Aww that is really sweet xP, thank you so much <3
Ayyyyyy thanks for the follow (I made sure to return the favor, you seem like a really cool person)! :D I caught a couple bugs in the game and I thought of a few dolls that would be easy to implement (hopefully XP) and make cool additions to the game! Lmk if you want to hear any of it, I’ll send it over (somehow XD) <3
Oh dang I'm so sorry I didn't see this until just now! Anyway, the major bug I've noticed is that Lily will get stuck when she tries to patrol around during Hide and Seek, and this happened 2 out of the 6 times I went through that section. That's the only bug I caught (after looking back the rest were my fault XP) and now for the new doll suggestions!
The item highlight feature would be great if one of the dolls hides your items at some point! I think the doll doing it the second they're dropped in or put in the chair is the best time to pull it off, but the scariest part of this event could be when the scissors go missing a second time, and you see the doll is holding them! Then you gotta actually walk right up to the doll and take them back (or the doll could be hiding the scissors behind them for a different kind of creepy).
My next suggestion is for a doll that when you ring the bell to get the next one, nothing drops down the chute and ringing the bell does nothing. Only when the player turns around do they see a HUMAN SIZED ZOMBIE HALLOWEEN MANNEQUIN with it's arms outstretched like it was trying to lunge forwards (bonus points if you can implement a camera jolt and sound effect to make it seem like the player got smacked)! It's holding it's own description in one of it's outstretched hands.
You really could do so much with full sized mannequins, like cadaver models, anatomy dolls, clothing store mannequins, more halloween props, etc.
This next one might be a bit harder to implement, but what if ringing the bell drops down 5 dolls at once, because it turns out there is one spirit jumping between the dolls and they all have their own little tells for when they're inhabited (like the mouth changing shape, the eyes winking, stuff like that). The main problem with this one is that if ANY of the dolls leave your sight, the spirit might place the doll behind you and it would kill you if you touch it without looking at it (this one's probably a long shot, but it's still a cool idea)!
Side note, it'd be pretty cool if the bunny doll had more to it than just the picture changing, I was constantly looking behind myself worried that another one would show up. Maybe you could have like a giant looming shadow that tries to sneak up behind you after you pick up the doll for the first time, it's completely silent so you just have to keep watch, and you could make it vanish with your flashlight (or you could use that for a completely separate doll, it's your game)!
My final suggestion is for something I call "Containment mode", it'd be a separate mode from the main game and it's where you have to deal with containing the very upset haunted dolls that just failed their inspection while the incinerator warms up (you can even make some of them permanent problems by marking them for further study, so the player can't burn them and just has to keep them from trying to kill them). If you feel like it, you could have alternate methods of destroying the dolls because the other ways don't work (stupid fire-proof, crush-proof, blender-proof fabric), but that's if you want the extra cool points.
That's everything I cooked up for you, let me know if you like any of it!
Regarding Lily, she tends to wander off when searching for people. Her pathfinding shows her accessible areas, which pretty much includes your whole workplace. If she got stuck, it's possible that a door was closed / opened in her path, and even though she is able to open doors, sometimes it gets messed up. I will certainly check this out!
I was actually just working on a new highlight item system just yesterday, as the endless mode will have more items o work with. Regarding your idea, it was actually sorta already thought of on our end, with the scissor theft, but the highlight feature was not considered. A lot of people forget about it, for example, when Andy hides, you can find him by highlight, because it will also highlight the doll. However, hiding the items is something we did not think of, so that is certainly going in the event pile! And of course, expect being credited in game (unless you specifically don't want to be)
The zombie / cadaver Halloween thing is very bizzare, but pretty much anything goes. I really like the idea of the doll not dropping and a humanoid spawning instead, but I'd probably change this a bit. It holding the testing sheet is a very interesting and unique idea! I'd love to do this one, including the bonus points :P
I really like this one! Once again it's very unique and pretty creepy! I'd probably do some changes, to implement the gameplay features into the event a bit more (since again, a lot is changed in the endless mode)but this one is certainly getting in!
Regarding Mr. Bunbun, I like the paranoia feel that the players get in the game. A lot of the times there is nothing dangerous happening, but you believe there is, your brain starts making scenarios, that vary a lot if you played lot's of indie horror games that have jumpscares around every corner. There are some changes going to the Normal mode dolls, but I like the way Mr. Bunbun works. He is sort of a "calm before the storm" pushing, that worked well in the playthroughs I saw. Now of course, instead, this idea could be implemented in a endless mode event!
Very interesting and cool idea, but it's certainly something that we had no plan of doing and it's a big change (or more so an addon). I like the idea, don't get me wrong, as the dolls truly don't immediately get destroyed or "sent to hell" as many people like to say :D, it would be interesting to get back to these dolls. But give the story of the game, that would not make sense. The endless mode once again could have a FEATURE from this idea, but a whole another game mode is too much. Still, parts of this could definetly be used!
Thank you for your time and for your wonderful suggestions!! As mentioned, the parts that will end up in game, you'll be credited for, unless you say otherwise. I'd also like to thank you for the bug report and for showing interest in our game, it means a ton to me! Have a great day!
Dude, I'd be THRILLED if you put me in the credits, I'd show it off to everyone I know if that ends up happening! I'm so glad you enjoyed my ideas and I can't wait to see how you interpret them into the game! While I was thinking of how to respond, I realized something that might be helpful to you and had a few final ideas for you to do with what you please!
If you're having trouble thinking of new designs to make new dolls with, since I notice you make all of your dolls really unique, you could do things like the top half of a clown doll where the legs are replaced with one of those rainbow-circus-balancing balls, a bug-looking doll that looks similar to Uniqua from the Backyardigans or one of those Quami from Miraculous Ladybug (sort of mono colored or spotted body with big eyes and those little curly antennae on top), an action figure (could even be a vintage 90s action figure not removed from the original packaging), or maybe one that's just a stuffed dog. Hell, thinking about what YOU could make out of a hostile Jack-in-the-box makes my blood curl and I'm all for it! You could also sort of take some basic models and dress them up as nurses, cow-girls, tuxedoes, clown outfits, different skin textures/designs. Idk, I thought that might help a little if you were short on designs recently xP
Now, here's a specific idea I thought you might like, a little doll body that has a CRT TV for a head! My initial thought for this one is that it could be a kind of doll that a company made so it would work with an AI program they're selling to kids, but if that doesn't work with the time frame of the story, then it could just be for playing VHS tapes, DVDs, or just be a fake TV for the sake of making a doll with a TV head. Whatever the case, when you start testing this doll one of the tests will cause a static sound to start playing. In a similar vein to how removing the Kate doll reset the surroundings, triggering this doll's test will spawn in a bunch of CRT TVs around the facility, all of them displaying a creepy moving image (I'm picturing a screen full of eyes looking in multiple directions). The TVs could be on the floor, on the shelves, in corners, where ever, the main goal is that you would have to run around and deactivate (or smash) all of the TVs before the time runs out (bonus points if something like hands or a giant head are slowly coming out of the TVs or the walls around the facility).
This next part is a stretch but you could make this even worse if a second test triggers another event, where there are so many TVs that they've stacked on top of each other to form a MAZE in the big rooms of the facility, but only a couple of them are actually on (maybe even only the ones that showed up in the first event are on, and you have to navigate the maze in order to get to them)! That part's a bit of a stretch, but it's your call whether to use any idea I give you :D!
One thing that I noticed that I MASSIVELY respect about you is that you don't animate a THING unless you really need to (something that I need to pick up for my own projects :P) and tend to let the physics system do the moving for you, so I get that this other idea might not get used. I was thinking about how cool it would be if there was a doll that for EVERY test, you would hear an inhuman humming or wailing coming from somewhere in the building. This is because a monster would spawn into the facility, and trying to touch the doll in any way before dealing with it would have you hear rapid footsteps before it kills you. Going out to find it, you would encounter a giant pitch black figure with no arms, standing face first into a corner. The procedure tells you to slowly approach it, but to freeze when it stops making noise. A split second after it stops making it's noise, it's head will snap to face you without the rest of the body moving, 180 degrees if it has to. 4 out of 5 times, it will stare at you until it decides to leave, in which the lights snap off and it vanishes the moment it happens. The odd one out though, it will scream and begin stomping towards you, moving at a speed slightly faster than the player. You have to run to the testing chamber and close the metal safety door from the inside before it catches you, and once it's stuck on the other side it'll scream again before the lights flick off and it vanishes.
Now that I think about it, you might have made it so that Susie is the only one who responds to every test, so feel free to have the monster pop up to as many or as little tests as you like!
Finally (and this is the last idea for this game that I'll ever bother you with), I wanted to say something about the "Containment Mode" I suggested in the comment before. I completely get why you wouldn't want to do it, it's quite a bit of work, is basically a separate game and doesn't seem like it fits the story, but I wanted to finalize the idea. This is mainly so I can get it out of my head, but I'd be happy if you had it in case you ever decide to revisit and expand the game (possibly for a $5 Steam release? 0_0 I'd certainly buy it and I KNOW they love scary doll games over there). That being said, I understand if you skip this section if you've decided that you don't even need to consider it.
The main reason I like the thought of this mode so much is because all of your dolls work so well as their own unique puzzles, that it would be a lot of fun to have to juggle several of them at once, like a kind of Mania Mode! To start it off, the job would have you entering a different section of the facility with four rooms connected in a circle; the first has an open pipe on the ceiling, the second has a small cage in it that's too dark to see into, the third has the incinerator and a chair, and the fourth has a breaker box with a power switch. In my concept here, the character you play as will default to holding a camera when they're not holding anything else, that can light up an area in front of you with a brief flash before needing a short recharge time. Before the night starts, you're briefed on the job you're supposed to do, which is to incinerate the dolls that were marked as possessed with the incinerator, but the anti-flammable material that so many dolls have been made out of has damaged the incinerator over time, so the incinerator needs time to reheat itself after every use (indicated by a red light above the incinerator that turns green when ready). As for the thing in the cage, they're not entirely sure that it's possessed yet, but one other employee has not been found since working in that part of the building, and it is possible that this happened because they were the only person so far to stay for more than 10 minutes in the presence of the cage (this effectively works as your timer, your reason to race to complete your job as fast as possible. For maximum terror, edit the maximum amount of time to be about 40 to 15 seconds above what an optimal run would require. I believe the best way to do it is to start with 40 to 15 seconds, then add 1 minute and 30 seconds for every doll, you'll see why in a second). On the bright side, if you go missing, they'll know for sure that the doll in the cage is haunted!
In my concept of how it would play, I broke the job up into separate nights so you would only have to deal with specific bunches of dolls rather than all of them together, but I could see it being one long night if you like that better for story purposes (maybe consider doing that as a hard mode, or rename the stages into hours instead of nights :P), where before each night officially begins you can go into one of the four rooms where you can see all of the descriptions for every doll you'll face in that stage above a table so you can remind yourself of what they do. To start, you'd activate the incinerator, the thing in the cage would have it's eyes start glowing red, and the timer would officially start. In my head, the incinerator takes 1 minute and 30 seconds to warm up, the first doll drops the second the night officially starts, and the dolls keep dropping every minute without your say so, which will quickly make this into a game where you prioritize eliminating the most problematic dolls first.
Before I get to what some of the dolls could do, I want to address your concern that this mode wouldn't really fit with the story, because I think of it like this: Every doll that ends up down here will be thinking similar forms of this statement, "Why the hell do they want to destroy me?! I didn't do anything wrong, I only followed what my instincts told me to do! It was everyone else's fault for triggering my instincts and being where they were when I reacted! And who the hell do YOU think you are to damn me for my actions?!"
I think it works because their rage, denial and grief is a reflection of the main character's and they're fighting just as hard as he is to see the other side of this nightmare. Effectively this traps him in a sort of mental purgatory where he's forced to burn spirit after spirit, each of which clings to the same argument that he did since all of this started.
Now onto what I think the dolls would do (I'm so sorry, I just finished the whole reply and had to come back to warn you that I put EVERY doll currently in the game in this next part. Feel free to skip if it's too long)! Because they're now angry and desperate, several of the dolls have become more aggressive with their powers. Ones with kinder personalities and weaker powers like Abby and Karen won't really do anything yet still work as threats because you need to burn ALL OF THEM before the time limit is up to beat the stage; while ones like Anna and Victoria could frequently shut off the power which pauses the incinerator recharge (or accelerates the cage doll's timer, same thing! Also, Victoria's power outages would feature a 15-10 second time limit to get the power back on)! In order to deal with dolls like Anna, I came up with this idea called "The Time-out Chair". It's a chair that you can put a doll in which will pause their power for 30 seconds before they fall out of the chair and become a problem again, but just holding some of them like Andy is enough to keep them in check. It could even work so that you could sit in the chair to pause the timer, although that might not work in a final product. Clawdia could activate any time you have to flash your camera, flinging herself at you hard enough that if she hits you three times, you die. Maria could hide herself somewhere in one of the rooms to make burning her more of a problem, but Andy who has a similar power with a more aggressive personality could occasionally try to shut off the power! Abby would just make you feel bad :( but Tina is a whole different beast, because if you accidentally get her in your camera flash, she'll have a PTSD attack, scream and race forwards to kill you! When Tracy spawns, a cabinet between you and the incinerator will slam from one wall to the other, making an obstacle that you have to run past with the right timing. Bella could make you waste time with her depression hallucinations. Olga would work much the same as before, but she needs a sound que or something so you know when she's started hunting. While you're dealing with all this, suddenly a voice starts counting down before she's even hit the floor from the pipe, "5... 4... 3..." LILY. Get yourself or her to the chair before she can finish. BunBun could be really unique, in that every 2 minutes he will spawn another BunBun, and if left alone for another 2 minutes, BOTH BunBuns will each spawn another BunBun, at which point you're probably just screwed tbh. Erid's power could evolve so that she would start spazzing out even if you aren't holding her, meaning you would need to put her in the chair to reset her before she can give you a seizure even while you aren't touching her (or you could add a pair of scissors, but idk what else you would use them for other than this)! Finally, Kate would work in a similar way to Erid, forcing you to have to put her in the chair to stop the building from collapsing.
THANK GOD that idea's over it took forever to write and reread it! ;-; I'm glad you got all the way here if you did, thanks for suffering through that with me! ;D Yeah reading it for myself I can see that's a WHOLE SEPARATE GAME, but I really enjoyed the idea and I'm just glad to get it out of me! Oh, and no, I don't really know what dolls would be grouped together for what nights/stages, that's the one part I never managed to figure out, I just know that them being dropped in a random order sounds WAY more fun than in a linear order. :p
Thank you so much for reading all of this if you indeed did, and I don't mind if you don't use any of it, you have a lot on your plate right now I bet! xD Please do let me know if I can help you in any other way, I gotta earn my keep if I'm ending up in the credits! :)
Sorry for the late reply, I wanted to write something to justify the effort it must have taken to write this.
Anyone who inputs just about anything worthy in the game will get some form of credit, if it didn't make it in game, there's still a chance I will credit you for your effort. At the very least, you'll get an answer from me, as I love to read every comment.
Regarding the designs, I have a procedural pick for every part of the doll and it's color, but above that is the type. Most dolls will be rag dolls, but stuff like action figures, ceramic dolls and plushies are a must have :P, all of this has already been implemented, right now, I can just make new hair / body models and eyes / mouth textures, the more there are, the larger the shuffle amount of a lower chance of repetition. When it comes to outfits of professions, that is not something we gave a thought about, and it's certainly a great idea! And the dolls referencing media is also something that we have thought about. Easter egg dolls, like what is pretty much a Chucky doll, are going to make an appearance. I won't say this every time, bjt you can surely expect credits in both the events and in the end-game credits. (They only appear in the normal mode, given that the endless mode is.. endless :P
The TV idea would be a huge event, that certainly can be implemented. I am not sure about the head for TV replacement. Although that too can also be implemented. I like the idea of the new TVs appearing and with some minor editing, this will certainly get added!
Animation is hard, but I would like to bring more of it to the events. Thank you for liking the stillness of the dolls, most of them do only move through the engine's physics or path finding. Susie and Abby are the only two dolls with a skeleton. Susie however is not the only doll to react to every test. In fact there are no such dolls in the normal mode. Susie couldn't initiate the audio and photo, as the power is out throughout the assignment about her.
Ok, so I am actually writing this on the phone on m way to work, so Imma edit this message and I'll give you a valid answer to your big other game mode idea. Sorry that I didn't get to it immediately. Still thought, thank you for your massive interest in the project ❤️
Alright, as promised:
As you mentioned, the mode is pretty much a whole different game, especially after reading your description of how it will work.
A mode, where you juggle with multiple dolls, ones that you've seen before, with the gamemode this time being completely different is interesting but really tough to pull off, here's the thing, as of now, there are a total of 5 titles in the making, mlst of which are far greater then Play Things and that did not include the endless mode update, which is being worked on currently. This game is therefor not going to make an appearance, but some ideas from it can surely be implemented in other aspects, like the dark cage and incinerator!
Regarding the dolls feelings about them being put down there, a lot of them don't feel remorse for their actions. Some are even sadistic, like Bella, Victoria and Tracy. They didn't follow their instincts, rather they are evil by nature. The doll you mostly described was Tina, as she commited a crime by following her instincts, that led her to murder of someone whom she considered a threat. If Tina ended up in this room, your thought process you gave the doll would certainly match!
But here is another thing, and a spoiler if someone is reading this without yet playing the game, the dolls in Normal mode were never real. The whole place never was. The place is a combination of Arnold's workplace and his home. A lot of the furniture found is the same as Arnold's home. And the whole game in the normal mode is just Arnold pinning the blame on something. Your decisions of Bad / Good are Arnold convincing himself that the dolls are guilty / realizing that it's stupid and the dolls are not to blame. I won't be revealing all of these details, as they are up to the player base to discover. The endless mode, is a whole different story, literally. That's also why everything kinda goes there. As to why, that will be explained in the titles / in the update.
The workflow that your idea would bring sounds really fun and extremely challenging! Having to juggle the entire possessed cast of the Normal mode, with every doll that has shown empathy now also being hostile hostile, that is tough! With only really the time out chair to help, it would be one heck of a challange! But as mentioned, the idea as a whole will unfortunately not be implemented / released. But I'll certainly take a lot of ideas and inspiration from it, while of course giving you all the credit you deserve!
Just wanted to say how truly honored I am for you to take such a long time (even creating an account here) to specifically focus on our game. That's amazing and really sweet! Thank you so much! If you have anything to add in, feel free to write again! Also sorry if I missed details from your story, I've read it twice, but writing on the phone is so slow, I tend to slowly forget :P. Thank you again and have a wonderful day!!