Development log 2.1
๐ Devlog #2.1: Conceptualizing the Core Gameplay : (Decision made during the lab session)
English
In this devlog, I want to introduce the foundation of my current game project โ a suspense-driven puzzle-exploration game where players must identify and correct anomalies in each level before being overwhelmed.
๐งฉ Game Structure
Each level is designed to introduce a new paranormal investigation tool:
- Tutorial โ No tools. Focuses on environmental storytelling and basic controls.
- Level 1 โ Introduces the Flashlight: navigate dark environments.
- Level 2 โ Adds the Flash Beacon: briefly reveals hidden anomalies.
- Level 3 โ The EMF Reader: detects ghostly disturbances near objects.
- Level 4 โ Introduces the Camera: helps confirm object alterations by comparing photos.
๐ฎ Core Loop
The gameplay begins as the elevator doors open and the player enters a room. Initially calm, tension rises as anomalies start appearing off-screen. The player must spot changes and restore items to their original state. As time progresses, the number and frequency of anomalies increase, putting pressure on the playerโs observation skills.
๐ Alerts & Fail States
A distinct alert sound signals when a new anomaly appears. If the player fails to act in time or too many anomalies accumulate, they will โpass out,โ triggering a level restart โ emphasizing vigilance and time management.
๐ช Level Transition
At the end of each level, the room stabilizes, lights return to normal, and the elevator doors reopen with a satisfying โding.โ The player steps in, and the next level loads seamlessly in the background, keeping immersion intact.
๐ ๊ฐ๋ฐ์ผ์ง #1: ํต์ฌ ๊ฒ์ํ๋ ์ด ๊ตฌ์ํ๊ธฐ
ํ๊ตญ์ด
์ด๋ฒ ๊ฐ๋ฐ์ผ์ง์์๋ ํ์ฌ ๊ฐ๋ฐ ์ค์ธ ๊ฒ์ ํ๋ก์ ํธ์ ํต์ฌ ๊ตฌ์์ ๋ํด ์๊ฐํ๋ ค๊ณ ํฉ๋๋ค. ์ด ๊ฒ์์ ๊ธด์ฅ๊ฐ ๋์น๋ ํผ์ฆ ํ์ ๊ฒ์์ผ๋ก, ํ๋ ์ด์ด๋ ๊ฐ ๋ ๋ฒจ์์ ์ด์ ํ์์ ์ฐพ์๋ด๊ณ ๋ฐ๋ก์ก์์ผ ํฉ๋๋ค.
๐งฉ ๊ฒ์ ๊ตฌ์กฐ
๊ฐ ๋ ๋ฒจ์ ์๋ก์ด ์ด์์ฐ์ ์กฐ์ฌ ๋๊ตฌ๋ฅผ ์๊ฐํฉ๋๋ค:
- ํํ ๋ฆฌ์ผ โ ๋๊ตฌ ์์. ํ๊ฒฝ ์คํ ๋ฆฌํ ๋ง๊ณผ ๊ธฐ๋ณธ ์กฐ์์ ์ง์ค.
- 1๋ ๋ฒจ โ ์์ ๋ฑ ๋์ : ์ด๋์ด ํ๊ฒฝ์ ํํํ ์ ์์ต๋๋ค.
- 2๋ ๋ฒจ โ ํ๋์ ๋น์ฝ ์ถ๊ฐ: ์จ๊ฒจ์ง ์ด์ ํ์์ ์๊ฐ์ ์ผ๋ก ๋๋ฌ๋ ๋๋ค.
- 3๋ ๋ฒจ โ EMF ๋ฆฌ๋: ๋ฌผ์ฒด ๊ทผ์ฒ์ ์ ๋ น ํ์์ ๊ฐ์งํฉ๋๋ค.
- 4๋ ๋ฒจ โ ์นด๋ฉ๋ผ ๋์ : ์ฌ์ง์ ๋น๊ตํด ์ด์ ์ฌ๋ถ๋ฅผ ํ์ธํ ์ ์์ต๋๋ค.
๐ฎ ํต์ฌ ๋ฃจํ
๊ฒ์์ ์๋ฆฌ๋ฒ ์ดํฐ ๋ฌธ์ด ์ด๋ฆฌ๋ฉฐ ์์๋ฉ๋๋ค. ํ๋ ์ด์ด๋ ๋ฐฉ์ ํ์ํ๋ค๊ฐ, ์ผ์ ์๊ฐ์ด ์ง๋๋ฉด ์ด์ ํ์์ด ๋ฑ์ฅํฉ๋๋ค. ๋ณํ๋ ํ๋ ์ด์ด๊ฐ ๋ณด์ง ์์ ๋ ์ผ์ด๋๋ฉฐ, ์ ์ ๊ทธ ๋น๋์ ์๊ฐ ์ฆ๊ฐํฉ๋๋ค. ํ๋ ์ด์ด๋ ๋ณํ๋ฅผ ์์์ฑ๊ณ ์๋ ์ํ๋ก ๋ณต๊ตฌํด์ผ ํฉ๋๋ค.
๐ ๊ฒฝ๊ณ ๋ฐ ์คํจ ์กฐ๊ฑด
์ด์ ํ์์ด ๋ํ๋ ๋ ๊ฒฝ๊ณ ์์ด ์ธ๋ฆฝ๋๋ค. ์ ๋ ์กฐ์น๋ฅผ ์ทจํ์ง ์๊ฑฐ๋ ์ด์ ํ์์ด ๋์ ๋๋ฉด, ํ๋ ์ด์ด๋ ๊ธฐ์ ํ๊ณ ๋ ๋ฒจ์ด ๋ค์ ์์๋ฉ๋๋ค. ์ด ๋ฉ์ปค๋์ฆ์ ์ง์ค๋ ฅ๊ณผ ์๊ฐ ๊ด๋ฆฌ์ ์ค์์ฑ์ ๊ฐ์กฐํฉ๋๋ค.
๐ช ๋ ๋ฒจ ์ ํ
๋ ๋ฒจ์ด ๋๋๋ฉด ์กฐ๋ช ์ด ์๋๋๋ก ๋์์ค๊ณ , ์๋ฆฌ๋ฒ ์ดํฐ ๋ฌธ์ด โ๋ฉโ ์๋ฆฌ์ ํจ๊ป ์ด๋ฆฝ๋๋ค. ํ๋ ์ด์ด๋ ์๋ฆฌ๋ฒ ์ดํฐ์ ๋ค์ ํ์นํ๋ฉฐ, ๋ค์ ๋ ๋ฒจ์ด ๋ฐฑ๊ทธ๋ผ์ด๋์์ ๋ก๋๋ฉ๋๋ค. ๋ชฐ์ ๊ฐ์ ์ ์งํ๊ธฐ ์ํ ํ๋ฆ์ ๋๋ค.
P.S Update required (From user feedback)
Solution: Add an in-game tutorial or instructions to help players understand their objective immediately upon starting. The tutorial should explain the core gameplay mechanics, tools, and objectives without relying on external sources like the website.
- Enhance Sound Design Issue: The current lack of sound makes the game feel empty.
Solution: Add sound effects for interactions, such as pressing the E key or restoring an object. Additionally, incorporate ambient sounds or background music to enhance the atmosphere, creating a more immersive experience.
- Improve Interaction Feedback Issue: Players couldnโt tell if they successfully interacted with objects.
Solution: Add visual and audio feedback for interactions, such as:
Animations when objects are restored.
Sound effects that provide satisfaction when an interaction succeeds.
Particle effects or subtle screen shakes for a tactile sense of accomplishment.
- Add Progress Indicators Issue: Players are unsure of their progress.
Solution: Include a UI element that shows how many objects the player has fixed or how much progress they have made. Consider adding small rewards after each interaction (e.g., a sound or visual effect) to reinforce the playerโs sense of accomplishment.
- Enhance Game Feel (Juiciness) Issue: The game currently lacks an engaging sense of โimpactโ during interactions.
Solution: Improve the โimpactโ when interacting with objects by adding:
Stronger animations or more exaggerated reactions when objects are restored.
Vibrations or screen shakes to give the player a physical feedback sensation.
- Narration or Commentary Issue: The game could use more engagement and personality.
Solution: Consider adding a narrator or voiceover that provides philosophical or humorous commentary. This could help with immersion, similar to the style of games like Getting Over It, adding personality to the experience.
- Strengthen Core Gameplay Loop Issue: The current mechanic of restoring objects feels shallow.
Solution: Introduce additional mechanics to deepen engagement:
Time limits that pressure players to act quickly.
Combo bonuses for restoring multiple objects quickly.
Randomly generated object chaos over time to keep the gameplay dynamic.
Upgrades or abilities, like faster restore speed or area repair, that evolve the playerโs capabilities.
- Consider Alternative Game Concepts Issue: The concept of fixing destruction might not be as exciting as it could be.
Solution:
Shift the focus towards creating more chaos instead of fixing destruction.
Consider a cleaning game concept similar to Lethal Company or Viscera Cleanup Detail. This could involve multiplayer mechanics, upgradeable items, and a shop system.
- Clarify Story and Motivation Issue: Players are unsure why they are restoring the ruined environment.
Solution: Introduce a simple story to clarify the playerโs motivation. Some possible themes include:
Restoring a broken life or a broken world.
Using the elevator as a symbol of progression or escape.
A narrative thread that ties the playerโs actions to a greater purpose.
The Five Floors
Explore the unexpected. Navigate choices. Shape your story.
Status | In development |
Authors | Salieri009, Niclas Rogulski, SpaceCharlie, SlipperySalmon999 |
Genre | Puzzle |
Tags | 3D, First-Person, meta, Narrative, Non violent, Psychological Horror |
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Comments
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Ah, I forgot to add on that we are going to clean up the branches. well it is not for announcement for game playersโฆ though !