ASSESSMENT FILED BY SDS SYSTEMS, SOFTWARE AUDIT DIVISION.
Inspected July 26, 2026 17:00 local time. This office opens with the finding that matters most: the core mechanic, playing a minigame while hiding from a threat, is a genuinely strong idea. Split attention is where fear lives; a player who must take their eyes off the door to do the task is a player whose imagination starts working for the antagonist, free of charge. The inspection finds the software unfinished , a time-budget shortfall this office is all too familiar with, and notes with approval your stated plans to continue, and that the software will remain downloadable and archived.
(Dropping the corporate bit for the design talk, because your plans deserve the real version:)
Before adding levels and story, I'd work backward from your mechanic. The question to design against is "what makes doing a task WHILE managing a threat fun?" The games that nail this (FNAF, Among Us) all do three things.
- The task and the threat compete for the same resource, eyes, power, a locked screen, so attention isn't split by decree, it physically can't cover both.
- Threat information is always available but always costs something, checking costs power, peeking costs progress, so the player is never blind and never safe, they're buying knowledge.
- Continuing the task is always the greedy choice. You could stop and just hide, but you want to finish, so the danger is self-inflicted, which is why it's thrilling instead of unfair. Concretely for your game: if the minigame needs your eyes and the father is tracked by ears, both run at once, imperfectly and if completing a minigame makes noise that draws him, finishing itself becomes the risk. Get that loop tight and the levels and deep story will have an mechanical to hang on.
One more thing worth mentioning is the restraint. Implication and a bloodied axe, nothing more is the right register for this material.