CNN Design Post Mortem

Coastal News Network started out as a grounded, simulation-heavy mystery game where you’d play a news anchor sorting through conflicting reports in a small coastal town. But the moment we locked in the idea that the cult was real and slowly bleeding into your reports, the entire project found its tone. It became a game about trust, ambiguity, and what happens when your job as an “objective reporter” clashes with the gut feeling that something truly terrible is unfolding just offshore.

One of the biggest pivots we made during development came from a time constraint: originally, I wanted there to be a more branching structure with dozens of variable-based endings, but halfway through I realized that would balloon out of scope fast. Instead, we focused on three endings that could reflect different player paths based on choices and evidence collected. Ironically, this limitation actually improved the narrative flow — it gave us space to really polish each ending, and tie them into the growing horror tone with more visual and emotional payoff.

Designing around a slowly unraveling mystery — where the player never leaves a single room — was a fun challenge. Every report, every newscast, and every bit of visual feedback had to do more work than usual. But watching players start to question what’s real and what’s staged made it all worth it. This game taught me how much power lies in restraint, and how to make a horror story hit hardest when you almost don’t believe it.