The working title is Gekkoukan High, named for the school in Persona 3 which is a major influence for this project. Other significant influences include Vampire: The Masquerade and Future Diary.
The game centers on events in a medium sized city, with mysterious figures jockeying for advantage in advance of an even more mysterious oncoming catastrophe. The player takes the role of a high school student who finds him or herself empowered with supernatural abilities. The player character is not alone in gaining such abilities, however. Some few other residents of the city have gained their own distinct powers, and utilize them for their own ends.
The player's goal is to investigate the city in order to identify these others, and also to develop his or her own abilities so that they can be dealt with once identified. Can the player successfully find his or her rivals in the sea of unsuspecting residents? Can he or she avoid detection? And can he or she find some way to stop these rivals before their designs are realized?
The game will include between eight and twelve distinct types of supernatural power the player can wield. Each will be geared towards a particular play style, but players will not be forced to play that way. Depending on their power and preferences, player characters can be strongly focused on physical combat, frustrating investigators, controlling and manipulating others, summoning minions, enacting curses, and more.
A major play element will be investigation. Players as well as NPCs will have to search for clues, question witnesses, and sift through collected evidence to identify other empowered characters. Once identified, the player can choose how to deal with them. The player may reveal him or herself in hopes of forging an alliance work quietly to subvert the other's plans, or pursue more permanent solutions. At the same time, rivals may be closing in on the player without his or her knowledge. The player will have to balance making more overt efforts to achieve goals with the increasing risk of discovery such action brings.
My goal is to produce a game in which the player is subjected to a tense cat-and-mouse scenario with unknown opponents wielding unknown powers in the context of otherwise ordinary high school life. I'll address gameplay elements in more detail in future posts, but this at least gives a broad overview of what I'd like to produce.
