Shelves of Shadow's 0.1.0 Release DevLog

Concept art for the main character of Shelves of Shadows made by Aiko Mei McCarthy

General Information

Title: Shelves Of Shadows

Description:

• You're stuck in a grocery store! To survive all three nights you must feed the cashier monster at night. 

Controls:

• WASD to move.
• Hold shift to sprint.
• When the head drone catches you, press "E" by the black arrows to hide. 

How To Play: 

• Find bananas at night, then bring them to the hand cashier creature when he craves them. 
• Avoid being caught by all of the monsters.
• Survive all three nights to win. 

Game Development Log

Shelves of Shadows was made for the FSU Fall Game Jame 2023 with the theme "Day and Night". This game was made by 5 people and took around a week to make. In the original concept, Dippo (the main character with the dinosaur hoodie) had a shopping list to complete during the day. At night, we planned for her to survive by eliminating the monsters (or avoiding certain powerful ones), and then picking up the money they dropped. Dippo would then use the money to buy grocery items to complete the shopping list and win the game. To buy the items, she would have to interact with the Cashier when it is daytime. However, after we considered the time constraints, the team met and talked about how to reduce the scope of Shelves of Shadows. 

We planned for the game to have a cut scene at the beginning where Dippo (the main character with the dinosaur hoodie) rides by the grocery store on a skateboard and walks through the grocery store. She also used that same skateboard to attack enemies. However, because of the time restraints later explained, the idea for her skateboard was saved for another time. 

The other humans that come out during the daytime all have their own names and stories, which were going to be showcased in the form of speech bubbles that pop up when Dippo walks close to them. For example, the old man with a cane's name is Winter and he is a veteran. 

Our team had to make more changes since we did not have time to implement the money drop system, the grocery list system, and the cashier UI within 1 week. Due to this, we first removed Dippo's Ability to attack. We didn't need her to attack and kill monsters for their drops if we couldn't implement the money drop system. Instead, Dippo would have to avoid all monsters and the food is free. Without having a grocery list system,  the player couldn't keep track of the food they must collect to win. So, we made the Monster Cashier ask for the food one at a time. Finally, to combat the missing cashier UI, we let the player automatically pick up the bananas and bring them to the cashier who will immediately accept the food. On the other hand, daytime turned into a break for the player and a way to navigate the map. 

Credits

Adam Niemi  -  Level Design, Monster Concept Artist, Monster Artist, Monster Animator, Game Designer

Aiko Mei McCarthy  -  Human Character Concept Artist, Human Character Artist, Human Character Animator, Game Designer

Jank;  -  Lead Programmer, UI, Level Design, Game Designer

SwoogitySwa  -  Environment Art (Textured 3D Models), Game Designer

Ryan Salinas  -  Sound Design, Sound Effects

Devlog written by Aiko Mei McCarthy