Depth of Denial
A horror shooter about a narrator you cannot trust.
Two bodies. Two different games.
Zaven can turn into a monster, and turn back. Both forms are playable, the game moves between them constantly, and they play nothing alike.
As a man he is a poor match for almost everything in the building. He fights at range with what he can find, keeps cover between himself and the room, and loses badly the moment anything closes the distance. That half is grounded survival horror, built to feel like being outclassed.
As the monster he is bigger, far harder to put down, and made for arm's length. It absorbs punishment, deals a great deal of it, and pulls enemies apart where it reaches them. The moment it arrives the game becomes a power fantasy, deliberately satisfying in a way the human sections never are.
The monster is kept on a leash, so changing is a decision instead of a mode you sit in. Every encounter asks which body you want to be in, and the answer is rarely free.
Violence with weight.
Combat is over the shoulder and unflinching, built around an anatomical dismemberment system. Things come apart where things come apart, and the camera does not look away from it.
The tone holds that line everywhere else. Straight body horror, played seriously, with the occasional dark joke and no winking at the audience.
The closest thing to this is twenty years old.
The Suffering is the nearest reference, with Resident Evil and Silent Hill further out. That corner of horror, where a man carries a monster around with him and the shooting is as ugly as the story, has been empty for a long time.
Depth of Denial is aimed straight at it. Third person, Unreal Engine 5, rated 18 and up, for players who want horror that stays unpleasant.
See it move
Gameplay
From the build
Captured from the current prototype.
Where it is
Playable prototype
Combat, inventory, health and persistent state are built and running. Both bodies work, and so does the switch between them.
Made by one person
Every system and every piece of content in the prototype was built by the founder alone. That is the base a production team would be scaling up from.
Paused
Development is on hold. The prototype is intact and the design is written down, so the work can restart from where it stopped.
Available to restart
The prototype is playable and the design is written. If you want to see it running, or talk about what finishing it would take, write directly.
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