Design work this week was split in two directions: the start of implementing narrative in the game and new documented mechanics.
Game Introduction
Now, at the beginning of the game, a few simple text boxes introduce the player to the narrative, goal, and controls of the game. It’s quite bare-bone at the moment, but sprucing it up with a nice background and images will happen once we move into polishing the game.
Evidence
We now have a list and a process to creating evidence in the game! Before talking about it, here is the format.
This is the initial idea for a piece of evidence. If the team OK’s it, we start modeling and writing the narrative for it. That is why there are bullet points for the art details and narrative description: we only want to spend our time on evidence we want to go with.
Besides this process, there is another thing to mention about evidence. All evidence are now categorized in tiers that are a measure of the creepy and helpful information the evidence gives to the player. This is so we can put creepier evidence further and the mansion and to motivate the player with more exciting information the further they go.
Hiding Mechanic
Because player have had trouble finding ways to evade cultists, to get to a safe place while being chased. To balance not being seen under the table, we have the creature still move towards the player while they are under the table. This way, the player is never too safe, and will sometimes have to move. Both this, and the evidence tier system, are also documented in a new VDD segment, as seen below.
QA
QA this week went well, we were able to solidify more of missing aspects of the game. The intro narrative did its job contextualizing the game, but some felt that there was narrative dissonance. (Ex. The context tells you are disguised, but cultists notice you immediately). The new sounds did a good job for there being a difference between cultists and the entity, although there still needs to be a few more sound cues for the players to distinguish when they are safe vs. when they are being chased. Lastly, the entity is still challenging to avoid. This is fine, but players wanted more counter-play, since the entity gets players at many unfair points, such as hallways or even through stairs.
Comments