Call Home GDD

GAME DESIGN DOCUMENT

CCL STUDIOS CAP DRAMSTAD | CHRISTIAN LIRANZO | LOGAN PELLERANO

SECTION 1 . Overview Title: Call Home Game Type: Visual Novel Basic Plot A young boy, troubled by his difficult family life, is struggling to keep a smile on his face.

He needs an escape from the chaos. On his regular trip back home from school, he finds a phone number to call that claims to give exactly what he’s looking for: happiness.

Without thinking, he dials it and is transported to a different...Planet? Dimension?

Galaxy? He’s not really sure. Everything is perfect, until his guilt of abandoning his family sets in. He wants to go back, but no one in this new “perfect” world will let him.

Call Home is an adventure based visual novel that challenges your perception on perfection and euphoria. Whether you end up truly happy or not is up to you.

Elevator Pitch/Tweet In search of a happier family life, a young boy finds himself traveling to an alternate dimension… but how will he return home?

Expected Routes Three (3) Main Routes.

Each have a good and a bad ending making for a total of SIX (6) different endings.

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SECTION 2 . Game Aesthetics Overall Aesthetic The overarching theme of the game is the deception of happiness and euphoria. This is portrayed through the brightly colored environment and characters in the new world that The Boy enters. Because the main character is a child, the view of the world must be like that of a child’s perspective. Things seem bigger, more whimsical, and overall more exiting and new. This helps sell the atmosphere of things seeming trust-able and fun which help to create the tension of who the reader should really trust and believe in the seemingly perfect world.

Sprite Artwork The art style is designed to facilitate the cute and friendliness of the world. The characters are drawn simply and cleanly with either minimal or no shading. This is to keep the characters crisp in appearance against the backgrounds that are designed to add distortion to your field of view.

Animations The animations are designed to appear as if they were hand drawn by a child (presumably the main character). This keeps the player feeling immersed as the characters and sets up the proper perspective of the story.

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SECTION 3 . Character Overview Boy

Species: Human Age: 10 He as a troubled family life at home due to parental discourse. He often finds himself on the sidelines of their priorities and ends up suffering silently through his daily travels to and from school. His one wish is to be able to be happy and enjoy his time with someone.

Dial

Species: Alligator/Alien Age: 100+ Dial has lived on the mysterious planet for a long time, and has noticed the general population of the planet has become obsessed with “kidnapping� people (often children) from other planets in order to lure them in and convert them into aliens in order to expand their population. Dial has sworn on his life that he will help these kids return back to their home-worlds, but must do it in secret in order to stay hidden from the authorities.

Aliens (generic) Species: Alien Age: Various, but all 100+ The inhabitants of the new mysterious world the boy travels to. They cannot reproduce, and can only create new life by converting, mentally and physically, another host into their own. They lure children from outside plants with false promises.

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SECTION 4 . Backgrounds Background Artwork The backgrounds are designed in contrast to the sprite artwork. They are photos that have been manipulated with an oil-paint-esque filter and the colors (with the exception of the backgrounds within the opening sequence) have been over-saturated and tweaked to be otherworldly. This places the setting in a different, yet exciting fun world which is the illusion that is to be portrayed.

Examples can be seen below.

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SECTION 5 . Story Summary Introduction A young boy is struggling with his difficult family life at home. His father acts aggressively when he’s around and his mom seems to have less and less energy every day. Going to school is his only escape from the chaos, but even that is becoming a stressful environment. He’s just looking for any escape to happiness he can get. One dreary afternoon on his regular trip back home from school, he finds a poster with “CALL 4 A HAPPY TIME” messily scrawled over it with a phone number attached at the bottom.

Without hesitation, he dials the number.

The next thing he knows he’s been transported to another planet and lands in the middle of a baseball field where he meets up with a mysterious alien that encourages him to play with them. These aliens are seemingly friendly, but highly dangerous, unbeknownst to the boy. He goes into the locker rooms to change and is met with a mysterious crocodilelooking alien who insists he go with him for a reason he won’t tell. He has to make a choice to trust this nervous new alien or return to the original friendly alien.

Route 1: Trust Dial.

He decides to trust him, and he quickly finds out that this was the right choice.

The crocodile (Dial) tells him that the aliens steal children to brainwash them and transform them into their kind. The aliens on the planet start to become more insistent on the boy not leaving the planet, but with Dial’s help they are able to travel to the giant cellphone tower in the middle of the city. The only way to return home is to find the phone number for Earth and dial it on the transporter phone they have there.

Good Ending: Return Home He makes it to the cell tower quickly and is able to return home. His parents are waiting there for him. They’ve been extremely worried while he was away, so much so that they seem to have excused their differences to try and find him. His Dad apologizes for acting the way he did and his Mom regrets neglecting him. It feels like this is the moment he can start being a happy family together. END.

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Bad Ending: Return Home but...

(If the player takes too many detours and side routes on the way).

He manages to make it back home but, having taken too many detours on his adventure to the tower, and he returns to see no one in his house. Furniture is overturned and there is clear signs of conflict with blood strewn across the floor. He hears footsteps coming up the stairs, and a police officer opens the door and is shocked to see him. He asks who the kid is and he explains hesitantly that your parents had a fight and blamed each other for losing you. He says he’s going to take you to the police station to tell you more. END.

Route 2: Don’t Trust Dial.

He decides he is absolutely not about this guy. He just wants to have fun and this guy clearly doesn’t want him to. He tells him to leave him alone and the crocodile-man seems distressed. He goes on to have a fun time with the others, and the other residence insist he did the right thing.

One day, one of the aliens pulls him aside to talk to him and tells him he was a kid just like him, but they brainwashed him and he’s been stuck here forever. He quickly explains that he needs to make it to the cell tower in the center of town to call home. While the boy tries to get more of an explanation out of him, the alien-kid starts to act distressed and is unable to communicate as he struggles to not fully transform into an alien.

Good Ending: Listen to him and return home.

The boy makes it to the tower, similarly to Route 1: Good Ending, however, after punching in the number and being transported, the player is not rewarded with seeing the boy’s parents, but rather the screen flashes to white, leaving what happens after he makes it back home a mystery. END.

Good Ending: Don’t listen to him.

This alien seems really suspicious, especially with how jittery and twitchy he acts. Plus he mentioned that crocodile-looking alien the boy met earlier and he already told him to go away. If the boy couldn’t trust that guy then, he certainly can’t trust anyone who agrees with him now. You report this alien to the other alien authorities, as well as the 7

crocodile he saw before who is now nearby and lurking. The boy helps lure the crocodile man by telling him he wants help, but instead, the local residents jump him and don’t just arrest him like they told the boy, but instead they execute him in the middle of town. Afterwards, the boy finds himself quickly forgetting about him, and everything else. His desire to leave is gone and he ends up staying on the planet, brainwashed forever. END.

Route 3: Friends Forever (Diversion of Route 1) If the player is able to unlock Dial’s back-story by befriending him throughout their journey, these endings will be available as new endings after making it to the cell tower.

Good Ending: Bring him home.

He doesn’t want to leave his new friend, but he desperately wants to go home. As he calls home, the boy grabs onto him, transporting the boy and Dial back to Earth. He returns home to see his parents worried sick, but his Mom is even more shocked to see a giant crocodile now in her house. END.

Bad Ending: Stay with Dial.

He makes the decision to stay on the planet with his new crocodile friend. Despite the planet being sketchy, his companion has been the closest thing to real family that he has ever had. He chooses to stay on the planet with Dial and lives together on the happy planet, vowing to help save anymore children that get transported here like he did.

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SECTION 6 . Animations and CG’s Short animations will play throughout the visual novel. Each animation will be a super simple styled animation in the style of a child’s drawing. This will enforce the perspective of the boy as what they player should be viewing from, as well as further immerse the player within the mindset of the boy.

Opening Animation *Not currently viewable in-game* It begins with the boy laying in bed and waking up to an alarm. There is no sound playing during the animation, but only a dull soft song in the background. The boy reaches for his phone to turn off the alarm, grabs his backpack, and heads downstairs. He has a depressed look on his face as his parents are arguing in the background, but he doesn’t pay any mind to it as it is a normal and everyday occurrence in the house. He exists his house and boards the bus to school. As the bus is driving away, his mother finally shouts “Have a good day at school,” but she isn’t paying attention to the fact that he has already left. The camera view pans up to the sky which turns from morning to afternoon as it sets the scene for the game to begin.

Transportation Animation As the boy is being transported to the planet, this animation will play. Animation is viewable in-game. It will show a very simple animation of the boy being transported off planet Earth to give the player some context as to what is going on during that sequence.

This is also where the title card will drop.

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SECTION 7 . Closing Our hopes for this game aim to be a more interactive and very different feeling visual novel. As fans of RPG’s that are heavy on story, exploration, and interactivity, our studio aims to pull some of these elements into our visual novel to create an extremely unique experience that isn’t normally explored in this format.

By keeping with the contrasting style of cute artwork, but dark themes, we want to emphasize that our story brings something completely new to the table. With our emphasis on visual images and animations, we are able to more easily show the player what is going on rather than tell through writing to keep the text very story focused.

Thank you for taking the time to consider, love, and appreciate our game.

- The CLL Studios Dev Team

Developers: Cap Dramstad, Christian Liranzo, Logan Pellerano Office Location: 1234 Business Lane, Bronx, NY callhomethegame.com | inquiry@cllstudios.com | @callhome on twitter & facebook 10