Bishop's Burden
A new pope interrogates 7 souls to learn how they committed the first deadly sins and released the Primordial Monsters into the world, by examining the distorted, insanity-driven memories of their past lives.
Bishop's Burden
Someone ate the cookies on our coffee table! How terrible! We can’t let them get away with this! We need to come up with potential explanations to find the culprit, then investigate to see if the clues match our theories. We know we have a dog, so we theorize that our dog might have eaten them. We go check up on little Milo, and lo and behold, his fur is full of crumbs!! 😲 The evidence seems to confirm our theory, so we declare Milo the culprit! Right? Or could it be that someone broke into our home, ate the cookies, sprinkled crumbs on our dog and left? Hmmm, let’s investigate further by checking out the door cam. Nothing suspicious, no one seems to have entered. Theory busted. Our dog is clearly the culprit, right? Well, what if aliens capable of teleportation actually framed our poor Milo? Let’s investigate further…
The point is, we keep theorizing and investigating until we discover the truth. Every piece of information reveals part of the bigger picture.
Our game is here to play on this notion. Investigating a mystery and uncovering clues bit by bit, the story slowly unfolds as you investigate. Endless possibilities with no clear signs leading you in any particular direction. All you have is your reasoning, curiosity, and intuition. It’s up to you to decide what information is relevant and what isn’t. The more you dig, the more you’ll find.
Gameplay
The game takes place in the Vatican Archives, and you’re the newly elected Pope. Congrats! But now, as the new Pope, you must learn some forbidden knowledge passed down from previous Popes. You’re presented with a fresco and chat box. You can examine the fresco to interpret it or chat with a character to learn more about the story. When the character reveals a new piece of the narrative, a new segment of the fresco will be revealed. Then it’s up to you to solve the rest.
Story
The overall story takes inspiration from Lovecraftian novels. In the works of H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, we see these struggles with knowledge present themselves. The mysteries of the world, the fear of the unknown, the dark side of our minds and what we, as humans, are capable of knowing without losing our minds. The mystique of those novels combined with the nature of uncertainty and otherworldly realms, seems to mesh nicely for a game like this.
Art
The frescoes will be realistic enough for players to identify elements, allowing them to make assumptions and fuel their investigation. Great examples would be Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights and Holbein’s The Ambassadors.
Technical
This game will be developed using the Godot Engine. After the whole Unity debacle, this felt like an easy choice especially because it is open sourced. The more Godot is showcased and used, more it will become the “Blender” of game engines, a powerful, free tool for everyone to use.