Prologue...

Prologue

A game by Darren Matthews

Introduction

Time isn’t on your side.

Background

Date: 12 August 2035

Addison Edge is an engineering astronaut working on the ISS and is on an EVA doing routine maintenance on one of the solar panels of the space station.  There are regular communications through the suit to the other engineers inside the station with the usual reassuring buzzes and clicks. Unbeknownst to him, a rogue asteroid is heading to earth that’s going to fly straight past his position.  His radio starts to break up and he try’s to get confirmation messages from inside as to this communication problem.  He glances in the mirrored surface of the solar panel to see the asteroid behind him.  He turns around just in time to see the asteroid explode close to him, with a blinding light searing his eyes and scattering shards of material in every direction.  He try’s to cover his eyes to protect himself but several of the shard rip through his suit and visor.

Everything fades to white and Addison finds himself flashing through recent memories of him being on the space station, being on earth, being at home with wife and kids.  The flashing stops and he finds himself on a deserted street next to a newspaper stand.  After getting his bearings he glances to see that the date of the paper is 20 July 2034, almost a year back in time. He suddenly gets a searing headache and brings his hand to his head, crying out in pain.  Everything goes white and he then finds himself in a nearly deserted automobile scrap yard, with only a barking dog snarling in his direction.  He backs off to the safety of the owners shed, hoping to find someone.  There is no-one there but a TV is on in the corner, showing the news of the 2012 Olympic games happening.  He backs off a starts running through the yard.  As he runs he starts to get another headache but as he does he sees a small glowing shard of some kind to the right of him which is strangely hypnotic. As he gets closer to it, the headache lessens so he keeps running to it.  As he gets close the shard gets brighter and brighter until he reaches it and goes to pick it up.  As he does, a strange vapour seems to appear from the scars where the shard from the explosion hit him and this vapour disappears into the shard in his hand and the shard stops glowing.  Addison then suddenly is transported forward in time back to the street he was on before.   He realises he must find more of these shards to draw out the shards inside him which seem to be causing the headaches and time shifts.  Just when he realises this, another headache and fade to white………

 

Description

This is a 3^rd person action adventure game with a time travel science fiction theme.

Key Features

·         Time travel through different time periods.  From future, through 00’s, 90’s, 80’s, 70’s, 60’s, 50’s, 40’s right back to the dark ages.

·         Use different tools from the different ages to help find the shards.

·         Sense of urgency as when time runs out, he gets transported further back in time.

·         Has to explore and find objects to use and combine to assist with the collection of the shards.

Mechanics

·         Time meter – counts down time before being flung back into different time period.

·         Engineer – can engineer and combine objects together to become more useful objects.

·         Trigger shard – shard does not activate until picked up by Addison.  He can collect multiple shards before activating to trigger a bigger jump through time.  He must however use an object, such as cloth, to pick up shard so as not to activate it.

Target Audience

·         Experienced PC and console game players age 13-40 who enjoy puzzle solving action adventure games with detailed character animation models and cinematic segments.