2. THE GAME
In this post:
Overall game concept & introduction
Origins of the idea
Naming the franchise
Next steps
Exploring the Foundations
Weâre creating an action-adventure video game that allows the player to explore an immersive, fairytale land filled with spectacle, awe, and peril. Armed with your wits and cunning, you play as 16-year-old Red Riding Hood, a girl forced to learn how to survive â and, ultimately, thrive â in an unknown, whimsical, and unforgiving world. Fantastical, complex characters and unexpected dangers await around every corner keeping the player constantly driven to continue on and discover more.
The game combines well-known stories and characters from existing folklore, fairytales, and nursery rhymes into a shared, darker, whimsical and dangerous world.
What Makes This Game Special?
Breathtaking original environments: From rain-soaked mushroom grottos to gnomish villages filled with towering âbootâ homes, Red will visit a wide range of deeply immersive and atmospheric locales on her journey that stand out from any game experience in the market.
Savage combat mechanics: Despite her unassuming size, Red is nimble, cunning, and merciless in combat. The ability to target vulnerable organs and make split-second decisions provides opportunities to dispatch enemies quickly with precision or slowly through attrition, making each battle uniquely exhilarating and their victories deeply satisfying.
Innovative gameplay: The game explores unique mechanics that provide deeper immersion. Aiming to strike the ideal balance between realism and player quality of life features, it rethinks virtually every traditional element in games from health bars to targeting systems and more.
Complex, multifaceted characters: The leading cast of characters are charismatic, charming, and each uniquely flawed in their own ways, working together to help Red on her journey while completing their own individual story arcs woven into the gameâs narrative. Conversely, the villains present a formidable challenge, with their own intricate backstories and motives, enriching the gameâs narrative and experience.
Subverted expectations: The storyline is filled with unexpected twists and turns, breaking away from formulaic, overused, and predictable gameplay and narrative tropes. The game is thoughtful in its every decision, creating an experience of always wanting to âturn the pageâ and see what happens next.
Origins of the Idea
Iâm aware the idea of Red Riding Hood as a wolfslayer is not a truly original one. There have been several takes on this concept in the past, perhaps most notably the Belgian indie game Woolfe: The Red Hood Diaries which was funded through Kickstarter and ultimately launched in March of 2015. Sadly, the studio filed for bankruptcy just five months later in August of the same year noting poor sales and player reception.
Conversely, American McGeeâs Alice (2000) and its sequel Alice: Madness Returns (2011) is a separate fable-based game franchise that was lauded a success by fans but also reflected mixed financial success. Most comments on YouTube around Alice Madness Returns claim itâs criminally underrated and a great game that was unfortunately overshadowed by a huge slate of triple A games released that year. Other sites claim less than 30k unit sales which is not much for a purported $9M development cost. If youâre interested in learning more, Ewaii has created a great comprehensive video of the series explaining itâs successes and challenges. Despite Alice in Wonderland being in the public domain, EA owns the rights to the specific dark Alice IP from the original developer, so future sequels in the series remain indefinitely halted mostly due to â you guess it â money and EA analystsâ lackluster financial projections for a sequel. I read through the entire 414 page design bible they made to pitch the sequel to that game for $50M USD and⊠yeah. I have some thoughts on it. But Iâll save those for another day.
Back to the source of the game and itâs protagonist â In 2018 I had never played the above games nor was I aware of them at the time, but I was brainstorming ideas for oil paintings and had a delightful off-the-cuff idea of featuring a savage Little Red Riding Hood character that hunts wolves and fantasy beasts.
After doing a bit of research online, I stumbled across a promo image from Woolfe featuring Red Riding Hood with a hatchet. It was cool, but instead of showcasing Red as a somewhat psychopathic teen killer pursuing vengeance I wanted to portray her as a young, savvy girl hunter adorned in wolf pelts and claw necklaces fighting for whatâs right.
On the left: GriN Gamestudioâs character art that helped inspire a more âhunter" style character idea in my mind. On the right: A reference photo of my friendâs daughter for a planned oil painting (that was started but sadly never came to fruition).
I even went as far as getting a reference photo of my friendâs daughter to use for the painting⊠but, ultimately, started and never completed it. She does look pretty badass, though. I didnât think much about the idea since deciding to not finish the painting, so the idea sat dormant until the very end of 2023.
After deciding 2024 would be the year to build my first game and launch the studio, I knew immediately that my large, sprawling Triple-A style game ideas would no doubt be biting off far more than I could chew and not work as the first game. Then the idea of fairytale and folklore universe came to mind and who better to be my protagonist than my nimble and vicious Little Red Riding Hood (LRRH) girl.
I dove deep into the lore, origins, variations, and history of LRRH narrowing her age in the tale to be between 3 and 8 years old which I quickly realized was just too young. If you consider Hit Girl from the first Kick-Ass movie â and the psychotic lethal killer she portrays â that actress was 11, which was a still too young and scary for my vision. It wasnât until I made the concept art image at the top of this dev blog post that I realized that 14-16 was the ideal age for the character. Young enough to believably be dangerous and self-sufficient in the world with proper training, but not so old as to lose innocence and the naivetĂ© of adolescence.
The events in the game take place 8 years after the event with the Big Bad Wolf. I spent the first week of the year fleshing out a backstory that felt narratively strong for those 8 years leading up to the start of the game which kicks off a creative and compelling story arc for her as the protagonist. More details on that to be revealed later on.
Next Steps
Having the concept and working title is just the tip of the iceberg. Thereâs a mountain of work to be completed with primary focus now being on the cast of characters, the narrative outline, and key gameplay mechanics. For what itâs worth, you can be assured this is being driven by someone that smells predictable and played out video game and movie tropes from a mile away. Everything about this game will be done thoughtfully with the player experience at the very top of itâs priorities, regardless of itâs scale. More to come as the journey continuesâŠ