Hey, welcome back - this week I’m going to be writing about the workers of Ghoul-B-Gone, and some of the ghosts they fight.
We set out to create a cast of characters based at a blue collar job. I didn’t want a typical hero and felt that making a world where ghost catching would be as glamorous as any other pest control was a nice twist. None of the people you rescue are afraid of ghosts, they’re just annoyed at the inconvenience to their day.
There’s comedy in contrasting the whole weird supernatural aspect of the game with the mundanity of office life, and I felt like this would make it easier for people to jump in and instantly understand the characters and the relationships between them (since everyone’s worked a job with a terrible penny-pinching boss, an over-eager young trainee, terrible ungrateful customers, etc).
At the same time I wanted to keep the cast pretty small for production and script reasons - it feels pretty odd if you have these characters floating around on the sidelines that don’t really get involved in any meaningful way.
So who have we got, then?
Hector - mentioned last week, as soon as I saw the big lad on one of Joe’s early sketches, I knew he was our main character. Personality-wise he’s a mix of Spongebob and Dan Goodman from Arachnophobia, he absolutely loves his job and approaches it with huge enthusiasm no matter what gets thrown at him. At the same time we were careful not to infantalise him and he’s not an idiot; I didn’t want to go the Homer Simpson route as I didn’t want any kind of implication that only a stupid person could enjoy this kind of work.
Beryl - Hector’s mentor. Originally the idea for the game was that you’d be earning money and competing with the other staff to become “employee of the week” (a basically worthless accolade), but this felt a bit selfish and not a very good motivation for Hector. After shuffling things around we came up with the idea of saving this legendary (but recently deceased) ghost hunter’s soul before she became trapped forever. Beryl’s seen it all, and her world-weariness works as a contrast to Hector’s enthusiasm.
Mr Theodore Mann - the stereotypical money-grabbing mean spirited boss, as seen in Mr Crabbs, Scrooge, Mr Burns, etc. Also yes, Hector is literally working for “T. Mann”.
Louise - we needed someone who could actually move the plot along and help Hector in his quest by creating a device that would let him access the ghost dimension, and for gameplay reasons we wanted this to cost a tonne of money. The idea of Louise buying spare parts with the cash and then taking the company’s ghost storage (Apparition Containment Unit and Linen Laundering Tool, or ACULLT for short) so that she can rebuild it as an unstable portal just felt nice, and allowed us a slight nod to Ghostbusters (I know, ok. I know) with the ghost containment being a pivotal device.
Lex Orcist - pour one out for poor Lex who was originally going to be Hector’s rival for employee of the week, a young whippersnapper of a kid keen to go places. I think the character brief was something along the lines of “like the youngest and most annoyingly enthusiastic salespeople at a mobile phone shop”. But ultimately once the story was re-written to be more about Beryl and Hector’s attempts to rescue her soul, there wasn’t really room for him in the game - he was only in a couple of cutscenes and it was confusing to keep him around. Who knows, maybe he’ll turn up again at some point in the future? I kinda like the spotty little kid.
So that’s our line-up of the heroic-ish staff of Ghoul-B-Gone. But we also needed a whole raft of crazy ghouls for you to fight!
We really wanted to go crazy with these and nothing was off the table. The main thing was that we wanted them to feel like spirits, rather than dead people, so there are no zombies and though some have accessories and backstories that hint to a human past you really don’t feel like you’re zapping folks. Enemy ideas came from a mix of just bad jokes and things that we thought would be visually funny - these are a few of my favourites.
The Poultrygeist was one of the very first ghost ideas, as well as a very strong pun name, I was in love with the idea of this wandering around bum-first, dragging its snapped neck behind it, and firing eggs at you.
For a while there was an idea that the ghosts could appear from scenery, rather than spawning in, and they could be disguised to surprise you. The ZX Spectre (another excellent pun, and Joe’s work) would sit on a table amongst other computers, before coming to un-life. In the end it was too easy to tell them apart, and the idea of camouflaged enemies was dropped. But we kept this computerised menace.
When we were brainstorming things in an office that people would love to shoot, the Office AssistHaunt (less strong pun) was pretty high on that list. It was also the first enemy designed as a kind of mini-boss, which would take more of a beating than usual, and would have a few attack patterns based on the different shapes it could twist itself into.
Finally, I think the Horrorse was the first enemy that we came up with for the park. These weird wobbly pieces of play equipment felt perfect for a good possession, and exactly the sort of thing that would bounce around chasing after you with cold menace in their evil eyes. No, I actually had a very happy childhood, why do you ask?
That’s all for this update - Hope to see you again next week when I’ll be writing about what Hector’s Dead End Job actually is!
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