Old scratch's face.

Old Scratch.

This is a quick look at how the devil is going to feature and look within the game. His design and role within the game has changed a lot through the design process and every iteration of story or mechanic, even puzzles seems to change the devil character in some way which is convenient considering I wanted him to change his nature and face a lot through the game.

Originally the devil would actively hinder the players quest complicating the puzzle but this was not that useful towards game play and hindered the ethical mechanic by throwing players off from the choices they had to make. Players must not feel that they are being tricked, they must understand clearly the questions asked of them so that they can come to their own decision about how best to answer it.

Now the devil hasn't fully given up his role of lying but its used to confuse the player more about his world than the actual ethical puzzles. He offers an altered perspective on the situation and will often mention bits of background story about the areas the player is in.

I wanted the devil to be somewhat faceless in the story, to be represented more as an amalgamation of every trickster god throughout history as opposed to a pointy horned Christian devil only. To show this in game his character will often change face and colour becoming something quite different each time but still a recognizable size and still occupying the same space around the player.

The puppet devil is inspired greatly by the old legend of John Schorne which is a legend local to where I live I have always been interested in, it involves the local priest (Schorne) trapping the devil in a boot and is theorised to be the origin of the jack in the box toys. I have featured a lot of my own work for local newspapers and such around the legend, it seems to be a much revisited topic for me.

Sam.