Story

 Occupants of The Dae-su, an ultra-modern office building downtown, begin exhibiting abnormal, dangerous behavior. Following reports that the phenomenon is spreading through the building – as well as speculation that anything from a terrorist attack to a virus to a disgruntled employee might be responsible – authorities quarantine the building and emergency response protocols are initiated. The player's character becomes trapped in the building along with hundreds of others, many of whom begin to fall prey to the transformations that are ravaging the building's populace, turning them first into crazed psychopaths and then into something much, much worse.

The player's character must, at the very least, learn what's behind the mass mutations in order to avoid becoming part of them, as well as escape death at the hands of the creatures, the authorities, his fellow quarantined, and the collapsing building. Ideally, he'll also save the world by thwarting it's invasion at the hands of creatures from another dimension, not to mention rescue his partner and resolve the conflict he has with his antagonist, both of whom are also quarantined in the building with him.

The game's title, The Epidemic, refers to the invasion into our world by unknown, unseen creatures from another, via the possession and transformation of those humans unlucky enough to become infected. The infections are initiated via the recital of an ancient text. All within earshot for long enough to succumb to its effects (albeit to varying degrees based on the length and volume of their exposure) become the playthings, both behaviorally and biologically, of the presence growing inside them. Initially, the recital and thus the transformations, have a single point of origin, a savant whose superhuman memory is thought to contain the last existing, whole, accurate version of an old book, a book that's purpose is to make our world suitable for habitation by the occupants of the another. 

The savant was brought into the Dae-su building by the cultists who worship the extra-dimensional beings as gods, and have done so for generations, in order that the information that's trapped in his head be recorded. Their goal is that the recitation be broadcast – and the transmutations take place – on a massive scale. The transmutations form the backbone of The Epidemic, in that they are the generative system by which the nature and number of game's enemies, The Horde, are determined. 

Character story lines – and their individual NPCs, both partners and enemies – as well as the creatures' origins, manifestations, and goals are addressed further on. Suffice it to say that by the end of the game the player will have survived successive waves of possession and transmutation; weathered increasingly desperate and dangerous authoritarian responses to their perception of the problem; navigated back and forth across the increasingly structurally unsound building; saved, killed, protected, fled – and agreed to disagree with – the infected and uninfected, stranger, friend and foe; and found themselves triumphant over – or lacking in the face of – the threshold of the apocalypse. 

 

Character Storylines

Think of the character options and their developing story arcs and back stories like the characters from an ensemble TV show: seven intertwined, unfolding story lines whose personalities are fleshed out – and skills and weaknesses added – both through the main story as well as playable flashbacks. There are seven playable characters with seven distinct character story lines. Broad-stroke descriptions are as follows:

Ellen – A wiry, twenty-something girl from the sticks made cynical and hard beyond her years by an impoverished childhood and rough adolescence. Her typical clothes are a sweater over a t-shirt, jeans, and boots – what her people would call shit-kickers – all a little worse for wear. Ellen is independent, distrustful of everyone – especially urbanites – quick-witted and no stranger to physical violence. She's in town looking for her younger brother, Arney, who ran away from home months ago. Her goal is to get her brother to safety. Thwarting her in this is the Fagin-like character who's claimed her brother as his own, as well as the trust issues that exist between her and her brother stemming from their relationship with their parents.

Holly – A middle-aged mother, wife and office drone who's office is in the Dae-su building, as is her husband's and their daughter's daycare. Holly's sweetness and accommodation is sincere but sits atop of a deep, rich sense of irony and cutting observation. She good-humoredly suffers a lack of appreciation for her intelligence from three of the four corners of her life, her daughter being the only person who recognizes the extent of her capabilities. Holly's goal is to save her family. Thwarting her in this is her husband and/or daughter themselves, after one or both of them succumb to the transmutations, as well as her having to come to terms with her unnassertiveness and difficulty activating her self-interest and independence.

Ronny – An ex-con, weathered, older. A small, wiry man, in a weathered black suit and derby. He spent a long time in prison for a high-profile armed robbery. Life passed him by. He got out of jail a week prior and wants money owed him by his old partner, who, having spent all of both of their share of the heist, now works in the mail room of the Dae-su. Ronny gave him a week to come up with the money owed him but was stood up. Ronny's goal is to find his old partner at work and confront him, ultimately to get his money and make up for the life-living he's lost. Thwarting him in this are his old partner and a number of enforcers for the criminal organization that Ronny used to get funding from – family member's of his old partner – as well as Ronny's stubbornness and unwillingness to come to terms with his age.

Bunk – Brian “Bunk” Unkerton, a stout, blue collar, sprinkler-fitter working on an under-construction floor of the Dae-su building. Bunk is a large guy, an ex-rugby player. He's let himself go a bit since his playing days but is still nine times out of ten the strongest guy in the room. He's also very mellow, goodhearted and quick to laugh. Bunk's been tasked by his sister with saving her fiance, whom he's not fond of. Thwarting Bunk in this is his sister's fiance, who's a bit of an obnoxious pain in the ass.

Llewellyn – An introverted lab technician, Llewellyn has a powerful crush on one of his coworkers, is being anonymously blackmailed (by another coworker, most likely) for his unwitting involvement in yet another coworker's corporate espionage. Llewellyn's goal is to save (and win the heart of) the object of his affections, as well figure out who is black mailing him and address that. He is thwarted by his blackmailer(s), his company's security, his competition for the girl of his dream's heart, and his own involuntary awkwardness and fears. Llewellyn starts the game in despair, about to jump off of the roof of the building.

Paige – A widower of advanced years but spry and sprightly for her age. She dresses like a cross between a flapper and a hippy. Paige has brought her cat Ferdinand to the Dae-su for a visit to the vet. Ferdinand is her best friend and her strongest tie to her deceased husband, who bought the kitten for her shortly before his death. It's become sickly as of late but nothing that can't be easily treated with the proper medication. Paige's goal is to get the handful of animals in the vet's office to safety. Thwarting her in this is her infirmity and the logistics of keeping the animals safe. Fortunately for Paige, she inspires an enormous amount of assistance from strangers – not to mention the animals in her care – and has an wide assortment of life experiences from which to draw on, providing her a variety of skills and a wealth of information.

Character Focus: Ellen

Ellen is a twenty-something girl from a rural, podunk town located a few hours drive from the city in which the Dae-su building resides. She's in the big city looking to bring her runaway brother, Arny, back home, or at least get him off the streets. She tracks Arny down but much to her chagrin he tells her he's begun making a life for himself there and doesn't need her help. He's got a group of friends that look out for him and each other – and references a failure on her part to do that for him in the past – and she wouldn't understand and can piss off, he's got things to do with his crew. But in response to her impassioned and plainly sincere plea for him to reconsider, he agrees to meet up with her the next day to hear her out. Thus she finds herself in the lobby of the Dae-su building because that was where her brother suggested they meet up, so she could make her case for why he should split with her. 

The lobby is indoors, but is otherwise a pretty public, open, airy place, with a bunch of eateries, a few fountains, etc. She's there with her dog, which draws multiple warnings from building security, the last of which – when the guard is on the verge of physically ejecting her – is interrupted by a request coming across the guard's walkie asking for his presence on floor (x). Meanwhile her brother doesn't show, but one of his associates does, saying that if she wants to see her brother she'll have to pay for the pleasure – the money she described to her brother as “enough to get us started somewhere else” - in front of his “friends”.

Her brother's fallen in with a bunch of street rats, present-day urchins complete with their own Fagin, James “Putty” Putkins. Putty runs a pretty tight ship and is well inside the heads of all his kids and isn't hesitant with the quick, effective application of pain where fear and hunger fail to motivate. He's arranged to shake Ellen down before sending her on her way, with no intention of letting her brother leave with her.

In the beginning of the game, Putty uses a handful of his kids to make Ellen jump through a series of hoops to talk to her brother, basically going from point a to b to c in the building. Once she's in one of the building's other publicly accessible - yet less popular and populated – spaces: either he (or one of the urchins) successfully extracts some or all of her money from her and says her brother will meet her there in five minutes; or the player refuses to pay him and Putty or the urchin make a run for it, eventually shaking Ellen if the player chooses to give chase. 

Either way Ellen finds herself deeper in the building and away from the lobby when the pre-quarantine sequence of events go down, the goal being to credibly keep the character in the building until the quarantine traps the character in the building. If the player chooses to keep Ellen in the lobby – and near the exits, when in-game circumstances might egg the player into having Ellen flee the building along with the handfuls of NPCs who've been put into panic mode by circumstances they've become privvy to on the upper floors – then other plot mechanics can arrange to have Ellen relocated, such as her dog running off, security detaining her for the dog, security detaining her for having seen her with one of the urchins, who's been caught doing something he shouldn't have, or some combination of somesuch.

Once she's located far enough away from the exits, if she encounters NPCs that present her with the rationale, it becomes her optional in-game goal to join the increasing number of people looking to leave the building. Rumors of an illness, or nerve gas, or a disgruntled employee attack circulate in hushed nervous tones amongst those headed for the exits. If she arrives in the lobby or at another exit within a certain window of time, the game pace will adjust so that she will have arrived at the exact initiation of the quarantine, replete with the drama it entails: the confused and horrified building occupants trapped, screaming, their panic and indignity peaking, with much banging on glass and screamed questions and confused weeping. 

And always the rumors and speculation on what, exactly, is happening. She can participate in or incite a riotous attempt to burst through the blockade the police and hasmat suited emergency response team has set up against the doors, but this will end up repelled with tear gas and rubber bullets, at it's most extreme conclusion, after which willingness to participate in a similar venture will be nil.

If the player has Ellen show up in the lobby a certain amount of time after the quarantine, but still in the beginning stages of the game, the goings on will be less dramatic. Depending on what mode they're in after their initial attempt at exiting – which is determined by what degree of separation they are from the invasion story line unfolding on the floors above, i.e., having seen some things first hand vs. having talked to someone who saw things first hand, vs. not having talked to anyone about anything, etc. – many NPCs will either head back to the section of the building from whence they came, or find an alternative safety zone, either communal or solitary. 

What NPCs populate the space will be more resigned to having been quarantined. Rumors will still abound, their nature influenced by the aforementioned degree of separation from, and the progress of, the invasion story line. As far as the lobby is concerned, information about the emergency response story line will be apparent from the state of affairs outside, as observable through the lobby windows, as well as discernible in more granular detail by a handful of other gameplay options, such as eavesdropping on a tidbits of conversation before being warned away from the window, or bribing/appealing to an officer's sympathy for information.

Later on in the game, as the emergency response story line intensifies and darkens, the lobby will become a no-man's land for NPCs, as snipers are given orders to fire at any who come within x ft. of a window or exit, out of fear that an “infected” will carry the mysterious affliction outside of the quarantine. Further, the emergency response story line events that involve large scale military actions in the building will see them staged out of the lobby – both the initial military action against the horde and the later military action against all of the building's occupants, horde and civilian NPCs alike. Towards the end of the game, the remnants of the military presence in the building will be slaughtered and/or ejected from the building via the lobby.

Character and Controls

The third person character will acquire physical attributes as narrative badges.I.e., you'll be able to look at the character at the end of the game and more less discern which story elements they've participated in and to what degree of success. For example, a torn shirt would indicate having run into the level one zombie type transformers (a purely cosmetic example) and bloody earholes would indicate having gone the self-injured ear drum transformation-immunization option (a more functional example).

Communication and Emotion Classification

Communication with NPCs occurs using a five emotion set of options. Instead of choosing one line of dialog among many, the player puts forth an emotion - or an attitude or approach, depending on the context - and the game issues an utterance appropriate to the player's character, the context and the player's choice. If the circumstances don't warrant specific dialog the character will speak from a stockpile of catch-phrases appropriate to the player's choice of emotion/attitude. 

 

There are a number of different lists of basic emotions. The most well-known is possibly Paul Ekman's: Anger, Disgust, Fear, Happiness, Sadness, Surprise. From Wikipedia:

Ekman devised a list of basic emotions from cross-cultural research on the Fore tribesmen of Papua New Guinea. He observed that members of an isolated culture could reliably identify the expressions of emotion in photographs of people from cultures with which the Fore were not yet familiar. They could also ascribe facial expressions to descriptions of situations. On this evidence, he concluded that the expressions associated with some emotions were basic or biologically universal to all humans.

These five options would be mapped to controls/keys or accessible via the onscreen menu, depending on the player's choice. If the former, the player's choice of character's face would appear, briefly reflecting the choice of emotion; if the latter, the always-on-screen face would change accordingly.

 

An additional option would be to enable the player to combine the five emotional options into various permutations of the originals, thereby creating more complex communication. Optional though, in that the player can use the simple, standard version when inclined but pursue more nuance when the story motivates them to do so.

Coupled with the possibility that the player could gain more by pursuing – and mastering – the techniques of more nuanced and complex interactions, the mechanism could turn game conversing from rote and predictable repetition, to an additional form of play or a minigame.

Cubickes arial video

Building walkthrough video

Enemies and Bosses

The stages of transformation:

The first stage will start out innocuously enough but introduce unease and then unequivocal panic in the building. The stricken will appear to become near comatose, lose all sense of their whereabouts and goings on, stare stupidly into the distance – or at each other or in the mirror or at the player - mumble, walk into walls. Then they will begin getting energized, spastic, frenzied, then they will turn violent and giddy, towards each other some, but mostly towards the unaffected, a la 28 days later, but uncoordinated and often un-focused in their atatcks. They will be savage for some time.

The second stage will begin with another calm before the storm. The stricken will slow down, lose their velocity, eventually many will lay down and begin to moan or have fits, some will appear to have died.   A brief period of calm ensues, during which a lot of drama can take place amongst the uninfected population, the emergency response, and the character and his story line. And then a physical transformation will begin to manifest in the fallen horde. 

Their “inhabitants” will begin to rifle through the assortment of human physical characteristics and capabilities, mutating their hosts, pushing them to extremes with both effectively deadly and grotesquely absurd results. The former involving near-superhuman size, strength, speed, and other enhanced faculties, while the latter will involve exercises in mutation that result in evolutionary failure: too fat, thin, big, small to be more than a nuisance or a fixed-location menace. Of those that are mobile, the coordination of the attacks and the level of cooperation and communication amongst the horde will increase ever so slightly. They will begin to show signs of pack hunting.

The third stage will involve more mutations. But this time the things from the other dimension will bring humans' shared evolutionary origins with the earth's other lifeforms to bear by drawing upon the assortment of genetic artifacts within human DNA and manifesting a variety of human-animal hybrids. Again, some of the beastly concoctions function better than others, and what's more, of those that prove to be effective killing machines, the tendency to hunt in a coordinated manner - in communicating packs – has come to full, deadly fruition. 

In the fourth stage the horde will transform again, this time into a collection of the attributes that have proven most effective at decimating the human population of the building. They will now also have a hive mind. What one knows and/or sees, all know and/or see. They also begin speaking in disjointed and rudimentary manner – first mimicking the sounds of others, then expressing themselves, which, as if it wasn't disturbing enough, is made all the more so by the hive-mind factor. At the end of this stage, some of them begin to display what seems like the ability to read minds.

The next stage is the final stage. The horde halts it's attack and converges somewhere to facilitate the production of the organic gateway.

Back-story

The text was written as an instruction/recipe book for bringing about the invasion of this world by creatures from the next. It was designed to be read aloud in a church-like setting, taking the gathered devotees through a series of synchronized transformations throughout which the invading creatures play-test their human hosts, come to understand the physical realities - the physics - of our world, before fully transforming their human shells into an appropriate simulacrum of themselves. 

 The last stage involves the initiation of a full scale invasion. The book is ancient and it's purpose has been semi-successfully fulfilled twice previously. The first involved a fairly sizable gathering of people. The transformations were undertaken but were interrupted by authorities. Many lives were lost in the ensuing bloody battle but the invasion was halted fairly on in the ritual. The second involved a lone individual who brought the entire process to fruition but was destroyed – along with the few creatures who'd utilized him as a gate

A failed exorcism was in reality an interrupted transformation, first stage. The “possessed” individual was institutionalized after she killed the priest who'd attempted the exorcism. Her utterances and mild physical oddities – the first stage is mostly a mental transformation – made their way, through psychological journals and communities, down into occult circles and the attention of someone familiar  with the book and the previous attempts at its enactments, and thwarting. 

With the first-stage victim as evidence of sorts, this person garnered the ear of some government support and put together a plan for an organized response, albeit one known of by only a handful of people and considered as anything other than nonsense by less. The occultist and his small team, and the possessed woman are all characters late in the game. The occultist and his contingency plan are the government's next-to-last response (the final response being the total annihilation of the building and everyone inside it). His team and ideas are not thought of until word of the insanity in the quarantined building reaches the right ears, and those in charge have been convinced that insane conditions warrant an insane response.

The possessed woman has been interrogated mercilessly by the occultist and his team and is kept as their prisoner/insider source of information. Over the years she has formed a peculiar relationship with her captors. They are old enemies and completely different forms of life, despite her outward appearance, but they can communicate on a rudimentary level, having spent enough time attempting it. The creature that inhabits the woman's body has learned how to aggravate, poke and prod her captors the way a parrot might learn that certain vocalizations elicit certain responses from it's owner. It has tried unsuccessfully to coerce and force a weak willed character to read the book to it and further it's transformation.

The savant was brought into the building to make a high quality audio reproduction of his recitation. The lengthy text of the book he's memorized, the equivalent of the necronomicon, is believed to have been destroyed after his peculiarly extensive memory had absorbed it.