# Seemersion Odyssey — Game design document

Concept 1.0 · 2026-10-26

Concept development / pre-production

This collection presents the initial design and AI-generated concept art for a game in development. These are not gameplay screenshots or final graphics. A playable build and release date are not yet available.

## A world to discover. A path to make.

From the living streets of a contemporary city to forgotten islands: journey through an open world where your choices connect its past and future.

Astan is a simulated city on the edge of an archipelago. The network that maintains it has lost parts of its shared memory. Routes disappear, neighbourhoods drift apart, and the official account no longer matches what people remember. You are a Pathfinder. With an Echo Compass, you trace forgotten routes and decide which connections to rebuild.

One street, two truths: in the Now, a bridge has collapsed; in the Echo, it still stands. Cross the old route, understand its mechanism, then build a new connection in the present city. Switching layers is a decision and a problem-solving tool, not just a visual effect.

## Design pillars

### Meaningful freedom

Travel on foot, by motorcycle, car or boat. Detours, conversations and vertical routes should lead to meaningful outcomes.

### An interactive past

Ancient traces have practical uses in the contemporary city: a structure, a route or knowledge that solves a present-day problem.

### A responsive world

Opening a route changes residents’ access and neighbourhood traffic. The consequences of a choice should be visible.

### Adventure at your pace

Exploration, skill, negotiation and puzzles are the main routes forward. Guidance is optional and timed challenges are adjustable.

## Two world layers

### Now

The contemporary port city: driveable streets, trams, markets, workshops, waterfronts and residential districts. Everyday life, small contracts and social relationships unfold here.

### Echo

A layer of world memory: stone harbours, enclosed gardens, ancient mechanisms and forgotten sea routes. This is fictional reconstruction, not a claim of historical accuracy.

## World rules

- Layer switching is allowed only at stable anchors after a safe-space check; players never materialise inside walls or underwater.
- Only authored changes propagate between layers. Environmental cues explain likely consequences before important choices.
- Open world means freedom of routes and activities. Story chapters have clear prerequisites, with free exploration between them.
- Returning home does not end exploration. The world retains the consequences of decisions after the story ends.

## Core loop

- Find a clue in the city or on an island
- Investigate its traces in Now and Echo
- Choose a route: skill, dialogue or puzzle
- Open a route or change a relationship
- See the consequence and choose the next journey

## Characters

### The Pathfinder; player character

Customisable identity is part of the vision; the consistent figure in the art serves visual continuity. Observation and reconnecting routes are the core tools.

### Roya; city engineer

Prioritises restoring everyday services and makes the practical costs of decisions clear.

### Darya; harbour navigator

Knows uncharted routes and island communities; her trust is earned through action.

### Soren; archive keeper

Defends the preservation of memories but challenges the player over who may disclose them.

## Factions

### Passage Guild

Open access to routes; risks overlooking maintenance costs.

### Memory Keepers

Stability and preservation; risks turning protection into monopoly.

### Neighbourhood Assembly

Local decision-making; faces conflicting needs and coordination challenges.

## Nine proposed chapters

### 1. Astan, the waking city

![ The Pathfinder above a market overlooking Astan’s harbour, streets and islands ](../images/01-city.webp)

**Theme:** Arrival & discovery

**Setting:** Market rooftops & harbour square

**Objective:** Reach Roya’s workshop and investigate a disabled city bridge.

**Gameplay:** A short movement and interaction tutorial; approach by street, rooftop or tram; scan the first trace and reveal the bridge’s Echo.

**Choice:** Restore the public crossing first or the workshops’ power route. The consequences are explained before choosing.

**Outcome & reward:** The Echo Compass activates; one city route opens and the other remains recoverable through a side mission.

**Side activity:** Help a courier find an alternative route; learn to navigate without mandatory markers.

### 2. Streets of possibility

![ A motorcyclist on a contemporary boulevard beside a stone market, tram and branching routes ](../images/02-streets.webp)

**Theme:** Freedom & responsibility

**Setting:** Coastal boulevard & market lanes

**Objective:** Deliver a navigation component from an abandoned depot to the harbour.

**Gameplay:** Ride a motorcycle, change vehicles or continue on foot; three routes differ in distance, traffic and risk; the timed challenge is optional.

**Choice:** A crowded shortcut is faster but reduces neighbourhood trust; the safer route is slower without a story penalty.

**Outcome & reward:** Unlock the garage and vehicle appearance options; local trust affects later contracts.

**Side activity:** Route-reading races, urban photography and deliveries, without mandatory violence.

### 3. The harbour pact

![ The Pathfinder’s boat leaving a stone harbour toward islands and a sea gate ](../images/03-harbour.webp)

**Theme:** Departure & companionship

**Setting:** Docks & archipelago

**Objective:** Chart the first safe sea route with Darya, the harbour navigator.

**Gameplay:** Steer, read wind and currents, anchor and make simple repairs; coastal landmarks replace a linear route.

**Choice:** Carry extra equipment or leave room to help a damaged boat during the crossing.

**Outcome & reward:** Unlock the basic boat and route journal; offering help introduces an ally and a new side route.

**Side activity:** Investigate dark beacons and discover small landing places.

### 4. The garden without tomorrow

![ The Pathfinder between a peaceful glass-domed garden and an exit toward a stormy sea ](../images/04-garden.webp)

**Theme:** Temptation & agency

**Setting:** An ancient garden beneath a contemporary dome

**Objective:** Find a lost-memory clue and learn why the residents refuse to leave the garden.

**Gameplay:** Branching conversations, conflicting memories and a water-flow puzzle; no mandatory countdown.

**Choice:** Preserve the garden’s calm with a voluntary exit, or restore the suppressed memories to everyone.

**Outcome & reward:** A witness joins your journey; the choice changes the garden’s residents and future activities.

**Side activity:** Restore a greenhouse and hear three generations of one family’s story.

### 5. The watchful foundry

![ Modern factory walkways with stone machinery, a brass sensor and multi-level routes ](../images/05-forge.webp)

**Theme:** Ingenuity & trust

**Setting:** A port factory & ancient mechanisms

**Objective:** Recover a route stabiliser from an automated foundry without shutting down city services.

**Gameplay:** Light stealth around a sensor’s field of view, crane routing and a counterweight puzzle; negotiation with the supervisor is also possible.

**Choice:** Temporarily misdirect the sensor or collect evidence for a repair permit. Both routes can complete the mission.

**Outcome & reward:** Add a stabiliser to the compass; the method changes your relationship with the Memory Keepers.

**Side activity:** Open a safe route for workers and repair the neighbourhood lift.

### 6. The singing channel

![ A boat between stone resonance towers and two sea routes in evening mist ](../images/06-reef.webp)

**Theme:** Perception & choice

**Setting:** Resonance towers among sea rocks

**Objective:** Distinguish a true signal from misleading echoes and guide a relief vessel through.

**Gameplay:** An audio navigation puzzle with a complete visual equivalent; tune towers, follow light patterns and steer the boat.

**Choice:** Choose a short, risky passage or first repair the beacons along the longer route.

**Outcome & reward:** Open a safe sea corridor and add signal reading to the map.

**Side activity:** Record island sounds for the archive, with textual and visual versions of every clue.

### 7. Two sides of the crossing

![ A contemporary bridge above a stormy strait, an old stone route and a relief boat ](../images/07-strait.webp)

**Theme:** Cost & solidarity

**Setting:** A strait, modern bridge & stone passage

**Objective:** Establish a supply route for two neighbourhoods before a storm front arrives.

**Gameplay:** Read a damaged bridge, control current gates and coordinate land and sea routes; timing assistance is available.

**Choice:** Which side receives limited equipment first? A third route opens through an optional mission and cooperation between both groups.

**Outcome & reward:** Traffic patterns and local service prices change; no choice permanently removes a neighbourhood from play.

**Side activity:** Find a backup route through service tunnels.

### 8. The archive beneath

![ The Pathfinder in a partly flooded archive with ancient columns and contemporary data equipment ](../images/08-archive.webp)

**Theme:** Memory & truth

**Setting:** A data vault inside a sunken ancient structure

**Objective:** Reconcile three conflicting accounts of the city’s disconnection.

**Gameplay:** Environmental exploration, event reconstruction and a two-layer alignment puzzle; evidence remains available in the journal.

**Choice:** Publish every memory or separate private records and disclose only public evidence.

**Outcome & reward:** Gain a new understanding of the crisis and final-story options; faction trust changes become visible in the city.

**Side activity:** Restore a resident’s memory without exposing it to others.

### 9. Return: the city you shaped

![ Return to a living city with modern transport, an ancient beacon and restored routes ](../images/09-return.webp)

**Theme:** Belonging & the future

**Setting:** Central square, beacon & reconnected districts

**Objective:** Decide how the route network will be governed, using the evidence and relationships you have built.

**Gameplay:** A final conversation, activation of selected connections and a playable route revealing the consequences of earlier choices.

**Choice:** Choose stable central stewardship, a neighbourhood-led network, or a shared agreement if cooperation requirements were met.

**Outcome & reward:** Three proposed ending states with visible changes; exploration and side missions continue.

**Side activity:** Revisit companions and the routes altered by your choices.

## Game systems

### Movement & camera

Third-person camera with adjustable distance, environmental collision, walking, running and limited climbing on marked ledges. Keyboard, mouse, controller and touch are target inputs.

### Vehicles

Motorcycles and cars serve the city, boats serve the islands. The goal is responsive handling with simple, predictable physics. Only the motorcycle is in the first playable slice.

### Echo Compass

Scan traces, reveal memory layers and stabilise links. Initially, layer changes happen at fixed anchors in small areas.

### Quests & consequences

Each quest has prerequisites, an observable objective, at least one alternate route, a checkpoint and a recorded consequence. Local failure supports retry.

### Trust & economy

Route credit comes from helping, discovery and contracts; it funds repairs and cosmetics. Story progress is not gated by paid purchases or repetitive grinding.

### City life

Simple daily schedules for crowds, traffic and local events. City changes follow quest state; this is not a promise of unlimited simulation for every character.

### Save & resume

Versioned local saves, autosave at safe points, save-file export/import and interruption recovery. Cloud saves depend on a separate account-system decision.

## Target play experiences

### Desktop; online play

Target: browser entry, keyboard/mouse or controller input and a continuous journey. The first slice is single-player; connecting multiple players to one world is a separate development stage.

### Mobile; the world with you

Target: online play with touch controls, quality settings and resumable progress. Supported devices and cross-device saving will be established through testing.

### Virtual reality; presence in the world

Development direction: first-person presence at real-world scale, spatial controls, teleport locomotion and snap turning for comfort. Headsets, performance and shared-play capability will be confirmed after prototyping.

## Accessibility & input

- Complete Persian and English text with a fixed glossary; RTL applies to interfaces, not world directions or vehicle steering.
- Remappable keys, camera sensitivity and speed, shake toggle, reduced motion, and tap-or-hold options.
- On mobile: left movement control, right look area and one contextual interaction button; left-handed layout and adjustable control size.
- No puzzle relies solely on colour or audio; captions, shaped cues, layered hints and a story mode are planned.
- Safe exit, single-player pause, adjustable challenge and saves before major decisions.

## A clearly scoped first playable slice

The nine chapters describe the full narrative vision. To prove quality, the first slice covers a small part of chapters one and two. Its target session is 20–30 minutes, not a promised final-game length.

## In slice scope

- One connected district with three routes and one Echo crossing
- Third-person movement, interaction, one motorcycle and vehicle enter/exit
- Three key NPCs, one main quest and two side activities
- One decision that visibly changes a route and its accessibility
- Save/resume, interactive onboarding and complete FA/EN interfaces
- Real keyboard, controller and touch testing on selected devices

## Outside first-slice scope

- The complete archipelago and all nine chapters
- Real-time multiplayer and a persistent online world
- VR, player trading and in-game payments
- World-scale destruction, unlimited traffic and full voice acting

## Technical design

### Proposed architecture

A browser slice using TypeScript and a streamable 3D renderer; Three.js is one candidate. Choose the final engine after device tests and greyboxing. Keep game code separate from the commerce demos, sharing only brand tokens and interface contracts.

### World partitioning

Stream small districts, use LOD geometry, compressed textures, instanced crowds and mostly baked lighting. Keep one district and its necessary Echo subset in memory.

### Game state

Save profiles include schemaVersion, checkpoint, position, layer, questStates, routeFlags, factionTrust and settings. Important operations must be idempotent; detect and recover corrupt saves.

### Performance budgets; provisional targets

Initial targets: stable 30 fps on selected phones and 60 fps on a mid-range desktop, with separate quality settings. Target at most 15 MB of compressed starting assets and incremental loading. These are test targets, not measured achievements.

### Quality & failure handling

Reduce quality before control is lost, pause in the background, recover after disconnection and preserve the last save. If 3D is unsupported, show a clear message with access to the introduction content.

### Privacy

Design the slice without accounts or personal-data collection. Any future behavioural analytics requires a minimal-data definition and appropriate consent.

## Acceptance criteria

- A new player moves and completes the first interaction within two minutes without verbal guidance from the developer.
- Test the critical path, alternative route, failure and retry with all three input methods.
- Saving and loading must preserve choices, player location and route state.
- No layer switch traps the player in geometry; failure returns control at a safe checkpoint.
- Both languages must be complete; test mobile layouts from 320–430 px wide and landscape without overlapping controls.
- All audio and colour cues need understandable equivalents; reduced motion and layered hints must work.
- Record frame rate, load time and memory with device and quality settings; publish no performance claims before measurement.

## Risks & design responses

### World scope creep

Freeze the first-slice boundary; admit further chapters only after quality and resource gates.

### Concept-to-product gap

Label concept art outside each image; judge final quality using an actual playable sample.

### Two-layer complexity

Start with small areas and limited testable changes rather than two full simultaneous worlds.

### Mobile control

Test environments and missions with touch; shrinking a desktop interface is insufficient.

### Unclear production status

Track design, plans and implemented features separately; this delivery is a design package and introduction preview only.

## Production roadmap

### 01 / Identity & design

Current phase

Narrative, world rules, nine concept images, glossary and slice scope. Exit gate: review and lock the design package.

### 02 / Greybox prototype

Planned

Test movement, camera, collision, motorcycle and layer switching using simple geometry. Exit gate: complete the critical path without getting stuck.

### 03 / Playable slice

After mechanics validation

Add art, quests, sound, saving and one real consequence. Exit gate: a 20–30 minute session that resumes correctly after reload.

### 04 / Testing & optimisation

Dependent on slice results

Test with Persian and English users and real devices, fix defects and measure performance. Exit gate: meet documented acceptance criteria.

### 05 / World expansion

Requires a production decision

Build islands and chapters incrementally after resources and quality are confirmed. No unverified release date or completion percentage is announced.

## Public FAQ

### Can I play it now?

Not yet. This version presents the world, art and game design for review. A playable version will be introduced after prototyping and testing.

### Are these images from the game?

No. All nine are original AI-generated concept images defining the art direction; final graphics may differ.

### How do open exploration and chapters fit together?

Routes and side activities are open. Main chapters have prerequisites, while unlocked districts and islands remain explorable between them.

### Will it support phones and browsers?

A browser slice with desktop and mobile controls is the initial target. Supported devices will be defined after performance testing.

### What about release and multiplayer?

No release date is set. The first slice is single-player; multiplayer requires separate design and production planning.

## Page integration plan

- After review, add a standalone Odyssey section to Seemersion; this stage changes no live-site files.
- Place the title, short description and pre-production status above the image. No copy overlays the scenes.
- Provide the nine-image gallery, chapter selector, concept and roadmap in the section or an accessible detail dialog.
- Use “Explore the Odyssey world” as the main CTA; do not show “Play now” or claim a ready demo before one exists.
- Follow the site’s metadata, alt text, canonical and hreflang patterns in both languages. Use CreativeWork or VideoGame with a clearly stated development status; add no invented ratings or prices.
- For publication, prepare optimised derivatives, lazy loading and fixed dimensions. Archive original PNGs; mobile crops should preserve the scene’s main routes.

## Glossary

| فارسی | English |
| --- | --- |
| آستان | Astan |
| رهیاب | Pathfinder |
| اکنون | Now |
| پژواک | Echo |
| قطب‌نمای پژواک | Echo Compass |
| پیوند | Link |
| اعتبار مسیر | Route credit |
| نقطهٔ پایدار | Stable anchor |