By Year of the Ladybug is only a pitch for a third-person survival horror game with “disturbingly beautiful and surreal art direction” but it has already got plenty of attention in China and Japan.
It’s a project that’s being developed by Toronto-based concept artist Mint Mentis who has already written the game’s full story.
It centers on protagonist James Hsieh “as he is pulled through a hellish world full of demonic entities and nightmarish illusions.” It’s this that might make it comparable to Silent Hill.
The game starts with Hsieh exacting revenge on a guy in a club by stabbing him multiple times. Afterwards, he then shoots his way through the thugs inside the club in order to find and attempt to kill the boss at the top.
Just before Hsieh cuts the boss’s head off with garden shears, he gets shot by one of the thugs, leaving him in a critical condition so that after he’s arrested by the cops he is immediately hospitalized.
After a flashback to four years earlier when Hsieh was a family man and interior designer, we join Hsieh in hospital. However, Hsieh is handcuffed to the bed and, after freeing himself, discovers that the hospital is deserted. Soon after, he finds young girl who begins screaming as demonic entities turn up, prompting Hsieh to escape the hospital.
That’s all that’s revealed of Year of the Ladybug’s story so far. But you can get more of feel for the direction the game will go in by looking through the concept art on the game’s website.
