Draft:At Dead of Night

The game begins with an opening cutscene that sets up the overarching story and setting of the game. The game then recommends viewing a separate tutorial video from the main menu as soon as you start a new run.

Jimmy most prominently hides around corners out of sight of the player, which is why the game heavily relies on sound cues to know of his location. Whilst unaware of Maya's location, Jimmy navigates the hotel on his own, sometimes checking rooms randomly. As soon as Maya is spotted, Jimmy immediately follows her and attempts to attack, either by attacking her from behind, following her into hotel rooms or waiting for her to arrive to his location. The player can be made aware of when Jimmy has spotted you, either by visually seeing his shadow moving along the floor or wall, seeing him peek around the corner ahead of you, or by hearing the sudden audio stinger which replaces the ambience.

Jimmy tends to say one of many different voice lines whilst he is trying to find you and is on the same floor as you, with phrases such as "I'm going to catch you, Maya!", "I know you're there.", among many others. These are more likely to play when Jimmy is unaware of your location, since when he has spotted you he instead tends to giggle to himself, indicating his presence. These can be useful to determine how far away he is from you, as his voice lines echo more and get quieter when he is farther away from you, or the opposite if he is very close to you.

Maya is able to "Call for Jimmy" in most areas. When she does this, one of many different voice lines will play, with Maya saying phrases such as "I'm here!", "Down here!", "This way!", among many others. If Jimmy is on the same floor as the player, this will attract him towards your general location, although he may not be aware of what specific room you are hiding in unless you call out for him when he is almost directly outside your hotel room. This can be useful for when you want to lock him in your hotel room or to try and manoeuvre around him.

If Jimmy begins to enter the hotel room you are currently in, he will begin to fiddle with the doorknob, and then use his key on the lock and begin to unlock the door, where the player will only have about 5 seconds to hide before he enters the room. You can either hide in the bathroom next to the hotel room's door, which is always accessible in every room, or in the wardrobe at the very back of the room, which is only accessible in rooms where the lights haven't been turned off. While hiding in the bathroom, you can visually see Jimmy walk into the room, where he sometimes peeks into the crack of the bathroom. Sometimes Jimmy checks the bathroom, and if he does, and you are hiding in there, he will instantly kick down the door and knock you out. If you decide to hide in the wardrobe, Jimmy is guaranteed not to attack. However, there is a chance that instead of leaving the room, he instead hides in the bathroom himself, and if you do not leave the room quick enough, he will suddenly appear from the bathroom and attack. If you are hiding in a store room and Jimmy is aware of your location, and you cannot lock the door, Jimmy will instead briefly turn the lights on and off to disorientate you, before suddenly kicking down the door and immediately knocking you out.

The game begins with a wide camera shot of a large hotel shown from the outside, overlooking a cliff. The camera then fades to being inside the hotel, where it slowly moves through the corridors, while multiple echoing voices can be heard loudly calling out for "Jimmy". The camera eventually shows a man in a red waistcoat wearing a black bow tie and bowler hat, named Jimmy Hall (played by Huld Martha), the hotel proprietor, sobbing whilst kneeling against the door of one of the hotel's store rooms, pleading for the voices to stop, and to leave him alone. The voices continue, as the camera changes again, revealing the device the voices are coming from. The voices gradually begin to get louder, before the camera abruptly switches to a young blonde woman wearing a backpack, walking down a road outside, named Maya (played by Chloé Booyens). Maya begins to call one of her friends, Hannah, who picks up the phone. After asking where they are, Maya is told that her friends have booked into a hotel nearby. Hannah then attempts to tell Maya something, possibly trying to warn her of danger, but the phone call cuts out due to there being a poor signal in the hotel. Despite that, Maya decides to go to the hotel that her friends are staying at, which is revealed to be the Sea View Hotel, as shown by a plaque on the front gates, which she walks past.

Entering the hotel, Maya walks up to the front desk and rings the service bell. Almost immediately, Jimmy Hall appears and loudly greets Maya, scaring her in the process. Jimmy informs Maya that her friends had already paid for her booking, and gives her the key to Room 101. Maya is visibly disturbed by Jimmy's appearance and overall tone, as he mentions how happy he is to see new guests. Jimmy asks if Maya and her friends are coming from the local music festival. She confirms that they are, and that they were supposed to be camping there for the night, but the stormy weather had cancelled their plans, which is why they decided to stay at a hotel instead. Eventually, Jimmy asks if Maya would be interested in seeing his stage show later in the night, where he plays Hugo Punch, who he describes as a "comedic sociopath" that says things that would be deemed inappropriate. Maya rejects the offer, stating that she would likely be going to bed soon, and has to repeat herself when Jimmy attempts to ask her again, this time visibly annoyed. After rejecting the offer once more, Maya asks Jimmy where the rooms are located, where he then directs her to the first floor, and suggests using the lift. After Maya enters the lift, Jimmy fully shows his reaction, where he angrily rants to himself about how nobody decides to come and see his show. Whilst he rants, he is suddenly stopped by an echoing voice, who states their dislike for "rude children". This angers Jimmy more, as he asks the voice to not speak for the night. The voice only gets louder, where it describes naughty children as "bad eggs" which need to be taught a lesson. Jimmy begins to appear more distressed, as he picks up a baseball bat that was sitting behind the desk and walks to the back room. He then shouts towards a mirror, and tells the voice to not bother the new guests. The camera slowly pans from Jimmy to the man in the mirror, who appears to be Jimmy but with a different overall outfit. He is most notably not wearing Jimmy's bowler hat, which reveals Jimmy's receding hairline and large balding head. The man in the mirror is revealed as Hugo Punch, Jimmy's comedy character, who loudly states how he thinks "bad eggs need cracking", referring to how he wants to harm the new guests, and threatens to send them to Hell. He then directly speaks to Jimmy, demanding him to show the guests who's boss.

The camera then cuts to an outside view of the hotel, this time facing the sea below the cliff as it crashes against the rocks, and then cuts to a view of Maya's hotel room, with a lit candle and ticking alarm clock, which shows the time to be around 2:30AM. Whilst being asleep, Maya is suddenly woken up to loud screaming coming from down the hall, where she turns on her bedside lamp and decides to leave her hotel room to investigate. Looking around the corner, she sees Jimmy, who has now fully transformed into Hugo Punch, who is holding one of Maya's friends as she appears to be knocked out, telling her to go to sleep. Horrified, Maya runs back to her hotel room, where she realises that she has left her hotel key in the room. She then decides to use the lift to go back to the front desk and use the telephone there to call for help. Unfortunately, the phone line appears to have been cut, as any attempts to interact with the telephone results in a static noise. Realising that she cannot call for help, she then finds the box full of the hotel's keys and pulls out one of them from the box, which is labelled "Master Key 2", indicating that Hugo had already taken the first master key for the hotel. As she is about to run back, she is suddenly stopped by the sounds of the voices from the beginning who were haunting Jimmy, as she sees the ghost communications device that was shown earlier. The device is labelled as the "Ghost & Spirit Voice Receiver". The voices begin to directly speak to Maya, as they scream for her to leave the hotel, but they also tell her to learn about Jimmy's past, and therefore learn what happened to the ghosts.

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