Hello. I'm GothicTaco. I'm a creature designer and game developer. In this post I am announcing my first-ever commercial game: An RPG Maker horror adventure where you play as test subjects with psychic powers, trying to escape a laboratory filled with monsters.

This, is PsychoLab.

Plot

You play as a party of captives/test subjects in a laboratory researching psychic abilities. Under mysterious circumstances, most of the patients and staff mutate into horrible monsters, many with psychic abilities of their own. Using the opportunity to escape, you form a team of four survivors and fight your way out of the lab, using whatever powers you have at your disposal.

...at least that is the plot so far. This story is somewhat limiting when it comes to granting character abilities. If they are just people randomly snagged and sent to a laboratory, it makes it hard to explain some of the skills I came up with.

I'm thinking of rewriting the current plot so that the party are special operatives instead. This lets me justify any and all abilities I come up with. However, it feels less scary as a concept. (I liken the first idea to Outlast, with the second one being more like Resident Evil and Dead Space. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but I feel that the test subject approach makes the player feel much more vulnerable)

I don't plan on writing everything on my own. I'm currently looking for a writer/narrative designer to help me come up with a fitting narrative. But for the nearest demo I will be sticking to the original idea, since that is what has been implemented so far. Either way, the setting will be inside a facility. I find it way easier to make indoor environments than outdoor stuff.

Characters

The party will consist of four characters. Three are currently implemented in the game, with two having finished costume designs.

• Dmitry: An energetic muscle man proficient in martial combat. He is brave, but not the smartest. Often pronounces words wrong. His abilities consist mostly of  punching stuff real good. He can also Stun enemies and remove Stun Guard Stacks (This will be explained in the future)
• Flynn: A softboy who cares deeply about other people. He can be naive and too trusting. His power is telekinesis, allowing them to move objects with his mind. His abilities let him grant Speed buffs and debuffs, as well as inflict and cure Confusion.
• William: Stern and serious. Originally ideated as a middle-school teacher but was later turned into a doctor to better fit his abilities. He is capable of healing teammates, as well as inflicting and removing various status effect. My favorite ability of his, Hot Knife, has a special effect when used on enemies with the Bleed condition. The Bleed is removed but the ability does increased damage.

*None of these abilities are currently implemented in the game.

*Sprite created using Top-Down Character Base by Super.

Current Progress

At the time of writing, I have been working on this game for about two weeks. I am very experienced with RPG Maker. And most (if not all) of the mechanics I want to implement can be added via plugins. The mechanics mostly require fine-tuning and customization. As for the content (characters, levels, monsters, etc.), I am a creature designer and can come up with creatures without hassle. Character design is not as fun for me, but two out of four party members have complete designs (that is, a body, and an outfit)

I went with 24x24 tile size. I am mostly a hand-drawn artist and not too experienced with pixel art. I find it easy to make tilesets, however, as it is largely square shapes.

I originally went with this color palette, which let me choose multiple purple-based values. Purple is my favorite color and most of my art uses that as a base tone. Unfortunately, this palette made the game look strikingly similar to Look Outside, as if I had color picked from that game directly. As much as I liked this palette, I decided to change it and go with this one instead. It has 21 colors instead of 32, so it is more limited. It is also less saturated, which fits the tone I'm going for but makes the game stand out a bit less visually. On the bright side, desaturated colors harmonize pretty easily (color theory 101) so most of the tones look very good together. Pixel art is less forgiving with color than raster art. I thought this would be a struggle, especially after I changed to the new palette, but I'm having a lot of fun picking colors.

Combat has yet to be implemented. I am very familiar with RPG Maker, but the engine does not let you see in-game changes to combat and UI. Whenever you want to make a change, you have to adjust numbers in scripts or plugins, and then boot up the game to see how it affected everything. It's clunky, and makes development feel slower despite the fact that you are using an engine with many pre-built systems.

Anyways, I currently have two maps created. There is some dialogue which giving each party member brief characterization. 

I teamed up with a composer and he has been hard at work making original music for the game. I'm pretty excited to share that with everyone, but I won't be showing it for now.

The hardest part of development for me, as is with every project, is the animation. I can do passable stuff on projects with one directional characters (platformers, side-scrollers) but anything with multiple directions is a nightmare for me.  It is much easier in pixel art but I'm still not a fan. I've been looking for people to help me with the character spritesheets but haven't had much luck yet.

I made a short video to showcase some of the progress so far. OBS cuts off the top and bottom parts of the screen since my computer resolution is 1920x1200 and it keeps capping it at 1920x1080. Currently the enemies are using the sprite of a table 😅.

*Combat music is Lab Work from MR Cinematics/Antipodean Writer. I altered the pitch and speed. It will not be in the final game.

Planned Design

Combat System

The combat system is taken from Child of Light. Combatants wait until their turn to act and choose their action. Most actions are executed immediately, while others take time to cast. During the channeling, other units can disrupt them and stop their abilities. 

There will also be two different types of skill resources. One if Mana, which is the blue bar you can see in the image. It is used for psychic abilities. The other resource will be Energy or Stamina, which is used for non-psychic abilities.

Psychic abilities will be the ones regularly taking time to channel, with the stronger abilities taking considerably longer.

Party Building

I want the player to have different options when it comes to building the party. The characters are fixed, but they can be built in different ways. Skills are unlocked via the menu in exchange for Skill Points. Just like in Octopath Traveller, the player gets to decide which skills they unlock next.

As for equipment, there will be no weapons or armor. I will be using only RPG Maker's Accessory slot. In-game, these will be called Nodes. Each party member can have 3-5 nodes. Nodes come in categories corresponding to Greek letters. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, etc. A party member cannot have more than one node of the same category.

Nodes will do all sort of things including changing stats, granting dmg resistances and weaknesses, and even granting its wearer unique abilities. Most Nodes will have both positive attributes and negative ones. Alpha Nodes, for example, boost some stats while raising others. And so on. Few Nodes will have positive effects alone.

I don't like coming up with a bunch of weapons and armor, so this system should expedite development a lot. 

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I'm aiming to have the alpha-demo finished within one or two months. It will be using the plotline of patients in a lab, since it is what I have already written. It should have approximately 30 minutes of gameplay.

In the one of the coming devlogs I will also be sharing links to a Discord (Or an alternative app if they implement ID-verification or something like that)

Collaborators Wanted

As mentioned above, I'm looking for some volunteers to help me with the project. 

• A pixel artist who can help me with the spritesheets. Anyone filling this position will be expected to make sheets in the style of the one present in this thread (dimensions are 19x28 I think) The demo will have roughly 15 different characters.
• A narrative designer who can help me come up with the story of the final game.

As of now, I'm only actively working on the alpha demo. If you would like to fill any of this positions, contact me at my Discord below:

gothic_taco666