Orange Dawn

Orange Dawn: World Description 

Team: Team Orange for GSD 405 at UIUC SP 2023

Team Members: David Zhu, Tom Jiang, Yifeng Ni, Fransico, Marta

Art Style: pixel art

Tone: dark, gloomy setting

Environment

After an outbreak of a virus in 203X, the virus has turned people into zombies. In the apocalyptic world, metropolitan areas are overrun with the infected, and people try to survive in the less populated areas of the wilderness. The world has been enveloped by overgrown trees, overextended grass, and other natural elements. In between levels, safehouses provide an opportunity to recover and upgrade the player’s weapons and abilities, as well as to interact with NPCs. As the game progresses, the player will traverse through different terrains in progressing difficulty as the world becomes gloomier until the player reaches the destination - a research facility in a human stronghold.

History & Culture of the World/Environment

In this alternate reality set in the near future, the world has been torn apart by the continuous waves of zombie attacks. 80% of the population has already been infected. Survivors are constrained within isolated strongholds, their days numbered against the waves of undead flesh and machine monstrosities under the control of a collective hivemind. It’s up to the player character to act as a courier to make a final delivery of a mysterious ‘cargo’ to the largest human stronghold in hope of saving the remaining human population. The infection, commonly known as Stratus, which gained its name from the corporation that engineered the virus, can not only infect flesh, but cyborgs and machines. As society advanced to heavily rely on automation, humans found in horror that their machines were corrupted by the infection along with other humans. The world’s major cities were destroyed by the zombies, causing many buildings to be completely destroyed. These zombies gained some form of intelligence as they coordinated attacks in hordes and brought many of the surface world’s weapons underground. Within the environment, the main player can find other NPCs to recruit on the way in order to assist them to save the world. 

Relation to the real world

The environments in the setting resemble the real world, with a skyline sometimes visible in the background.

Important Audio Elements of the Environment/World

Each unique terrain will have its own music, with the music during combat and safety being drastically different.

●  Main Character(s): The player character

■  History: A survivor’s journey across the nation to deliver important cargo.

■  Reason for Conflict/Drive: To save humanity

■  Skills: fighting/weapons

Game World Narrative

In an alternate universe set in the future, a company by the name of Stratus sought to make the world a better place through its extensive research in human evolution. However, this company harbored a dark secret; it developed a virus that infects human beings at the cellular level, transforming them into mindless zombies who desire nothing but human flesh. Stratus prepared countermeasures by creating weapons, rescue task forces, militia groups, and vaccines in order to keep zombie levels from getting out of control. In the public eye, Stratus was a heroic private company who swooped in to save the day when things were looking bleak for a certain city or town. In reality, Stratus had been orchestrating these zombie outbreaks to gather intel on how long a zombie can survive, how strong certain zombies can get after consuming humans, etc… It was recorded that the zombies’ metabolism of other human beings lead to two different yet equally devastating outcomes; the zombie either secretes the virus from its body after consuming a full sized human, or the zombie’s body mutates and effectively “evolves” into a new type of zombie. With Stratus gaining new information at such a rapid rate, the lead scientist and CEO of Stratus, Dr. Rust, eventually went too far and began splicing animal DNA with the mutated zombie DNA, leading to the creation of new types of zombies and mutations throughout the population. These new types of zombies gained intelligence, new physical abilities, and they were more resistant to the countermeasures prepared by Stratus. Dr. Rust continued his work on perfecting the zombie virus by utilizing the three main organizations within Stratus for his own personal benefit. After finally perfecting the zombie virus, Dr. Rust injected himself with the new strand of virus and proceeded to infect the rest of Stratus. With no one controlling the zombies anymore, the infected began to truly take over. People tried to fight back and eventually a few human outposts were established, with the majority of the world population either infected or dead. Now the player character must deliver an important package to the largest human stronghold in hopes that it will lead to a cure for the virus.