Posted March 17, 2022 by Gargoyle House
I wanted to thank folks who gave me feedback on this project, it got way more positive reception than a simple self-teaching project really should. Here's the main things I learned from making this game.
-Unity imports assets as duplicates, so to save yourself pain, save files in the Unity assets folder.
-Overlapping UVs cause problems when making lightmaps.
-Spaghetti coding is making your own life hard later on.
As for feedback, here's the really actionable advice I got.
-More than one person saw a bug I didn't where the camera doesn't stop moving. But not in Firefox??
-Game is probably too dark. Lacks enough tutorial text, lacks clear meters for data.
-Text is hard to read, needs to be less blurry with a background.
-Game lacks good sign-posting and player goals. This one is totally on me. It's not even clear that you can win. It's not clear that you have to look once to start the countdown, then look away until it runs down. A big part of game design is figuring out how to explain your rules to your players without stopping the game.
-I should have had Jim follow you with his eyes and change windows to whichever was closest to you. A more visible fear/hypnosis meter and have Jim cast a shadow onto the walls even if you look away.
-With more rooms to explore, I'd be able to gamify it better, have Jim follow you around the house to different rooms. More things to interact with.
-Some people had issues with Unity web player so I have also rebuilt the project as a standalone app.