Week 4 & 5 - Level Demo, Alpha

Feb 8th - 14th

For the level demo, we decided to flesh out the tutorial more. We added a few new features: text to guide the player through the tutorial, changed the notepad so that it can be picked up from the dresser and opened at any time, and added a few new art assets to the bedroom, such as a carpet and lamps.

Feb 15th - 26th

To get ready for the alpha, the game needed to go through a drastic change - from a singular grey room to a playable game. We managed to implement many of the basic features we've been planning on - interactable tasks for the morning level, objects that can be held and dropped, and faces that start spawning after the tutorial transitions to the morning level. Other general features have been a pause screen, an animated main menu complete with music, as well as many bug fixes. Many, many new models and textures have been added - wall textures, floor textures, animated doors, a fridge, cereal, books, etc. New music and sound effects were added to go along with each new interaction, such as the sound of the cereal box being picked up and the player's footsteps on the wooden floor.

We changed the layout of the house so that rooms would be slightly smaller, and added new walls and rooms to enhance face spawning:

On Wednesday, Feb 26th we presented our alpha version of the game to a small group of industry guests in class to gain feedback. The feedback we were given and the observations we made during the playtest were: 

• Tutorial text was appreciated, but was difficult to read.
• Playtester had issues navigating the mouse - perhaps add a crosshair/recticle
• Playtester tried using milk for the coffee task at first, but realized it was only for the cereal.
• What is causing the screen to become darker is unclear (the loss of sanity from looking at the faces)
• Maybe have a text prompt that comes up when losing sanity

• Unclear what the point of the task is - What is the objective of the game?
• Maybe have the To-Do list tasks all be available right away per level
• Regarding the face stains: Not very horrifying, and stand out very obviously due to the bright colours. Maybe have faces appear out of the players vision and disappear when looking at them, and blend the faces into the environment more.
• Lots of notes for “missing the horror aspect of our game”
  • What’s the goal?

• Add some UI icon that notifies the player when a new task is added to the notepad
• Disconnection between the faces and the tasklist, apart from the shower as when they opened the curtain, a face appeared

Some bugs that were encountered:

• Game crashed after using the spoon.
• Milk was floating in the fridge when the fridge door was opened.

Over the next few weeks we have several other playtests scheduled to prepare for. We plan to address the issues encountered from this playtest and consider the feedback we were given to improve the game in time for the next playtest.