A Pitch Document

A pitch document is something that’s typically created when a game is in the early planning stages.  The goal is to communicate the most important information about the game, what it is, the key features, how it plays, etc. in one page.  It’s used to “pitch” the game to others.  Your boss, other team members, potential publishers, etc.  I’ve made a lot of pitch documents in the past, but I never made one for Aurora’s Nightmare.  The main reason being that I never had a need for it.  Since this is a personal project, I never had to pitch it to anyone and I’m pretty good at keeping things organized in my head, so I jumped right to some of the more detailed documentation.  Anyway, I recently did make an AN pitch document as part of a writing assignment so I figured I’d share it here.  As a note, the number of decision points and endings used in the pitch document are estimates.  I won’t have an exact count until the script is finished.

Aurora’s Nightmare
Pen and Sword Games
Josiah Lebowitz

Venue

Aurora’s Nightmare is a visual novel game for the PC, iOS, and Android.  The story is fantasy / suspense, with an estimated T rating for content and violence.

Features

  • A lengthy branching narrative with a memorable cast of characters.
  • Over 100 decision points and 30 endings across 3 main branches.
  • High quality music and artwork.

Premise

Aurora’s Nightmare takes place on the idyllic world of Lucerna, which is home to a race of winged humans known as Angellus.  The main character, Ars, is a young man who works as a research scientist alongside his fiancé, Tristitia (Tia for short), and their childhood friend, Aurora.  However, a chance encounter causes their perfect life to unravel and sets them on a path to learn the dark secrets lurking beneath Lucerna’s calm surface.  As for what truths will be uncovered, and what will become of the three friends, that depends on the player’s decisions.

Basic Game Play

Aurora’s Nightmare will use a branching story structure similar to that of visual novel games such as Fate/Stay Night and Tsukihime.  Players will read through the story while accompanied by a constant flow of artwork and music.  There will be 3 main branches (story paths), each with numerous minor and moderate branches, 10 or more bad endings, and 2 good endings.  The completion of each main path will add additional decision points to the story, allowing the player to make new decisions and explore new paths on each subsequent play-through.