….
It was 3 AM on September 18th, and Regal sat alone in his apartment with two monitors glowing in the darkness.
On one laptop screen are document notes where he wrote the script and gameplay of the [Harry Potter] game he completed the meeting with."
Regal took a sip of cold coffee and stared at the final version of gameplay he designed from the multiple games from his past world.
Obviously, Regal had a bigger vision for [Harry Potter] games and no matter what he wanted to design a game that could be the most successful mainstream game ever, that could have a run with GTA games from his past world.
And now with the team finally being formed - his confidence only grew.
I mean no matter the knowledge he has in games from his experience - he is still only a director who plays games for fun whether in this world or in his past.
And this is what he had exactly done.
He still remembers playing [Silent Hill 2] and was haunted by it for weeks.
He played [System Shock 2] and couldn't stop thinking about how isolation could feel suffocating in a world full of voices.
He played [Amnesia: The Dark Descent] and finally understood that horror wasn't about what you saw, but about what you couldn't control.
Even simply remembering those experiences still made him jerk a little - while designing the Harry Potter game.
Still, he pushed it away and began systematically playing survival horror games.
Not to simply copy them exactly, but to take inspiration from each of them.
He would play with a notebook beside him, pausing constantly, asking questions about every design decision.
'Why did the Dementor appear here? What made me feel afraid at this moment? What would have happened if I could have fought back? Why does this room feel wrong?'
This was the time when Regal had initially approached Pete - who works in Unique FX Studio - wanting to make a game with the Harry Potter concept six months ago.
And for the past half year, whenever he could skim some time, Regal allotted small space in the story board to the game.
His notebooks are filled with insights. His understanding of how to make players feel powerless, vulnerable, and hunted had become almost supernatural in its precision.
He thought back to that conversation with Marcus: "Unlike the 'children' game anyone would expect from the franchise, he wants a Harry Potter survival horror game."
And the designs he showed Pete matched his vision.
He moved to the first section of his document, titled "The Architecture of Powerlessness."
The premise was simple: every survival horror game that truly worked made one fundamental promise to the player:
You cannot win. You can only survive.
The gameplay of [Amnesia] had taught him this through the absolute removal of combat.
The player holds a lantern. They hide. They run. But they never fight.
This design choice - more than any monster design, more than any atmosphere - created profound psychological horror.
[Outlast] reinforced this lesson.
The protagonist was a journalist. Helpless. Armed with only a camera and the ability to hide. Relentless pursuers. With no weapons, defense, only escape.
And [System Shock 2] - that game had shown Regal something deeper.
The horror came not from the threats themselves, but from the scarcity. Limited ammunition.
Limited resources. Every action carried a cost.
The player began calculating: Do I use this spell now, or do I save it? If I save it, will I encounter something worse later?
Regal had applied this insight directly to the Patronus mechanic.
Three uses per game session. No more.
The player would feel each one - Would regret wasting them. Would face situations where they desperately wished they had saved them.
He scrolled to the section on "Environmental Wrongness."
[Condemned 2] had been his teacher here.
That game had shown him that horror could come from the familiar becoming an alien. Hogwarts students would walk into classrooms they had seen a hundred times.
But something would be wrong. Shadows where they shouldn't be. Sounds that didn't belong. The architecture would feel impossible.
James Richardson didn't know it, but when Regal had recommended "subtle geometric inconsistencies" and "corridors that don't align properly," that language came from hours spent analyzing how Condemned 2 made players feel like they were losing their minds.
He moved to the section on "Narrative Consequence."
[BioShock] had shown him that moral choice in games worked when it was seamlessly integrated into the world.
Not presented as a binary menu, but as natural consequences of natural actions.
The Little Sister dilemma in [BioShock] didn't ask the player to make a choice - it presented a situation and let the player's action define them.
Thomas Garrett's journey would work similarly.
When the player decided to save a student or abandon them, that choice wouldn't be presented as a moral dilemma. It would simply happen. And later, that choice would ripple through the narrative in ways the player hadn't anticipated.
[Silent Hill 2] had taken this further.
That game had shown Regal that player agency could be so thorough that multiple endings could feel organically inevitable rather than arbitrarily branching.
The player's behavior throughout the game - not their final choice, but their entire approach - would determine their ending.
He read through his notes on "The Power of Questions."
[SOMA] had been a revelation.
That game had proven that existential horror could be more powerful than creature horror. The game didn't ask the player to survive a threat - it asked them to think about existence, consciousness, identity. The horror came from philosophical weight, not from jump scares.
Regal had woven this into the conspiracy narrative.
The Dementor threat was immediate and visceral. But underneath it ran a deeper horror: the question of systemic corruption.
The question of whether truth matters if no one will listen to it. The question of whether saving individuals means anything in a corrupted system.
This was not copied from SOMA. But it was built on the same psychological foundation that SOMA had proven effective.
He scrolled through his section on "Free Roam Mode" - the part he knew no one else would ever understand.
Obviously, the free roam is completely inspired from multiple games and this principle was very successful even in this world.
Still nobody has pushed to such limits Regal is planning.
Regal pulled up his final notes, written the night before the team assembly.
He had organized his thoughts into a single question. "What is the one principle that binds all effective horror together?"
And his answer, written and rewritten a hundred times, had finally crystallized.
"Effective horror comes from player helplessness combined with player agency. The player must feel unable to prevent suffering, yet responsible for responding to it. They cannot stop the threat. But they can decide how to live under that threat. They can choose who to save.
"They can choose whether to expose the truth. They can choose whether to escape or confront. This combination - powerlessness against the threat, power over the response - creates the psychological intensity that makes horror memorable."
This principle had emerged from studying Amnesia (powerlessness), BioShock (agency), System Shock 2 (helplessness), Silent Hill 2 (consequences), Outlast (vulnerability), and SOMA (existential weight).
Regal had not invented it. He had discovered it through synthesis.
Now he sat in the darkness, understanding that in six hours, Pete would call a team meeting.
In that meeting, eighty people would begin building a game based on Regal's design - they would program systems, create artwork, compose music, design levels.
None of them would know that what they were building was rooted in fifteen years of study. Pete had been explicit: "We don't innovate from other games. We innovate from your vision."
And that was true. Regal's vision was original. The context was new. The application was entirely unique.
But the psychological foundation? The understanding of how to make players feel afraid, how to create meaningful choices, how to make environments tell stories, how to make powerlessness profound?
That foundation came from every game he had studied. Every mechanic he had analyzed. Every hour spent asking why does this work?
Regal closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, the execution will begin.
The synthesis was complete, the design was ready.
And no one would ever need to know that vision came from standing on the shoulders of giants.
That was the secret of all great design, Regal thought.
It looked effortless because the work had already been done.
Elsewhere in the city, his team slept, unaware of the depths beneath the vision they would soon bring to life.
And that was perfectly fine.
The best design was invisible.
….
Two days after the kickoff meeting, Pete called Regal into his office.
"We need a title." Pete said, gesturing for Regal to sit. "Marketing wants to begin preliminary branding. We can't keep calling it 'the Harry Potter game.'"
Regal had been thinking about this.
"I have several options." he said, pulling out a notebook. "The working title was always [Philosopher's Curse], but there are alternatives."
He listed them:
"Philosopher's Curse - Direct reference to the Philosopher's Stone, or Sorcerer's Stone in America and the horror framework. It's elegant, literary, and immediately tells players this is not a typical Harry Potter experience.
"The Dementor Protocol - More thriller-focused. Emphasizes the conspiracy element and sounds like a spy thriller adapted to magic.
"Hogwarts: Fractured - Simple, evocative. Suggests the breakdown of safety.
"The Third Year - Minimalist. References Prisoner of Azkaban but is deliberately vague.
"Azkaban's Shadow - Direct and ominous. Plays on the iconic Dementor presence.
"The Inheritance of Fear - More literary, psychological.
"Veiled - Single word, mysterious."
Pete leaned back in his chair. "What do you think?"
Regal was quiet for a moment.
"[Philosopher's Curse]" he said finally. "Here is why: The Philosopher's Stone represents wisdom, discovery, and wonder–
"Everything Harry Potter should represent.
"But a curse on that philosophy. A corruption of it - that's what this game is.
"It's the perversion of the wonder into horror. It works for both Story Mode and Free Roam Mode. In Free Roam, players are pursuing the wonder. In Story Mode, they are discovering the curse. Both are accurate."
Pete nodded slowly. "I like it. It's sophisticated. It's not obviously horror, which means it might appeal to broader audiences who think it's a traditional Harry Potter game and then get surprised. We will test it with focus groups, but I think you have got it."
"There is one more thing." Regal added. "The subtitle should be - 'A Survival of Hogwarts' or simply 'A Hogwarts Experience' - Something that positions it as immersive and singular."
"Philosopher's Curse: The Hogwarts Experience." Pete tried it out. "I like it. It sounds like we're offering something comprehensive."
By the end of the week, the title was official:
[PHILOSOPHER'S CURSE: THE HOGWARTS EXPERIENCE]
Marketing began developing logos and promotional materials.
.
….
[To be continued…]
★─────⇌•★•⇋─────★
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