate to knock his subjects out and then experiment on them to find ways to extract epinephrine, which was the only way to get his wife’s’ mechanical heart beating. Before he created the barbiturate, he used a rag soaked in chloroform, which had the same effect but was difficult as he would struggle with the victims fighting back and their attempts to escape. When the barbiturate was ready for use, he would fill syringes with it and inject it into his subjects, to make sure they would become unconscious. Getting caught at one point trying to knock a subject out got him kicked out of the medical community and he lost his doctor title and job. This left him no choice but to escape his court trial and he fled to an old abandoned military base, taking his wife with him. He decides to improve and expand the facility. He is wanted for crimes against humanity. The summer of 1852 he has finished the mechanical heart after many months of research and hard work. He attempts to perform a heart transplantation, replacing her real heart with the mechanical heart he created. His wife dies from this, although the heart replacement was successful. Later the same year, he develops insomnia due to psychological causes and recent events.

1853 – Dr. Reeves’ has found his first potential subject, French prostitute, Margaux Boudeville, who moved to England, London in 1850. He found her to be an easy prey since she worked nights; she had little to no family in England, and few friends. She would disappear as stealthily as she arrived. After an unsuccessful experiment on her among a few other unnamed subjects, he realised he had to harvest epinephrine in other ways. He started planning out a vest, which would have tubes at the back of it drilled into their back, harvesting the epinephrine directly from the subjects. The vest would be sewn into their skin, thus impossible to remove, although the tubes were detachable. The epinephrine filled tubes would then be plugged into his wife’s’ mechanical heart.

1854 – Dr. Reeves has completed the vest that he planned to sew into his subjects’ skin. He needed more and bigger doses of epinephrine that his original experiments if ever successful could never accomplish. He starts planning out the rotating rooms one by one, to create a labyrinth that would take his subjects through dangerous rotating rooms, that would give them an adrenaline boost (epinephrine) that would be harvested and extracted into the tubes attached to the vest.   

1862 – The facility is complete, Dr. Reeves stops improving and expanding the facility. No subject reached the final test. People would die due to traps or starvation during the early tests, some people got far but none of them made it to the final test in Dr. Reeves' study. 


1862-1878 – Reeves gets older and grows weaker for each passing year, gets desperate and kidnaps local people, and slowly give up as it is too much effort for him and his old weak body. 


1878 – One day Harland Shears stumbles across the facility. Dr. Reeves take advantage of this. He drags Harland Shears into the hubworld, where he sews the vest into Harland's flesh, and places the tubes into the back of the vest, all this while Harland lays unconscious. Harland (the player) then wakes up when Dr. Reeves has escaped the room, and the game begins.

Spin Doctor: Methods for the Kidnappings "Does this rag smell of chloroform to you?"

- A different disapperance

1. The Stalk

Dr. Reeves stalked his prey and snuck into their houses at night and injected them with syringes filled with a custom tailored barbiturate (containing Wolfsbane, Henbane, Opium and Chloroform). He also used rags soaked in chloroform before he came up with the brilliant barbiturate. This would paralyse his victims/make them unconscious, and he would bring them with him on his way back to the mansion to experiment on them, or take them through the maze, depending on what year it was at the time. "Does this rag smell of chloroform to you?"

2. The Bait

Dr. Reeves sent anonymous letters under a fake alias, promising gold and green forests (or a sophisticated party they were invited to), in an attempt to lure victims to his mansion. The carefully chosen victims who recieved this, had been watched by Dr. Reeves for short periods of time until he got to know them, their secret desires and hopes. The letters would be tailored for each individual victim to make sure they would eventually arrive at the mansion, invitiation in hand. 

Spin Doctor: Narrative Elements: Corpses

Corpses are found in hallways in-between levels. These corpses usually have notes on them, explaining how they got to the facility, evidence (such as the invitation written by Dr. Reeves, signed with his alias), and their last thoughts before death occurred. A dead couple is found, embracing each other, possessing an invitation to the mansion,which will reveal the couples’ intentions and expectations when they arrived at the mansion. The player can also find previous victims who tried to escape and failed, who ended up getting stuck in a trap or incinerated to death. There will also be a dying man the player can interact with before he dies. Previous experiments Dr. Reeves did before he built the rotating rooms (which are the levels the player will have to face) will also be shown. He had to harvest epinephrine in other ways for the mechanical heart, by experimenting on both living and dead victims in his laboratory.


Information about Corpses and their Location:

Corpse 1#

Name: Unknown

Age: Unknown

Appearance: Pile of bones.

Location: First corpse the player will stumble across after exiting the elevator, in the industrial zone.

Corpse 2#

Name: Mr and Mrs Wakefield.

Age: 35 and 37

Appearance: Mr and Mrs Wakefield is embracing each other, Mr. Wakefield possessing an invitation to the mansion.

Location:

Corpse 3#

Name: Richard Ashcroft

Age: 52

Appearance: Heavily experimented on, with needles and tubes piercing it's flesh. Corpse is laying on a table covered in blood. Possess a drivers' license.

Location: Medical zone, laboratory.

Corpse 4#

Name: Ida

Age: 19

Appearance: Wearing a ripped masquerade costume, torn apart to accommodate the vest.

Location: Industrial zone.

Corpse 5#

Name: Magraux Boudeville

Age: 24

Appearance: Bones, old drained blood surrounding her, with rags of what seems to be an old elegant dress (subtly promiscuous)

Location: Medical zone, laboratory.

Other Corpses:

Not very detailed and insignificant corpses will just be a pile of bones in different traps in the industrial and medical zone, these are duplicates of corpse #1. 

Spin Doctor Comic Frame 1-6 Example

Frame 1

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: Dr. Reeves' is in his study room, talking to a silhouette/unknown figure/off screen (dead wife, but player can't see who this is), he is leaning forward onto his desk, looking stressed, as if he is about to make a decision). Near his hands are the map of the whole finished facility, building plans of the facility and blue prints of the mechanical heart. Dr. Reeves' is facing away from the table, profile of him is shown. Camera is possibly behind the dead wife (as an example).
Dialogue: "Decades of my life dedicated to the same cause, you, hangs in the balance judged only by my actions on this night..."



Frame 2

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: Dr. Reeves' is crouching whilst packing syringes (to paralyze his victims, etc) among other things. He is looking at his his wife in the corner (still offscreen), asking her questions.
Dialogue: "You know I am doing this for you? You realise I am only doing what I must do, to save you?" questions along those lines. He explains he has to take to drastic measures in order to save his wife.


Frame 3

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: Dr. Reeves' is now walking across the room to get his jacket, while speaking. Wife is still offscreen.
Dialogue: ASking questions, continuing dialogue from Frame 2.


Frame 4

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: Dr. Reeves' is now putting his jacket on, facing his wife or facing the door/wall (?).
Dialogue: None yet.



Frame 5

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: The doctor turns the lights off, walks out the door.
Dialogue: He mumbles "Goodbye, honey."



Frame 6

Setting: Dr. Reeves' study.
Action: Apart from all the other lights being turned off, there is still one green dimly light lamp in the corner of the room next to the wife. The green light slightly illuminates the dead wife (which is a skeleton).
Dialogue: None.




- This is just an example to show the Artists. I've pictured it in a Max Payne kind of style, but any style will work. A dark and creepy atmosphere and minor attention to details in the background, major focus on characters.

Spin Doctor: Inspiration - cut scenes and notes

Throwing in some inspiration and my idea of how the cut scenes, notes and other things could possibly look like:

Comic book "cut scenes"

Max Payne Comic 

Cut scenes will be in a comic style as mentioned before, these cutscenes will appear when fragments of journal entries written by the villain have been pieced together into a full page. They will tell the story, bit by bit, to the player, as a reward for finding them and completing every page.

A cut scene clip from Outlaws (1997)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wb8_MACgvBQ&feature=related

Our game will have still drawings, like a comic book, but I thought the style in Outlaws is a good source of inspiration.

Notes

Game: Amnesia

Note found on Google

Notes written by the player could look like this or something similiar. Phil also had an idea; we could soak paper in tea water, so it looks old, then we could write down game notes on it and scan it in. 

These notes could either be found as a full note or as fragments to piece together to reveal the message, and it'd pop up as a picture you could read.

Example of an authentic Victorian newspaper:

The player will stumble across a newspaper page every now and then. These pages will be unreadable
and messy but the player can still see pictures and headlines.

Spin Doctor: Flashbacks/Cutscenes & Story Elements

Flashbacks/Cutscenes

The player will find fragments of notes, that he has to piece together to reveal the whole message. These will mostly be journal entries written by Dr. Reeves, but also other clues left by previous victims. These fragments will be in random places and not in order, and they will be portrayed as a picture/still cutscene when completed. These pictures will tell a story to the player, in a comic book style, rather than reading just plain text. These cutscenes will provide the player with an idea of Dr. Reeves intentions, including small bits from his past, how his wife got ill, how he built the vest and mechanical heart, started to neglect his own patients/career, and how he planned out and built the whole facility. It will possibly also show how previous victims were trapped within the facility.

Story Elements!

There will be messages on walls, presumably written by previous victims, messages will consist of cries for help, among clues and other thoughts they had. These will also show up as explained above, as old parchment, although these will not be in the comic book style.

Story-related Items

• Newspaper articles
• Journal entries
• Notes
• Corpses
• Mysterious writing on walls
• Small clues/items on the ground

Spin Doctor: Ideas for immersion

• The player will find notes written by old victims, when the player finds clues and notes along the way, they will get an idea of where they are, what is really going on and gets to know the villain's story from what old victims witnessed and experienced.

• Near the end of the game, the player will enter the Living Quarters of Dr. Reeves, where the player will find portraits of him and his wife, and the Doctor's journal among other belongings, to get to know his motives and reason. Good for immersion. At the end the player will also face the villain, whether this is for a final battle or a twist is undecided.

• Voice and subtitles have not been brought up yet. I think if the player talks to himself during the game, when he finds a note or reads the journal, sees portraits or finds dead bodies and other clues, it will give more depth to the player himself and his place in the story.

Bill the Butcher from Gangs of New York.

Awesome top hat, awesome moustache, awesome villain!

Spin Doctor: Story Prologue and Overview - by Gina and Jonny!

.Prologue  (Backstory)

Prologue Overview

- The once great Doctor Reeves is forced out of the medical community for experiments deemed to brutal to human kind.
- Experiments into the study of Brugada Syndrome, of which Elizabeth Reeves (Wife) suffers.
- Reeves builds a cybernetic heart to save his wife.
- Epinephrine (a by-product of Adrenaline) is the only substance capable of maintaining a heart rate needed to sustain the mechanical heart.
- Facility is created designed to mentally and physically challenge the subject, in order to extract quantities of Epinephrine once adrenaline is reached.

Detailed Prologue Explanation

Prior to the events of the game

1852 – Dr Reeves

Dr. Reeves, a once highly renowned scientist in the fields of both medical and psychological science falls deeper into the affects of stress and paranoia. Neglecting what little patients the tired Doctor still keeps, spending more and more time alone in his study designing projects and mechanisms deemed to horrifying and brutal to the rest of the scientific community; Reeves works on his masterpiece.

1854 -1855
The mechanically automated vivisection of various unnamed prostitutes and vagabonds leaves Dr Reeves  officially out-casted from the medical community, left disgraced and battered, the Doctor retreats to his manor to nurse his dying wife Elizabeth, whom slips closer and closer to death as each day passes. Crying out the experiments were necessary in the interest of biological advancements and the study of the rare “Brugada Syndrome” (A defect slowing the blood flow from the heart to the rest of the body); the condition Elizabeth Reeves also suffers.

1855 –
Turned more mad scientist than esteemed Doctor, Reeves slips deeper and deeper into a chaotic state, dealing with his own insomnia and psychosis in coping with his beloved wife’s illness. Wanted by federal state law enforcement for crimes against humanity, Reeves establishes his base inside an old disused railway tunnel complex where his inventions and tests into mechanical human organ transplants continue; developing a cybernetic human heart for his first guinea pig, his wife.

Epinephrine (a by product of adrenaline in the human body) becomes the only substance capable of maintaining the needed hear rate for the early designs of the Drs project. With his wife highly sedated and comatose, the Dr begins the greatest experiment of his life; a live and real-time extraction of Epinephrine from living human hosts. Reeves sets about converting the underground structures and vaults within his lair to substitute such needs. Rooms that spin. Rooms that disorientate and test the subject’s mental and physical agility, removing from them a sense of security and balance, replacing these with disorientation, exhaustion and fear; perfect factors to induce the fight or flight instinct inside humans and as a result, adrenaline.




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Story Overview  - Events of the Game

Setting: Victorian Era (Britain)
                Roughly late 1800s (1860-70)

·       -  Harland, the protagonist works in the mines, one day he goes to work with two other colleagues.

·        - Said two colleagues are told to mine closer to the surface, Harland is told to venture deeper into the mines to discover new materials.

·        - Harland stumbles across something he believes is a new discovery, but it turns out to be something far from it...

·        - After working his way through the supposed newly discovered material, to his surprise he falls over and down, hits the ground and passes out. (Screen fades to black)

·         -When Harland wakes up, he is equipped with a technologically advanced vest with empty tubes attached to it at the back. The vest is impossible to remove and is somehow sewn into his skin.

·        - Harland decides to explore the room he is in, he finds a hidden switch and a door opens and reveals a living nightmare: A rotating room and extremely dangerous traps!

Spin Doctor: Mood Boards