When I started writing Penny Road I wanted to create a character the player could relate to, a victim of their own faults and choices. That’s where Chloe Rose comes in. This is her character synopsis I wrote. Having this was handy when I was looking for someone to voice Chloe. I ended up finding someone in freesound.org that was willing to voice her.

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In 2007 Chloe Rose was a social and studious girl whose great taste in literature was contrasted by her atrocious taste in boys. The night of the incident she was at a party in the rural part of Harmony Falls. It was no secret that her relationship with Bobby had been strained, that night it reached its boiling point and she was humiliated by him infront of all her friends. As the sun set over the horizon she left the party a drunken mess and made the grave mistake that cost her dearly. Newly single and driving recklessly she veered into a popular dirt road that led into a dead end. There was a blind corner right before the tree at the end. There was also a little girl named Penny playing by the tree at the time. Bawling her eyes out she turned the blind corner and didn’t have enough time to even think about stopping. She struck the tree but the airbag saved her life. Overwhelmed by the accident and afraid her parents might find out what she did with Bobby she began crying again. She opened the car door and stepped out of the car for some air, still crying. She was unaware but that was the moment when tragedy struck Harmony Falls. On the hood of the car she saw what could only be described as blood. As she stepped closer to the front of the car she saw what looked like a doll lying on the ground. Clenching the doll was a hand, and connected to the hand was the lifeless body of a little girl, the place where her head should go was between the tree and the car. There wasn’t enough space to accommodate a head. Chloe couldn’t believe what she was seeing. Her cries grew louder as she realized what she had done. She ran into the woods in her hysteria.

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5 days later the search for Chloe Rose began. She was never heard from again.

Creating the Protagonist – Ben Crowley /u/bencrows

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Benjamin Crowley was a result of me wanting to create a bigger game than just Penny Road. I wanted to make a game series whose name escapes me but it would end up being “SERIESNAME: Penny Road”. It would each be a different horror story at a different location with different game mechanics. Something really ambitious for someone’s first Unreal 4 project. Due to the time constraints and the fact that I didn’t know if anyone would end up liking Penny Road I wrote the character in a way where I could add information later on if my game got traction and people were interested in a sequel.

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Benjamin Crowley or /u/bencrows as his reddit account name would have him be is a high school aged teenager whose curiosity over the closing of a dead end road compels him to visit it. He starts by creating a subreddit (basically what a forum is called on reddit) which he shares in his local towns facebook page in an attempt to get people to divulge information about Penny Road. He’s related to Aleister Crowley, an occultist from the early 19th century. This backstory would be what I would pull from if I created a sequel.

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Creating the Storyteller – /u/spidermanure

/u/spidermanure is the only alias we get of the person who shares Penny Road to the masses. He can be summed up as being someone who was pulled into a world he didn’t know existed by letting his curiosity get the best of him. He gave Ben the tools he needed to share Penny Road with everyone. His sanity was the price he pays.

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Creating the setting – Harmony Falls

Anyone who was old enough to read a newspaper in 2007 knows what really happened in Penny Road, why it’s named that, and why it’s important to stay away. They’ve worked tireless to make sure the next generation didn’t know anything about it. They almost succeeded before Ben came along.