Working Level Title: The Fall, The Nudge

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Vital Narrative Beats:

• The Player Character is an angel-like being with wings and starts in an office setting where feathers are harvested from the employees as they work. They are called by the boss and told they are no longer needed. The Boss breaks their wings and throws them out of the building.

• Outside in the wasteland, hurt and broken, the Player Character sees a lonely flower struggling valiantly to survive and gains the resolve to survive themself.

• While learning to survive in this harsh world, the Player Character sees another person be devoured by a machine-like entity.

• The Player Character finds and destroys the giant version of the machines and realises these machines were created to collect the feathers of those abandoned in this barren wasteland outside the offices, even if that means killing people to get every feather possible. The Player Character can not let this keep going on. With renewed purpose they move onward.

 

Music Theme references:

• Fly, My Wings [Limbus Company] by Milli

 

Mission Beats

 

    The Fall

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• CUTSCENE:

  • We start in an office-like setting. All the employees are angel-like beings with wings, sitting at desks. Machines are next to each employee, plucking out feathers from the wings (some employees have more bald spots than others).

  • The Player Character is called over a Tannoy to see The Boss. They get up and go to The Boss’ office.

  • The Boss explains to the Player Character that they are no longer needed, and the Player Character asks for their own feathers that were harvested to be returned.

  • The Boss says those feathers belong to The Company now, considers for a moment before grabbing 1 feather. The Boss colours the feather mostly black (like redacting data) before handing it over to the Player Character with a smug grin.

  • The Player Character forlornly takes the vandalised feather, not noticing that The Boss is reaching over to pull a lever.

  • Once the lever is pulled, a machine turns on. Machine arms reach down from the ceiling to grab the Player Character’s wings and violently breaks them. Many of the Player Character's feathers fall to the floor.

  • The machine (still holding onto the Player Character’s wings) picks up the Player Character and throws them out of a nearby open window.

  • The Player Character falls and falls, all the while losing what little feathers they had left.

  • The Player Character eventually crash-lands in a mostly barren-looking area, and the blackened feather slowly falls after, landing nearby in front of a lonely flower.

 

    The Nudge

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• (Gameplay) The Player Character gets up, hunched over in pain and looking to the floor.

  • UI: Tutorial message appears showing the Player how to move and jump. Then directs them towards the Black Feather to pick it up by walking over it.

• The Player moves the Player Character over the Black Feather, and the Player Character looks towards the lonely flower, seeing it. The Player Character stands a little taller, despite the pain and looks forward. The Player Character sees something off-screen to prompt the Player to move onward.

• The Player moves the Player Character onwards and a dim, fallen feather comes into view. The Player moves to go pick up the fallen feather and more can be seen across a small ravine that can’t be jumped over. The Player Character looks towards their broken wings, then back across the ravine.

  • UI: Tutorial message appears showing the Player how to glide to reach the other side.

• The Player makes the Player Character glide over the ravine and pick up the fallen feather. Two different paths are shown to the player, but one path is too high for the player to reach (though not explicitly stated, this route will become available after an upgrade later in the game to repair the Player Character’s wings slightly and the player can come back to take the route for a bonus).

• The Player directs the Player Character through the currently available path. The Player Character is temporarily stopped, and a Doomed NPC is shown – crawling along the ground with no legs and only half of their wings - on the other side of another ravine facing the Player Character.

• The NPC calls out for help. A strange box-like robot (Enemy Unit: Scraper) then arrives from behind the NPC and opens its large machine maw. The robot then charges at the NPC, maw agape, scrapes the NPC up and devours them.

  • UI: Tutorial message appears explaining that this is a hostile unit called a Scraper and shows the Player how to fight it.

• The Player regains control of the Player Character as the Scraper shakes itself before shooting out brown paper-like projectiles.

• The Player directs the Player Character to dodge the projectiles and fire magic-like energy blasts at the Scraper. The Scraper will attempt to charge at and devour the Player Character if they are on the same side of the ravine. The Player directs the Player Character to dodge these charge attacks as well while firing at the Scraper.

• Once the Scraper is defeated, the Player can direct the Player Character onwards through the level.

• Throughout the rest of the level the Player collects more dim Fallen Feathers and fights more Scrapers.

• Eventually the Player reaches the boss arena for the Tutorial level. A Giant Scraper attached to a large hose-like pipe awaits them at the other side of the arena. The arena is filled with platforms that appear and disappear into the background wall.

• The Giant Scraper starts by shaking and a jagged piece of ceiling falls into the floor creating a small, jagged wall. The Player moves the Player Character up onto the disappearing and reappearing platforms (higher than the wall). The Giant Scraper shoots brown paper-like projectiles at the Player Character while they are on the platforms.

• The Player moves the Player Character behind the jagged wall. The Giant Scraper then opens its giant maw and charges towards the Player Character attempting to devour them. It crashes into the jagged wall in front of them - taking damage and the jagged wall is destroyed.

• The Giant Scraper returns to its original position and continues to fire projectiles at the Player Character for a short time before blasting a fan of projectiles out all at once that the Player directs the Player character to dodge.

• The projectile fan attack causes a smooth piece of ceiling to fall into the floor that creates a wall. The Giant Scraper then goes still and a gauge on the Giant Scraper starts to fill.

• The Player moves the Player Character up onto the platforms and over the smooth wall to stand behind it (the wall being between the Player Character and the Giant Scraper).

• The gauge on the Giant Scraper finishes filling up and opens its giant maw fully. It begins to vacuum everything into itself as the gauge decreases.

• Bit by bit the smooth wall crumbles and is vacuumed into the Giant Scraper but fully protects the Player Character while the Giant Scraper’s vacuum is in effect.

• Once the vacuum ends the remainder of the smooth wall crumbles. The Giant Scraper is stunned for a short while and the Player directs the Player Character to attack the Giant Scraper as much as possible.

• The Giant Scraper then stops being stunned and begins firing projectiles again.

• The Giant Scraper randomly cycles through projectile, charge and vacuum attacks that the Player directs the Player Character to avoid and attack the Giant Scraper back.

• When the Health Points of the Giant Scraper hit ‘0’ it is defeated. The Giant Scraper blows up, raining fallen feathers down around the arena and revealing a hole through the hose-like pipe. It seems like the Scrapers were collecting feathers, even if that meant devouring and killing people in the process.

• The Player gains an attack upgrade for the Player Character to Charge at enemy units across a straight area of ground.

• The Player directs the Player Character to jump down the newly revealed hole to end the Tutorial and advance to the next level.

 

Notes

 

Characters:

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• Player Character: Similar in look to the other NPC employees. Bald patches are on their wings at the start, though the feathers that remain look dull, but could have once been bright and iridescent. Loses most of their feathers as their wings are broken and then loses the rest during the fall out of the window. Though initially downcast and broken, they gain resolve and push forwards. Once they see injustice they resolve to make a stand against it.

• Other NPC employees: Heads down working at their desks. Their wings being slowly plucked of feathers and fed into tubes. Some employees have more bald patches on their wings than others (the feathers would be different variations of iridescence for each employee, the more bald patches the wings have the more duller the feathers). They don’t raise their heads or look at the Player Character when the Player Character is called.

• The Boss: Rakishly thin with small wings though they are completely full of downy baby-bird-like feathers (no bald spots). Has a very smug aura – like a sleazy car salesman.

• Doomed NPC: Only the upper half of his body is left after being attacked off-screen. His upper half still has half of his wings with dull, blood-spattered feathers, which is why the Scraper is still chasing after him.

 

Enemy Units:

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• Scraper: A large box-like robot and about as large as a person. They can fire brown paper-like projectiles at their prey to injure them. Once their prey is injured, they open a large maw-like opening in their front side and charge at them. This scrapes up the prey from the ground and deposits them inside the robot “devouring” their prey. The prey is then processed and any feathers separated from the remaining corpse. The corpse is dumped while the feathers are taken to a separate depositing area where the Giant Scraper is located.

• Giant Scraper: A much larger version of the Scraper, about the size of a one-storey house (this can be negotiated to be smaller – no smaller than a shed/garage - if needed for the size of the arena). They are also able to fire brown paper-like projectiles at their prey and charge at them to scrape them up to process. They can also utilise a vacuum function to suck up all prey in the area to process at once, as well as collect any feathers deposited nearby by the Scrapers. Though this function requires some time to power up and is displayed on a gauge on the side. Giant Scrapers can’t move very far from where they are built as they are connected to large hose-like pipes that funnel any feathers they collect straight to a warehouse where they are stored.