Hey I’m going to talk a bit about PSYCHOSOCK now!

It took me a couple of hours to develop the concept for PSYCHOSOCK. The original concept was thought up whilst brainstorming with my wife about the theme, she suggested a man trying to escape from a hospital and some item he need so he could escape, a sock for example. I then ran with this and decided to turn the item into a secondary playable character, making things somewhat more interesting. I also decided that to fit more closely with the theme, the character of the sock would be the player’s only means of offense, making it essential he take it with him and use it to deal with danger.

What went well:

I started mostly by experimenting with the visual style. I wanted something rather distinctive, different from my usual pixel art style, but also quick to produce to stay within the time constraints. I settled on a colourful, bold, childlike art style- which I feel helps the game stand out. The style itself was rather fun to work with as it meant I never got bogged down in character details and could make art assets at high speed.

From that I started to work on the basic gameplay concepts, considering things such as nonlinearity, an expansive map the player can explore, stealth systems and multiple approaches. I decided to go with none of these aside from a basic stealth system- to have done so would make it far too ambitious a concept to knock out in 48 hours. I settled on a linear basic stealth adventure, with a couple of environmental puzzles, and a basic enemy to be defeated or avoided. The character of the sock was always fairly clear in my mind- it’s a homicidal item of clothing. I originally thought of many puzzle concepts for the sock such as slipping through air vents and laser fences, but decided this was too complex and allowed him to strangle people, pick up items and flick switches; which still allowed for some basic puzzles.

Level design was a big step forward for me in this project, the rapid development process left no room for error, and I tracked every room, item and door object numerically on paper so I could immediately see how everything linked together. This was vital as it saved me a lot of headaches and backtracking by knowing exactly where each room transition object should point to, and how it was numbered. I also numbered all of the rooms, and using a few basic templates I was able to quickly design and populate the levels of the game. Going forward I will undoubtedly use this system of mapping on paper with room transitions and naming codes to keep track of my level design.

Soundwise I spent about an hour composing the two tunes in the game, just some simple chiptunes made using SFXR and LMMS. I made all the effect in SFXR in about 10 minutes, and added a little voice acting to the guards with my Rock Band microphone. The sound was a lot of fun to make and thought a lot of people neglect sound in these projects, I feel it can really enhance the atmosphere and feel of such a small project. The way it can be so rapidly generated using tools such as these really helped.

What could have been done better:

The final stage was rather rushed as I was running out of time, leading to it being very corridor based and a bit sparse. The final art assets I created for it are also noticeably rushed, as sadly I didn’t have time to make them look better.

Due to the time constraints I was unable to make much of the narrative either. My original idea was to have the player initially escape with their sock, then between each level I would have a scene where they talk and I could flesh out the characters and setting more. As it turned out I had barely enough time for the narrative that is in as it is, having to really speed draw the background for the opening and closing scenes. Perhaps I’ll revisit it and provide an updated version with the full scenes as originally intended.

The explanation of the controls was intended to be non-intrusive. I felt text prompts would break with the visual style of the game, so I put all the controls aside from movement in thought bubbles above the character’s head. This worked fairly well as a hint system, but the control for strangling guards (mashing X) did not come across clearly, leading to some people repeatedly being caught after failing to strangle them. This is unfortunate, and I have since put notes on the game page to help with this issue. Overall I feel animating these would have helped but as with most other things I simply did not have the time.

Lastly, though I think I managed to handle all the showstopping glitches, there are some left in the game. Testing is one of the most time consuming parts of any project, so I had to really cut it to a minimum. Notably one of the guards is stuck inside a locker and can’t move, and if you are caught whilst strangling a guard, the strangulation sound effect will loop endlessly until you kill somebody. On the plus side this does mean you get some further exposure to my wonderful imitation of asphyxiation.

Overall:

I’m really pleased with the way this project went. I feel I made a pretty good game and learned a lot about how to develop more efficiently, as well as getting to experiment with mechanics and styles I hadn’t tried before, as well as being able to release a game at the end of it. Perhaps if I’d have stayed in and not got drunk on Sunday evening it’d be a little more polished, but really I’m happy with how the whole thing played out.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think of it: PSYCHOSOCK