Horror Game Plot Idea

In the 1960s, a young boy named Adam Teller and his sister Olivia, both aged seven, had to live with an extremely abusive and drunk of a father.
There was also a mother in the picture, although she was apathetic and didn't seem to care about what went on.

There was also an incident in the house where the father, attempting to grab hold of Olivia, made her fall down the flight of stairs and break her neck.
She was buried in the woods later that evening. The father made Adam help him in the burial.

That boy grew up to be a traumatized adult , and father to a teenage girl named Allison Teller.
On the outside, Allison lived a somewhat normal but troubled life.
Her mother left the picture early and her sister died of a disease.

And her father was extremely troubled and quaint but loved her dearly, although due to work and the depression of losing his wife and one of his daughters, he didn't interact with her much or spend as much time as her as he should have. He was also always stuck in his past, like a nightmare that he never seemed to truly wake up from.


Shortly before the events of the game take place, Allison and her father were driving home.
Being drunk , tired and disorientated, Adam crashed their car into oncoming traffic, killing his daughter Allison and titling him alone.

Allison's father, driven to madness and absolute guilt, started drinking obsessively.
Due to realizing he was never the father he promised he'd be to his children and regretting his distance in their lives, he suffered unparalleled denial and in a somewhat twisted way treated Allison as if she was still alive.


Throughout the game, you technically play as Adam as he continues to lose his mind and will to live, and as he continues to be trapped in his haunting youth in his rural country home all those years ago.

But you play through the eyes of Allison his daughter. The sort of dramatic irony that we know is that Allison is dead, but to Adam he's still trying to fight that she's gone, and wants some way to show her what happened to him - perhaps as a sorry and justification for how he treated his family , or just solace in the thought of letting his secrets out.



Allison's character can be picked apart in the game through journal entries and clues.
The player sees her as a girl who lost her sister and has a troubled father with a drinking problem.
The player also sees her as a girl who's always had vivid dreams, and nightmares that haunted her , her entire life.

If you notice, these are all traits that  describe Adam. Since that is who you truly are playing as.


In dead Allison's narrative, her father died. Killed himself slightly before the events of the game. (He does end up killing himself)

After the "disappearance" of her father is when this game takes place.
Allison starts in a vivid dream, with a deer in a forest leading her to her dead father , who disappears into the mist.

After awakening, Allison can roam around her bedroom and review her diary entries, gain information into her character and troubles, as well as the backstory.

*UNIMPORTANT*
Reading Allison's journal prompts a hospital scene.
In this scene, Allison is sitting on a waiting bench in the hallway of a hospital after the car crash.
She's holding a teddy bear in her arms, and her vision is blurry from the tears. Down the hall is her father, weeping while a doctor with a clipboard
describes the situation of his wife and second daughter Rose.

To the player, this hints a flashback from when Allison's sister, Rose, passed away from cancer. (a true event).
Although, this could also be interpreted as Allison's death herself.
**



Allison, a lonely and confused girl, has one painful thought and wonder always coursing through her mind.
Why her father left her.

She's always known he's had troubles, and difficulties with depression. He's never told her about the abuse to him and his sister Olivia by his father all those years back, but he's been reluctant to ever take her there and told her briefly that it still bothered him.

But to leave her so soon and sudden after everything that happened,
she couldn't bear not knowing the truth.


Through the game, Allison(or Adam) is pulled back into the past, reawakening in the forest outside his childhood home and being chased both in the woods and around the mansion by his old abusive father. Allison then sees what her grandfather was through Adam's eyes as a boy, and the player gains back story from this.


After the nightmare, and some other things yet unworked into the game plot and plan,
we see Allison, staring at herself in a mirror. Washing her face.

Although when she comes back up from the sink, she's not Allison. She's her father.
All along, the reason why she was able to travel back into her father's past and understand why he killed himself,
the reason why she was able to witness what they had to go through, is because you were never playing as Allison. But a mad, twisted man continually tormented from
all those years back.


Other interpretations from this plot idea could also be drawn.


Allison could have never existed, nor Rose, nor your mother.
He could've always been a sad, haunted man who dreamed of having a normal life and a family after what he went through. Perhaps someone to support him and be there
when no one in his life ever did.

Or Allison could have existed, along with your sister and your mother - but Allison died with the others that night in the car crash, and Adam didn't want to accept it.
Perhaps he was trapped in denial of losing both his children, and wanted to pretend for his very last moments that he was explaining the truth to his daughter,
or showing someone what he had to go through and why he acted the way he did.

The reason why this idea could work is because Adam essentially IS Allison. The journal entries all fit,
they all still make sense - how she lost everything and was haunted by strange dreams and couldn't tell the difference anymore between nightmare and realities,
and how she never had a normal life. It wouldn't make much sense for Allison herself providing she was a real daughter to Adam, as we don't know much about her actual life. But they certainly fit for Adam.