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Oniros
Synopsis
The sun is setting and slumber surrounds you, but now is no time to rest : The Goddess of nightmares is missing and without it's guidance, the nightmares are now invading the dream worlds, shattering the balance of the night and threatening to destroy the dimension of Slumber.
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The God of dreams, weakened by this corruption, needs the help of a brave dreamer in order to save his world and all the others . This dreamer is you, so embark on a journey alongside the master of the peaceful night : Oniros.
Oniros is a graduation project developed between April 2022 and June 2023, at Brassart Lyon, a french school of game design.
GENRE
Plateformer
D.A
Surealist
Type of game
Solo, fist-person camera
PLATFORMS
Targeted audience
Platformers fans
PC and console
The Game
The story
Since the dawn of time, the worlds of Slumber are rules by 2 entities : Oniros, God of dreams and Anzagar, Goddess of nightmares. These two were getting along just fine and the night was at peace.
But the love of Oniros for humanity led him to despise nightmares, as he considered them to only be a source of pain for his beloved humans. He was unable to see the good and the balance these nightmares brought.
As a result, he kept saying to Anzagar that her nightmares shouldn't exist, and he did this for centuries. At first, Anzagar paid it no mind but eventually she ended up feeling shameful of what she was and of her creations. Without a word she ran away and concealed herself, deep within the realm of nightmares.
Now alone and deprived of guidance, the nightmares were lost and ended up wandering everywhere, including inside the realm of dreams. As a result, balance is broken and Oniros is weakened. He quickly realized that he would need help in order to find Anzagar, save his dreams and fix the mess he unknowingly caused.
And so in order to accomplish anything he needs an ally, a human, a dreamer : you. Together you embark in a long journey that will change the both of you.
As you advance, you realize that Oniros isn't as altruistic as he believes himself to be. With time and wit your help, Oniros slowly understand how wrong he was and how much he hurt Anzagar. Dreams and nightmares are complementary and one cannot exist without the other.
At the end of your journey, you find Anzagar. Oniros has grown and apologize for everything. Anzagar forgives him et they are finally reunited, at last. Together they will do everything to fix the worlds of Slumber et re-establish balance. But youtask is over and you peacefully wake up, you mission accomplished.
The gameplay
Even though Oniros is weakened, he is still able to empower the dreamer with some of his divine powers, giving them resilience, strength and speed.
And so the dreamer is able to make long, floating jumps, almost flying for a brief moment. They also can seemingly fall from any height and be unscathed .
The jump mechanic, with the long, short and high jump.
In the dream world, things are rarely what they seem at first glance, as such you can walk on some surfaces even though you wouldn't have expected to be able to. For instance, you can wall-run on a waterfall as if it was a sold wall, or see a planet, floating seemingly miles from you, and be able to jump on hit, realizing it's but a small sphere, barely large enough for you to stand on it.
The wall-run mechanic
Speaking of perception, some places may look like dead end or out of reach. The player will need to think and move around, as standing in precise spots will allow you to align pieces of the environment, fusing it together and allowing you to continue either by unlocking the way or creating platforms you can navigate on.
The perception mechanic, here you need to align correctly in order to progress.
The level design
The realm we go through is corrupted by nightmares linked to the fear of pain. As a result, walls and floors are cracked by corruption ans the player will need to jump and run on the floating ruins in order to progress.
We took inspiration from surrealism, as it is the artistic movement closest to dreams. More specifically, one painting of Salvadore Dali, The temptation of saint Anthony. In this painting, we can see creatures with long, atrophied limbs, that we can find in the level as we considered it to be a good representation of physical pain. Their emaciated body twisting in pain and their face silently screaming as tears endlessly flows from their pitch black eyes. But by the end of your journey, these tears become ones of relief as the creatures understand that their torture is about to finally end.
The team
Of course I'm not alone in this project, here's my colleague with their role, as for myself, I'm game designer and level designer.
Julien Garcia
Narrative designer
Mathieu Mattei
Programmer
Thomas Gourmanel
Game designer
Nicolas Ammirati
Game designer
Guillian Pienoz
Level designer
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