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Indoctra is a first-person psychological-mystery game that combines the exploration mechanics and event-driven storytelling of Gone Home with the creepy atmospheres and psychological elements of critically-acclaimed games such as F.E.A.R. and Condemned: Criminal Origins. As the headmaster of a small boarding school in the rural rainforests of Washington State, you find your school completely and eerily deserted after returning from a 3-week-long business trip to Seattle. Search for clues and avoid the psychological elements of the unknown as you struggle to keep your sanity and uncover the terrible, unnatural events that took place while you were away.

Features

• A dynamic environment that can change behind your back.
• The main character's journal in which plot-related entries are written as the game progresses.
• An interactive menu that displays collectible evidence documents picked up throughout the game.
• Puzzles that unlock doors and initiate other events that help you experience the game world.
• Tons of little Easter eggs and references to the genre and real-world crime.

Gameplay Overview
Indoctra isn't a traditional horror game like F.E.A.R. is; instead of focusing on combat, Indoctra focuses on story, and as such, there isn't any combat in the game, which is where the connections with Gone Home are drawn; but instead of an object interaction system like the one in Gone Home, Indoctra has a system that messes with you by making more-or-less subtle changes to the environment behind your back; and lastly, instead of conveying highly-important plot points by bringing you into a horror-filled psychological “flashback” section of game world (i.e., the Alma moments) like in F.E.A.R., Indoctra reveals and conveys its plot points via event-triggered “journal entries” written in the style of the player character's thoughts.f

The Setting
Indoctra is set in November, 1993 in a secluded forest in Forks, WA. Its atmosphere and overall tone are heavily inspired by TV shows such as The X-Files, Millennium, and Twin Peaks, and as such is generally foggy and chillingly cold and creepy. The game world has a very mysterious and uncanny feel to it, but under the sheets of mystery is true terror as the player discovers throughout their journey. There is heavy use of shadows to enforce fear of the unknown similar to Gone Home - usually aesthetically. Sound helps set the mood to enforce the mystery and uncanniness that drives the game world of Indoctra.

Screenshots
Note: Click to view full size.

Outside


The Classroom


The Library


A Bedroom


An Office


Another Bedroom


More screenshots coming soon!

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Game Team Overview

Design Team
- Aaron Gilbert (Marth)
- Anthony Tran

Art Team
- James Plummer (WULF)
- Jacob Petry

Music
- Richard Savery

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Comments? Questions?

I just realized how appropriate the month is that we're releasing it in.

This evokes a similar feel to Elfie's Nyctophobia game. The library seems a little too dark, IMAO. Interesting concept overall, though. What's the gameplay like?

AQT wrote:This evokes a similar feel to Elfie's Nyctophobia game.

In what way(s), exactly?

AQT wrote:The library seems a little too dark, IMAO. Interesting concept overall, though.

Yeah, it's much easier to see when you're in-game where you don't have a ("bright") website encompassing the dark scene.

AQT wrote:What's the gameplay like?

Well, like I mentioned, the game is very atmospheric and involves quite a bit of exploring, opening doors, going through people's stuff - but we're in the process of designing and implementing various puzzles that the player must solve in order to progress through certain parts of the game.

Looks very stunning. I will definitely download this game as soon as it releases. By the way what are the system req's?

thelegend wrote:Looks very stunning. I will definitely download this game as soon as it releases. By the way what are the system req's?

Thanks!

The system requirements will likely be something around this:

Windows XP SP2/Windows Vista/Windows 7 with DirectX 9.0c or DirectX 11
2.4 GHz or better dual-core (or quad-core) CPU
1+ GB of RAM
NVIDIA 7800GTX+ or ATI X1300+ Video Card

I like the idea -- only just recently saw Twin Peaks, and I've been playing Alan Wake a little -- but my gut reaction on seeing the screenshots was that the area seems empty. Shouldn't the locations be filled with clutter, props, little things that flesh out the world and add variety? ...Stuff like scraps of paper, discarded supplies, the kinds of things that make an area feel used rather than decorative. In an exploration game like this one, that seems pretty important.

Due to a demanding social life, I have been unable to complete most of the planned clutter object meshes. So you're not wrong, we're aware, and we're attempting to address the issue.

Reminds me a bit of the old silent hill games. I'll give it a shot.

Are we looking at seeing this game on Steam?

Kingpin wrote:Are we looking at seeing this game on Steam?

If we do, it'll be free. With that said, whether we actually ship it on Steam depends on a number of things, most notably Autodesk's rules on using products with an Education license (for Maya and Softimage) to build assets for free, commercial games, and Adobe's rules on using products with a Creative Cloud license (for Photoshop) to build such assets as well. Ugh, I'm also using an Education license for CrazyBump, so I'll have to figure that out, too. And hopefully Microsoft doesn't have any special licensing rules for Visual Studio Community...

Speaking of licensing rules, I've conducted a risk assessment on porting the game over to UE4 and it looks like it's a go, so there's no worries for licensing the engine. Ugh, it'll be a pain to re-script all of the Kismet sequences into Blueprints, but it'll definitely also be an interesting experience nonetheless, haha.


UPDATE!

Finally built the model and textures for the playground's carousel!

Looking good Marth!!

The kiddie colorfulness of that prop in that dark foggy environment makes for a very creepy look.

10/10 would be spooked again