Vanished

INFORMATIONS

Title : Vanished

Genre : Puzzle, Action-Adventure, Solo-Player

Support : PC, Console

Technology : Unreal 5

Connexion : Offline

References : The Room, Until Dawn

PLOT

Built in 1415, Burdfield Castle is a majestic building only destined to the heir of the Burdfield family. It somehow went out of the bloodline when in 1965, the previous head of the family had to sell it for financial reasons.

Many years later, in 2020, the company Alternate Life and its CEO Anthony Hykes bought the castle to create in it the biggest and most innovative AR System: Marigold; and its brand new game using the said system: Vanished.

Dozens of celebrities and journalists are invited for the inauguration of the game, but the reception turns south when someone hacks the Marigold system. Doors begin to lock themselves and a virtual prison traps the guests in an out of control game, menacing to kill them with their AR googles connected to Marigold.

Now in command, the hacker ask the players to escape while making it clear, he wants "justice to be done". Marigold being an offline system, for Hykes, there's only one possibility, the hacker is in the castle, and maybe even among the players.

Out of this situation, three culprits emerge:

Albert Burfield : head of the now commoner Burfield family, he sold the castle to sir Kroesh due to the decreasing funds of his family.

Roger Kroesh : Previous owner of the castle who bought it from Albert and later sold it to Anthony, he sold the castle in a rush but wouldn't mind getting it back.

Anthony Hykes : Owner of Vanished, there are rumours surrounding the company suggesting that Marigold is a money pit leading Alternate Life toward bankruptcy. Via this scandal, he could claim the assurance money.

To escape, players must solve 7 great enigmas that require smaller puzzles in the area to be solved first. To do so, Marigold has the ability to virtually change the appearance of the castle to simulate 3 different years : 1415, 1967 and 2020.

GAME CONCEPT

INTRODUCTION :

Vanished is a first-person game diving the player in a gigantic escape game experience in an old castle filled with mysteries and traps, all while trying to unveil the secret lying in-between those thick walls.

DESCRIPTION :

Invited to a strange castle for the inauguration of a brand-new Augmented Reality game: Vanished; you find yourself trapped between reality and fiction when the system is hacked and the original story changes.

Explore the castle, may it be its present or its past to find what the hacker wants to tell you before it is too late. Find the hidden keys and unlock part by part the game up to the finish line.

KEY FEATURES :

Object Manipulation : Observe and interact with object as much as you want, some objects can turn into others with a bit of reflection.

Anamorphosis : Inspect objects, may there be in your hands or in the world to reveal things only a certain point of view can show you.

Time Travel : Use the Augmented Reality system to show the castle as it was through 3 different times (2020, 1967, 1415) to find clues and secrets to help you progress in the present.

Deep narrative : Explore Vanished and find what the hacker wants the world to know.

LEVEL DESIGN OVERVIEW

This castle is part of an Unreal Engine pack purchasable on the market place and is in no way my property or the final design for the story's map.

Buy it here!

Blank Map

Areas separations

GRAND DOORS :

Each of the 7 areas is separated from the others by one or more Grand Door. They open when the main puzzle of the area has been completed, allowing the players to move deeper into the castle.

TIME TRAVEL :

The time travel ability doesn't change the Castle's structure as it is only an holographic system, it can however change the texture of things and create non-physical objects and boundaries that will hurt the players to simulate real ones.
NPCs created by Marigold will change depending on the Era, their behaviour is also affected by the era's manners and particularities.