Hit & Haunted
ROLE - Writer, SOUND DESIGNER, character designer
Project Overview
Hit & Haunted is a top-down murder mystery game where you investigate the case as unconventional roles in a murder case: the murderer and the victim. The murderer is a closed-off hitman named Ace and after realizing they can't be rid of their latest victim's ghost: Eli, he has no choice but to get to the bottom of the case.
You can find the store page for the game here on Steam! You can play the demo for free!
Hit & Haunted
CONTEXT
Genre: Adventure
Team Size: 3
Platform: PC (Windows)
Development Time: January - April 2025
Tools Used: Clip Studio Paint (Art), Adobe Photoshop (Steam Assets), Final Draft (Script), Figma (Flowchart), FL Studio (Music, Sound), Audacity (Sound).
Hit & Haunted's demo was a graduation level project completed within four months, I worked alongside Yuki and Jillian. Together we decided on the premise of the game, the personalities of the characters and marketing of the game. My responsibilities included the design of the characters, the story of the game as well as being the sound designer.
Key art for our game Hit & Haunted. Arranged by me in Adobe Photoshop, with Ace and Eli drawn by Yuki Cai. The logo was created by me.
OBJECTIVE
Hit & Haunted is the end result of an attempt to make a industry quality project with a like minded team, this includes also included marketing on top of creating the project itself. I teamed up with Yuki and Jillain with the goal of creating a game, and after ideating for a while we presented three separate ideas all with the shared idea of being an adventure game with an air of mystery... out of the three the one that would become
Hit & Haunted is the one I created a visual for. When we presented the idea we knew we wanted to the story to be about a hitman and a ghost solving the murder mystery thanks to their unusual roles for playable characters in such a game.
DESIGNING HITMAN & GHOST
When I designed the Hitman and Ghost (would later be named Ace and Eli, I will be referring to them as such from now on.) I wanted to make sure that their silhouettes gave off different vibes, with Ace having much sharper shapes giving a more serious or intimidating look; while Eli is made up of mainly rounder shapes despite being a vengeful spirit.
Their initial outfits also reflect this difference in personality as well as to make their occupation clear, with Ace wearing clothes that cover most of his body up, but not wearing anything that would make it seem like he's trying too hard to stay hidden. For Eli his clothes are more casual, but would later be changed to ones that are more professional while still keeping the player unaware of his true occupation.
The initial designs of Hitman (Ace) and Ghost (Eli) for the first presentation. Sketched by me in Clip Studio.
After feedback we had the choice to decide on which idea to go forward with, as you can tell we went forward with the one that would later turn into Hit & Haunted. This allowed me to further iterate on the potential design of Ace and Eli and give them more detail, such as patterning on their clothes, colors, as well as their default expression. Initially Ace and Eli both had color palettes that fell into the blue area of the color wheel, to better separate them, my groupmates suggested shifting Ace more towards the red area creating more of a opposites feel to help boost the differences between the characters.
WRITING ACE & ELI
From the initial stage we as a group got together and talked with one another to get a general idea of how we wanted the development of the characters would go. With both Ace and Eli having something they struggle to let go of, and eventually have Eli allow Ace to open up and want to live again before eventually moving on. The difference in their personality was important as well as it would impact both the dynamic between them as well as the pull it would have towards potential consumers.
To sum it up, Ace is stoic and more closed-off due to a traumatic event in their past, while Eli is someone who appears less vengeful than they appear to be and tries to avoid their current predicament through sarcasm.
Past this we discussed the potential backstories of Ace and Eli, eventually shooting down ideas that seemed to big in scope for the game such as Ace being involved with a underground organization that accepts hits and made it so that Ace worked alone.
The continued iterations of Ace's and Eli's design to their finalized ones. Sketched by me in Clip Studio.
WRITING HIT & HAUNTED
As a group once we reached the stage of writing the story of the game, we realized that it would eventually bloat to something that demanded far more time than four months and so after asking permission from our professors we shorted the game down by opting to create a demo of the game instead. As a result while we had a general idea of how the story beats would go, we put a lot more focus into the beats up to half of Act 2.
Once all of us were happy with it, Jillian and I took this and refined it in a proper Beat Sheet on Figma writing out scenes that would happen with specific locations and times. Once this stage was finished, I took it and wrote it in the context of a screenplay putting more detail into each scene through dialogue as well as the specific movement and actions the characters take.
A rough sketch showcasing the planned key feature of the game (switching perspectives) from the initial pitch as well as a glimpse into the dynamic between Ace and Eli. Sketched in Clip Studio by me.
FLOWCHART, SOUND DESIGN, COMPOSITION, PLAYTESTING, CONCLUSION
FROM SCRIPT TO FLOWCHART
Finally for ease of reading to build cutscenes and dialogue in game, I took the script and converted it into a flowchart displaying when certain sounds or music would play along with what expression the character sprites would have. On top of this additional interactions with the world were added, most if not all are optional, but each would hopefully give the player more information on either the world, the character's personality and the character's history.
Initially Ace's were very basic simply stating what the object was at the time I felt it was in character as Eli would have most of the quirky flavor text. However, feedback from both professors and play testers alike proved that this was a bad idea as it could discourage players from wanting to interact more with the world. To alleviate this I changed all of Ace's flavor text to be more informative, giving details of how he thinks of objects as well as some hints to his past.
A segment of the beat sheet being expanded upon into the script and turned into the flowchart. The beat sheet and flowchart was done in Figma while the script was written in Final Draft.
SOUND DESIGN & cOMPOSING
For the sound effects in the game, a majority of them were gathered online. Though after some trial and error I made sure to mainly grab sounds under Creative Commons 0. Ones I couldn't gather due to either not having the sound or oomph I imagined I created myself.
Other sounds related to Eli and his abilities were created by me in FL Studio through instruments or adding effects to the sounds I gathered. At the end if needed they're all cut down and cleaned up in Audacity.
Other than sound, there is the background audio which can be divided into ambience and music. Ambience is more of the same as sounds, being grabbed and maybe combined with another sound or edited in order to not be grating to the player's ear.
In the demo there are three music tracks: Ace's Apartment, Eli's Apartment, and the cafe. When I composed the apartment themes I wanted them to embody the character's state of mind at that point in the story. For Ace, his apartment is slow and static, this along with the first melody being his motif I hoped to achieve a feeling of someone who is tired but has yielded to trying to change their life.
For Eli, his apartment gives a feeling of loss, a tragic end. It gives a feeling of acceptance and despair of what happened which can gleam into Eli's true feelings as he's made it clear he's accepted it, but he's definitely more than just angry. The lack of oomph in the low end of the track can also make it seem not all there, representing how Eli is trying to avoid these feelings as long as he can.
Finally for the cafe, there isn't as much deeper meaning in this one compared to the apartment themes. As the song's purpose was to serve as a song you might hear in the background of a store, which would explain the reverb put onto the song as a whole.
A look at Ace's Apartment song, with the bottom image being the composition that plays in Eli's perspective. Done by me in FL Studio.
A DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVE
While visiting a game convention to get thoughts on our game idea, someone said that an important feeling to get right was the difference players would feel while in control of Ace or Eli. To do this, we as a group agreed that when in control of Eli, visually the screen would become more monotone along with a little chromatic aberration. Now that the visual difference was settled what was left was the audio to change, for sound none of them were changed as Eli had several unique ones to accommodate his abilities. The main change would be to the background audio, for ambience each one would be put into FL Studio and have various ethereal sounds from a plugin played over it. I would also put an effect over the original audio, making it seem farther away than the sounds.
I had a similar approach to the music, where the original instruments become more muted and like the ambience had ethereal strings put on top of the original composition as well as small touches of new melodies (Typically Eli's motif). The main exception would be the café track as its faster pace made it difficult to put strings over it with the fast changing chords, so I opted to simply changed the instruments while also making it more muted and occasinally play non-diegetic sounds over it.
CONCLUSION
Reception to the game so far from playtesting as well as presentations have resulted in positive feedback to both the designs of the characters and how they're written. It even has led to a professor offering to mentor us to continue development of the game beyond the scope of the course, it's very exciting and I do hope development continues past the demo.
From this point on, I would like to rewrite some segments of the story that already is in place that will help with the believability of the story. As well as design and write more characters to make the story long enough to warrant a price tag.
