Overview
“Monotony” is a story heavy metroidvania set in the expansive dystopian city of iznull, where the government and police have too much power and have taken out all colour and creativity out of the city and the surrounding area outside of it for control. It is up to the protagonist(s), Nira (or Hito), to create a movement and resistance to bring back colour into the city and free the people. The game will feature story beats that feature political inflictions on anti-authoritarianistic and anti-dictatorships ideals as well as being a wide story about breaking free from oppressive higher powers.
This game is highly inspired by the likes of Hollow Knight and Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and is meant to leave a lasting impression on the player.

Primary Research Analysis
To figure out the basis of the game, a questionnaire was made which asked college students to fill it out. It should also be mentioned that this normally isn’t a large enough sample size for a full fledged game, however, for a small game the results from the class will be enough. Upon asking what genre was most favourite across the students in the class, story games was the most picked answer so it would be most beneficial to make a story game as it will be the most likely to sell, assuming that the demographic only includes the class which will not only be the case.

This survey results helped acknowledge the fact that the game’s main driving point should be its story, with a secondary genre as the foundations for its gameplay. The metroidvania genre was picked due to its features of exploration aspects and large maps as well as its ability to convey a story through the player’s progressive actions and worldbuilding.

The questionnaire was effective in collecting data because it asked neutral, closed and broader questions. This was done because studies show that people are more likely to skip open-ended questions rather than closed questions and that it is best to keep neutral questions and not invoke emotion into questions (Harrison 2007). Doing this allowed for users to anonymously answer questions on wider, general categories instead of specific, biased questions based on the maker’s personal favourites to eliminate bias. Specific questions without bias would be very hard to ask as inevitably there will be more bias included the more specific a question is. For example, users were asked about their favourite genres instead of favourite games because it provided a broader question that covered as many games in the least amount of options, only providing examples of games that fit into those genres for clearer understanding. The questionnaire also asked the person taking it what they have been disliking about games recently and asking the player on how they think a dev should interact with their community. 

Demographic
The demographic for the game is young adults and adults (15-25) as they will have the most understanding when it will come to the underlying story in the game that speaks about the oppressions of an authoritarian government. This game however is meant to appeal to most ages and therefore will attempt to interest players from the ages of 12 onwards with features such as violence, light swearing but also more politically heavy storylines to adhere to the older demographic.

Platform
This game will also be made for PC initially as PC has the highest market for games which potentially could maximise sales based off of this survey results.

The possibility of making console versions for Xbox and Playstation will still be kept open and for the possible future after the game starts turning a profit.

Technical Specs
The game will be made to be as accesible as possible to as many gamers and therefore will make the game both look visually pleasing but attempt to keep the technical hardware specs not demanding as current day PC hardware has risen in price over the last 5 years significantly.

Minimum Requirements: (estimated from similar titles)
OS: Windows 11
Processor: Intel Core i3-3240, AMD FX-4300
Memory: 4 GB RAM
Graphics: GeForce GTX 560 Ti (1GB), Radeon HD 7750 (1GB)
DirectX: Version 11
Storage: 12 GB available space

Gameplay Mechanics
The core settings will be very similar to a regular metroidvania where there will be a lot of exploration, back tracking and abilities that will be able to unlock more areas later on.
The core abilities include
– Sprint – skateboard
– Dash
– Double Jump – Air Canister Spray upwards
-“Paint Screen” – stand still, a small animation where a character throws down a paint bomb, and they heal off of it.
– Grappling Hook – materialise paint into a grappling hook line to swing from specific points
– Paint-Fireball
– Paint-Down smash attack
As development begins, there is potential to explore adding more abilities such as smoke bombs to confuse enemies or higher range paint spray to deal with far away enemies.
Mechanics will also include combat where graffiti spray cans are used either in a blunt sense where the main character will hit the opponent with the can itself or will just spray at the enemy, hurting them. Upon defeat, enemies will drop currency that can be used later to buy items and upgrades from different shops and npcs. Currency can also be gained via story beats and “paint jobs” which will work like side quest story lines or special POIs for the player to interact with.

The controls are going to be easy to understand for new players but will take time to truly master all mechanics and controls as a challenge to the experienced players and speedrunners.
WASD – The most common movement layout in gaming so that everyone is used to it.
Left Click – Attack, extremely basic. Can also be used for “trick combos” in fights or chases.
Shift – Sprint, Another extremely common keybinding for everyone.
Space – Jump, press again for double jump, extremely simple.
Map – Tab, another simple keybind.
Grappling hook – Right click, this will be very easy to pick up when and where it could be used.
Paint Attacks – Z + WASD, Depending on the direction that the player is facing, a different ability will be used with different damage and size.
Heal – Hold Z.
All of these keybinds are open to be changed manually by the player but these will be the default keybinds.

Story & Characters
Nira & Hito – The two siblings who grew up in downtown slums and in poverty, the two MCs of the game where at the start of the game the player gets to pick which one they play as. The character which the player doesn’t pick is kidnapped, providing the first bit of motivation for the player and character to follow the story. After initially rescuing, the other mc will provide guidance and possible help during fight/run segments and will be useful in story beats. There will also be multiple smaller settlements which will feature shopkeepers and additional members of the resistance as the story progresses. Possibility of a home base where people gather?

Trigger Warnings for the story: Heavy politics, Police Brutality, Wounds, Swearing.

Level Design
This will include an expansive map, taking inspiration Hollow Knight‘s large map and inspiration from Rain World’s artistic level design where the background will include a more expansive city while the foreground is the main focus you can get around with the ability for vertical and horizontal travel between screens.
The map will be broken into whole big areas that are then split between screens to not overload the game and load too much at once.
Level design will change between progression and how further the player is, demanding more movement focus platforming when getting around the later areas when the player has unlocked more traversal abilities.

Art and Audio Direction
The art direction will head into a smooth, hand-drawn style, being almost grey-scaled when the game first starts, slowly gaining more and more colour the more the game progresses.

Examples of hand-drawn style:

Unbeatable (2025) by D-Cell Games

Constance (2025) – btf Games

Hollow Knight: Silksong (2025) – Team Cherry

Iconoclasts (2018) – Joakim Sandberg (this is 8-bit hand drawn art but it is hand drawn nonetheless)

A moodboard summarising a lot of referenes and themes in Monotony, the colours on it represent the rough transition between the different stages of the game as the world returns to its colours, there is art that would show the fasion inside of the world, as well as art that would show how the world of Monotony would look like. Rebellious grafitti to show the story progression of the city rebelling against its government and personal references that inspired the base idea for the game.

UI
The UI will feature a currency counter, a health counter, a “paint” bar that will work as a “mana” bar, with abilities and potential health regeneration costing a fixed amount of ‘paint’ in your bar as well as a combo counter when fights start.
The inventory will show what items and abilities the player has gathered as well as what tricks the player can do and potential upgrades collected. The player will be able to access the full world map from the inventory and a quick map when getting around which only shows the area of the world they are in.

Monetization
This game will be advertised using social media platforms as they are both free to use but also big spaces for the desired demographic. Social platforms such as X, Bsky and TikTok will be very effective in advertising the game.
For monetization, the game will be costing around 15-20 pounds as opposed to the standard of game prices being 60/70+.
To keep the player count growing and for more people to buy the game, the potential of DLCs will be explored, adding more story, more areas and more interactions.
When the development of the game will have reached an end of its life, the game will encourage modding, even making the game open-source and adding an in-game modding menu similar to Dead Cells and Deep Rock Galactic as it has been shown that games stay alive longer when the players are encouraged to mod them, Bindumon (2023).
The game will also support and encourage speedrunners and will include in-game timers for the speedrunning community.

There is another game similar to the idea of this one called ‘Constance’ which has to be considered as a competitor, it features similar core mechanics such as the paint meter as well as the fact that its a metroidvania but the story is vastly different. At the same time, from the statistics of Constance’s success, a prediction can be made about Monotony’s success.

While the player count is not the highest, it is also #280 in wishlist activity and in the top 500 of top sellers (08/01/2025) meaning that even after 2 months of the game being released, there is success. The owner estimations are also really interesting as it shows that even with vast differences in the story, the idea in and of itself can still garner interest from a very specific demographic of gamers.

Quality Assurance
The game will feature alpha and beta tests as well as a potential early access release to the public (or paid subscriptions like Patreon or Kickstarter) that will aim for player feedback and further surveys for the players, where the developers will change stuff if it ever gets reported by the player.

Design Log

This is a level roughly designed to be one of the slums, it’ll at first have no colour because it will be very early on but as you come back there will be more graffiti around the area as well as the buildings in the bg will be coloured. They are brown and there will be additional green lights as accents for the cyberpunk feeling.

This is a planned overview shot of the city both used in the intro of the game (or at least very early on) and will work as an exposition for the setting of the game. This shot will then also be revisited possibly around mid-game when the game has started gaining some general colour and will also be revisited at the end of the game when the city has been filled with colour and the people’s minds are freed from the monotone greyscale: and will work as cyclical structure for the story with this rooftop bench being the end of the game.

This is a very brief and quickly drawn concept design for the main character attire and doodles of spray cans that they would use.

Referencing

Harrison, C. (2007). TIP SHEET ON QUESTION WORDING. [online] Available at: https://psr.iq.harvard.edu/sites/g/files/omnuum11131/files/psr/files/PSRQuestionnaireTipSheet_0.pdf [Accessed 2 Oct. 2025].

D-Cell Games (2021). Unbeatable Game (2025). [online] http://www.unbeatablegame.com. Available at: https://www.unbeatablegame.com/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2026].

btf Games (2024). Constance • btf. [online] btf. Available at: https://btf.de/constance/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2026].

Team Cherry (2025). Hollow Knight: Silksong. [online] Hollow Knight: Silksong. Available at: https://hollowknightsilksong.com/.

Sandberg, J. (2018). Iconoclasts on Steam. [online] store.steampowered.com. Available at: https://store.steampowered.com/app/393520/Iconoclasts/.

Karthik Bindumon (2023). Why Game Modding Matters – Karthik Bindumon – Medium. [online] Medium. Available at: https://medium.com/@karthikbindumon/why-game-modding-matters-b32f1227ec60.

SteamDB (2012). SteamDB. [online] http://www.steamdb.info. Available at: https://steamdb.info/app/2313700/charts/ [Accessed 8 Jan. 2026].