Play the game here

Initial Design

Our discussion began with ‘Monsters, inc.’. We liked the idea of scaring being the daily grind and removing any horror aspects of the game going down a more ‘Theme Hospital’ route. We then continued the discussion along this path and decided that in place of a hospital we had to start with the classic haunted house. You would collect screams to sell and use the money to buy more scare props to set up in the rooms.

This was all sounding great to us but we started to think it may be a bit out of scope for 72 hours, so we tweaked it to have static props and map, but the player had to manually set off traps while avoiding being seen (he was too adorable to scare and nervous as it was his first job). This would also make the gameplay a little less ‘tower defence’ and make the game feel more dynamic. What could go wrong?

Final Outcome

Due to poor planning we ended up having to remove the stealth aspect of the game, which meant the player in the world was slightly redundant so we also removed him.

What we were left with is a game where victims (teens) look around the house, where you need to scare them to earn points. Using the correct theme to match a victim’s fears will gain extra points and increase their fear level. The points you get are relative to the players fear level (which increase the more you scare them, till they run away) and whether or not you match their fear. When victims have seen all the rooms they will leave, the aim is to have as many points as possible before they all leave.

The Good

• Visuals – The game makes good use of post processing effects to create a distinctive art style and make the game stand out. An effect we’re very happy with is our funky (scaling) walls, while primarily there to benefit the players’ view of the game, they give the house an organic feel which really brings it to life.
• Playable Game – Ignoring any quality issues we still produced a playable game that suffered from very few bugs and none that were game breaking. While it’s a small accomplishment we’re always pleased that we were able to produce something that works (compiles, is playable etc.).
• Social Media – This isn’t quite related to the game we made, but as a fledgling company we are always trying to improve our social media presence. We managed to get a decent number of impressions as well as some new followers (we love you guys, are you reading this? Hello?). In addition to this it’s also more data for us to use to identify the best way to communicate using social media (in this case twitter).
• New Tools – In this Jam we used two tools for the first time: Mixamo Fuse and ProCore’s Prototype. Both of these ended up providing results we were happy with as neither of us are 3d modellers. While it take a little time to get accustomed to the software it’s always nice to use a jam to experiment with a new set of tools.

The Bad

• Priorities – We started off well and quickly agreed on the core concept for our game, however from there we didn’t prioritize the task required well to meet an MVP (Minimal Viable Product) or in a manner that would allow us to easily cut content that wasn’t core to our concept. This ended up with us not having a playable game until the final day, at this point we then had to cut other gameplay content leaving the game a little bare and with very little time for testing and tweaking. As we have suspected this has been mentioned in early feedback that both gameplay elements are light and user feedback needs improving.
• Gameplay – This is pretty a simple one to evaluate, as mentioned above it is too light on gameplay elements and what the game does contain is not well communicated to the player. The initial design felt like it had a lot more substance and potentially we ended up removing the wrong elements from the game in order to get the game done in time.

And The Conclusion

Having looked at what we made and all the feedback we have gotten (thanks guys), we’re actually quite disappointed with the result of this jam. We have have discussed internally what we feel we need to change and it seems the consensus is that we need to prioritise gameplay over everything and really double down on it. We’ve seen a few comments along the lines of “looks cool, but I have no idea what I’m doing.”.It’s great that people like the visuals, but we’d rather be seeing “super fun, but looks a bit dodgy.”.

With that in mind we plan to implement some hard rules in our next jam and identify an MVP and then the stretch goals beyond that. The MVP will only have white boxing or primitive/representative art so that we can focus on gameplay. As a studio we’re currently looking for an artist, so potentially resolving that problem may help us better divide and organize the tasks out in jams.

That was a little bit doom and gloom, while we’re disappointed with outcome we still loved the process, and it’s been really awesome to see all the games everyone else has made and special thanks to everyone who played and rated the game (especially all that gave feedback).

Ludum Dare 34 was my first ever gamejam and in-turn my first ever completed game; working with all of the members of Questionable Quality (four at the time) we made something fun, addictive, and different to the LD35 project: a game. However this time around- Ludum Dare 35- we only had two of our members: myself (the artist) and Matt (the co-director). We had less manpower to get more done. So the question was: what could we do?

P.S. I would recommend playing the game here, as this contains spoilers.

Honestly I probably shouldn’t have been doing the Jam in the first place considering how much work I had to do for my final degree projects. Luckily one of my final projects was meant to be done with the studio at a later date: to make an experience/world made for VR, which to me basically meant ‘let’s play god’. I pitched we work on that and Matt agreed. To be honest I had zero idea on what I wanted to do with the piece anyway and being thrown a theme made for a great starting point, especially when it turned out to be one of my favourite subjects: Shapeshifting.

Our LudumDare adventure was- as usual- a part of Plymouth GameDev Soc, and so we were all gathered in a little room somewhere in the university, locked away from the world whilst we cackled away like the deities we had become, living on snacks from the nearby Tesco. Matt- being one of the heads of the society- had to be around for the evening previous, so when I arrived Saturday morning, fresh and feeling great… Matt was ready to sleep. Before he left for the day we discussed ideas on what we wanted to do, what the capabilities were and- well, actually it turned out he couldn’t do anything without knowing what I actually wanted. I told him to head home and by the time he returned I had written up a script, designed and illustrated most of the world, and figured out what I was doing with the character.

Shapeshifting is a topic I overly enjoy, having found myself almost obsessed in the past with the idea of doppelgängers and changing forms, even down to subjects like being a cosplayer and changing faces/identities. There was just so much that could count as shapeshifting, and it made my mind race with ideas. What could I do? Where could I start? What atmosphere could I go for? I knew for certain that what I was creating here was a world and although it may not be living and breathing, I was bringing a new world into existence none-the-less. It needed personality, a core, it needed emotions. With what I had in mind, for starters, it needed to be confined, claustrophobic even; that could work for the atmosphere, I thought.

At first I decided to go for a shapeshifting world theme, jumping from one world to the next (I had been playing a lot of Mickey Mouse & the Enchanted Castle recently and the idea of multiple worlds had rubbed off on me), following a figure perhaps? Or were you the adventurer? You wouldn’t move in this world for sure; I wanted it to happen around the player. The idea of being stuck had reminded me of Sleep Paralysis and how terrifying a subject it was. I had read a long time ago about multiple accounts where the dreamer ‘woke up’ in their own bed, only to be unable to move and for a shadowy woman to crawl on top of them and maul them, and that it felt so terribly real. Being a ‘sufferer’ of vivid and lucid dreams, the next night I had a similar dream out of fear of having the dream. I realized on this thought that that this could make for a very good creepy game without having to hit tropes of jump scares and running away from things. I feel you don’t have to stick to the trends to make something interesting, and sticking out can be refreshing.

In the end I decided on a forest that shapeshifted into a crystal cave, a shadowy creature darting from one tree or a rock to another, hidden yet visible enough to be aware that it’s there and you don’t know what it is or what it wants. I started on the forest designs and illustrations, deciding to go from an earlier take of a ‘sketch’ style (everything in moving lines) and make a fully illustrated world with an animated character, etc. By the time Matt returned I had the whole thing up and ready for him to start on it in unity and perform his gamedev wizardry. Looking over the script he pointed out that the crystal caves felt a bit disjointed and so we left that out, making a slightly longer part in the middle instead.

The ‘monster’ was next. All I knew was I wanted it to be a shadowy figure with no real features, to be small and then shift into a larger creature at the end. I tried a few creature-like designs before I got to the idea of ‘ghost children’ or at least the idea of a lurking child that was not quite human. I found myself inspired by old folklore and the animation studio ‘CartoonSaloon’s movies based on Irish lore (even whilst writing this I find myself listening to the Song of the Sea soundtrack). Suddenly a Changling child came to be.‘Síofra’ was born.

Eventually I fixed up all of the sprites and passed them over and we ended up with something close to finished by leaving on Sunday night. I knew I wanted to change some parts but I wasn’t going to force my perfectionism on Matt as I was pretty sure he was dead inside by this point.

What went well:

• Unity. I now have a better understanding of what can be done in Unity without worrying that I’m being a bit too over-zealous. To finish this project I’ll need to learn how to do things myself and am more eager to learn the software

• World-design. The world turned out gorgeous and the atmosphere was just as I wanted: Something relaxing yet not-quite-right. Not too scary, but a little bit magical and uneasy.

• Character Design. Síofra herself was my favourite part, her magical whispy being coming off as I wanted it to. I’ve become quite fond of her.

• Teamwork. I definitely feel like Matt and I worked well together and I gained some good feedback from him along the way.

 
What went wrong:

• My own anxieties took over at times and I felt like I was being a bit too bossy with Matt or being too over-the-top with ideas. Yet in the same way I also felt like I wanted to go into more, only for my mind to go ‘no, you’re making the poor guy do enough’. Directing is not something I’m very good at.

• SFX. Although background music and some effects I managed to pin through either editing or a lot of searching, there were a few I didn’t like. The monster’s roar and Síofra’s growl came to mind, and other than timing placement that I gave, I didn’t like how they sounded at all.
• Sprites. I got some sprites down well (the skipping animation was tough but I cracked it) yet there were sections I disliked a lot. The whole monster section from when she stops in front of you needs to be better thought out, to have a few frames switched around and generally re-drawn (especially with the monster design itself). The lines need to be thicker on the further away sprites too, the whole thing too thin and messing with the image’s quality.

• Framerate. On the rare occasion we got to test it on VR we were having big performance issues. We had to drop moonlight from an earlier point and have it manually drawn in; this only helped a little. Upon revisions I plan to make the sky one entity at least, and perhaps the leaves on the ground. I may be entirely wrong on this but I imagine the less sprites the better performance.

• UI. We didn’t even have time for a UI. We actually didn’t finish it until Monday because we’d lost all steam by the end of the GDC weekend. I’d love to put in a start button eventually, or at least some way to close it without alt+tabbing out and manually doing it.