If you haven’t, check my game out in here!  It’s bound to get lost among the 599 we got!

Some of my ramblings about the project to follow..

This is the first time I’ve managed to enter an entry to the compo – I’ve tried several times but due to mix of IRL stuff happening and just generally not being able to pull it off I haven’t finished an entry before. I did have to go to work on Saturday this time as well which cost me some time, but hey, can’t help it.

At first my game was going to be something completely different and a lot more gamey, with some puzzley-platforming elements. The thing was, in secret I’ve been working on a platform game and quickly discovered I was doing pretty much the same thing I already had – just from scratch. Repeating the same work I’d already done didn’t feel right to me in a sense, so I decided to scrap the idea and take into a different direction. Plus I knew if I wanted to take it further, I’d have to start building tools and soon all my time would’ve been used on that! Or tweaking collisions.

Instead of focusing on the gameplay, I stripped all the gameplay elements to a minimalistic core and focused on writing – however much there is of it -, art and sound. My intention was to also make something I could release quickly, though in the end, that proved not to be the case as much as I initially thought!

I had bounced the theme Escape around in my head and had a concept about a guy locked in his room in deep depression. Dunno where it came from, but there you have it. At first, the idea had some grim turns with suicidal implications but I thought taking it that route might be going too far. Instead, I wanted to portray the idea of seeking help.

Basically, the intention is to get the protagonist out of his room. The game has two phases, dark and light. Dark phase is meant to represent the protagonists current “true” state of mind, where the whole world is bleak and dark and in this phase, escaping from the room is actually impossible, as the character is unable to function normally. Every action takes an extra effort. The way I went about this was implementing a hidden meter which increases every time you try to use an item until the main character finds it in him to pull through the action. At first even moving was implemented by forcing the player to tap move buttons while in the dark phase instead of letting them be held, but during playtesting I soon found it a bit annoying so for my own sanity I just made the PC move at half speed while in the dark phase. The protagonist’s fears manifest as monsters which attack him raising his anxiety, if he stays put. So he has to keep moving to stay functioning, which is one of the concepts I wanted to explore a bit. If he chooses to stay, eventually the monsters of his mind overwhelm him again.

The one way out is by grabbing the healing item, which calms the protagonists inner turmoil, his anxiety level resets and his view of the world shifts more to a normal one. This is represented in the world by the world outside the windows turning light blue instead of black, and black clouds turning white. Now he’s able to open the door and leave his room. But I wanted to portray that while he’s out, he’s not okay really… yet. The sky’s still cloudy with no sun to be seen. Also the song that plays as the screen fades out is slightly distorted.

Holy crap reading what I wrote I do sound like an art douche, goddamnit.

What went wrong

There are some things I didn’t get to implement. I planned to make the house represent the main protagonists level of anxiety, with walls pounding and moving in a heartbeat like fashion in the dark world – accelerating as the anxiety levels climbed. My intention was to present the house in more of an organic manner that way while also solving another problem – lack of any on screen indicators for anything. I didn’t want to make a HUD or any indicators for the fact that it would make my game more game-like.

I also initially had a bit more interaction in my game but took nearly all of it out due to my implementation not really liking having too many objects which would overlap in x-dimension. Also, no indicators for what you’d be interacting with, again. A problem I didn’t get to solve in time.

I think the game is a tad too obscure or artsy to really get into. It certainly is not fun, but it’s not intended to be.

I also got a bit sick during the LD, so there’s that!

My code is awful. No surprise there! During the second day I really just decided to do some pretty ugly stuff, just to get it done and over with. Oh well!

What went right

I got it done! Hell yeah!

I managed to implement most things I wanted to. I have an actual soundtrack. I have hand drawn animations. I have hand drawn graphics. Those are the things I set to do, those are things I did. Quality is another matter!

What’s next

If I choose to go back to this thing, first thing is to clean up the code. Then I’m going to implement rest of the features I missed and maybe even some gameplay. Sky’s the limit. Well, Skyrim’s the limit. Once that bastard is released I’m unable to do any actual work…

Other than that, I’m going to be working on some fun things. I have my github at github.com/shinD and my webpage at digitalcheeseplate.com or conspiravision.net and if I get something released, those are the places to find about them!

Tags: postmortem