Issues

Throughout our 22 weeks of development the greatest challenge we faced was establishing a clear ruleset for how gameplay behaviors ought to relate to each other. We knew we had to give the player a fair amount of exposition in order to tell them what was going on, and what they needed to do, but visually representing that information was a slow process. Determining what the most effective way to do this was extremely time consuming and it was difficult for us to figure out how long achieving those goals would take. This ended up affecting the progress of other aspects of the game such as including additional mechanics or more sound. This was largely due to the visual aesthetic and its relation to the game’s mechanics. The player controls an otherworldly entity that moves and sees and hears unlike the way we do. To reinforce this we spent roughly 14 of the 22 weeks tweaking and experimenting with various shader settings, materials, and particle effect systems to get the feel we were going for. The team was fairly inexperienced with shaders and how they affect materials and particle effects so it became a game of whack-a-mole. One thing would get fixed but in doing so something else wouldn't look right anymore. It took way longer than anticipated to get the right mix of shaders, materials, and post processing to consider the visuals done without sacrificing visual player feedback. All while making sure it fit the premise for this main character and looked clean.

Once this was set then we were finally able to solidify the rules of the game and reason with why they were what they were. We figured out ways to take advantage of post processing, for example, to enhance visual feedback when the player is in certain states. We were also able to use fog to hide areas of the level but also use materials on specific objects to help give the player a sense of direction using points of interest. In the end we had just enough time to cover all the bases and I think we managed to create a compelling visual style that was unlike anything any of us in the group had tried before. Moving forward there is plenty of options left to explore and iterate on and that is something to look forward to. The scope of our game can be scaled up to our liking and it would be great to see the introduction of more complex mechanics that push the visual aesthetic even further.