itch.io

A photographic adventure of journalistic intent

    I am creating a game loosely based on the Arthur Conan Doyle short story of the same name. You are following up on the investigations of Joyce Armstrong who has discovered the invisible creatures of the Sky Jungle, an airborne landscape of flying creatures that exist above the clouds. These creatures have started invading the highest floors of skyscrapers and it is your job to investigate and document these new species. If your photos are convincing, you can start a new chapter in scientific research. If poorly framed or shot from far away, your work will be seen as more conspiracy garbage and ignored. Can you convince people of the truth?

Monsters of different shape and size will wander the office with their own behaviors and means of interaction. Some will be benign and the difficulty will be getting them close enough to take a good photograph. Some will be dangerous and the difficulty will be getting away.

These creatures have evolved to be invisible to the naked eye. Only their interactions with the world around them can be seen without the aid of your camera. Here a snail creature from the sky jungle has started using a soda can as its shell. The can is visible normally but only with your phone can the creature itself be seen peaking around its home.
I am building a system to gauge framing and distance of the pictures you take., using a system of Points of Interest built into the models. When enough of these points of interest are in frame and not blocked by line of sight the framing is considered to be good and your photo score will go up. Taking a picture of only part of a creature will result in a lower score. Some creatures will be able to hide their points of interest (like a turtle can hide its head and limbs in danger) and will need to be interacted with to get the best pictures. Currently there is only one interactive creature in the game right now that hides itself but can be drawn out with music from a radio that needs batteries.

This has been an attempt to create a game from the ground up to practice multiple disciplines. I have made most of the code, models, textures, and animations all from scratch save for a few pngs for things like a radio, skybox, and outside buildings. I've been trying to see how the different parts of the game dev process work and which ones I might most enjoy.

There are several more creatures planned to liven up the office and many more rooms that need furnishing before they can be explored. The lighting is currently on its first pass and needs a lot more attention before the spooky mood starts hitting right. The classic horror-notes-scattered-about system is still being filled out and will end up with some voice acting to bring the character of Joyce Armstrong to life. The end plan is to also allow the player to name the creatures (you are the first to discover them after all) to hopefully allow for some fun madlib situations for the ending dialogue.
I am also just learning the Itch.io systems so the themes on the store page will also need some updating.

For right now I have an alpha that should be working on PC without to many performance issues. Please check it out if you have a chance.
https://devoles.itch.io/horror-of-the-heights
Password: TechAlphaReview

Nice, classic sorta escape game.
The QWE control was a little awkward as I'm used to just clicking options but I got used to it. Maybe hide the "..." options or replace them with "Do Nothing" to be clear they aren't options.
Same thing with the camera. I thought the camera tracking was broken until I did a full 360 and realized you didn't need to turn much. If possible, lock the camera to the important angles so the player doesn't get lost.
All the puzzles made since and the chemical pouring was fun. I was glad to see it didn't require exact measurements. This let me finish the puzzle when I knew the solution even though I accidentally went a little over.

Good job!

Now works perfectly without any additional installs.

It's a pretty serviceable asteroid style game. Well done!

It all depends on what you're going for. An instant but limited check to see if a board space still doesn't require much work on the part of the player. Either the space is infected or not and the player can go there or not. That doesn't add too much to the strategy. Some part of the mechanic will need some skill to use effectively. Either acquiring charges of the ability need to be skill based or the information given is not 100% accurate (Like the space only says the distance to the nearest infection not direction, or number of infections around it but not positions, like minesweeper). Something to make sure that someone who thinks about the ability can use it better than someone who doesn't.

Just the thoughts off the top of my head, though.

Can't start the game as it seems to require python38.dll.

"The code execution cannot proceed because phython38.dll was not found. Reinstalling the program may fix this problem." is the error.

Reinstalling did not fix the error. A quick google offers the file available to download online but not being the most tech savvy person I'm not excited about installing software I know nothing about when I'm not sure if it will even fix the issue.
Is this something that can be fixed on the Pygame side? Maybe removing the dependency or including necessary software in the installer?

No glitches, no hangups, no controls doing what they shouldn't. Seems to be perfectly solid in terms of construction.
There do seem to be some issues for me when it comes the game states. In something like Minesweeper (which you mention) the game state is always the same: You have uncovered tiles, covered tiles, and all the information necessary to tell what surrounds the uncovered tiles. Thus your purpose at any time is to determine what is under the covered tiles and uncover them if they are safe.

This game doesn't have a state like that where I can know for sure what I'm doing.

• I first thought my purpose was to keep all of my units healthy but with random hidden diseases this is purely luck until I hit one and the unit coughs. (Consider having a limited number of cures at the end so the first expected sick units are forgiven and the player isn't punished unless they play poorly and get further units sick).
• Then I thought my purpose was to keep the number of sick units low by keeping the healthy ones off of sick trails and not putting them adjacent. Unfortunately the win condition is all units adjacent at the top so as long as one unit is sick they will all be sick, as masks are infrequent and rarely a viable option, so I might as well brute force all units to the top when someone coughs just so at least no one dies. (Consider having the top be ICU beds or something so units "lock in", can't move but also can't pass on the disease when they hit the top. Or maybe some units are medical professionals and are always equipped with masks and you need to use them as a wall to 'quarantine' sick units from healthy units at the top).
• Then I was confused as the only win condition seemed to be never hitting a virus which ended up happening a lot as if I found a single safe path to the top, all other units could follow it and be guaranteed to be safe. (This is a bit more of a doozy to fix. You have to let units interact with each others' paths otherwise each unit is just a random chance to get infected moving in their own space, and you can't change the board state to possible invalidate a safe path because then all motion on the board is random chance to get infected).

Dealing with the disease is the main mechanic but without the information of someone being sick there is no information at all. You don't start interacting with the game mechanic and planning movement until symptoms show but symptoms showing means you've gotten closer to the failure state (all sick or dead). Getting the best score (no one sick) isn't something that can be achieved by smart play but purely by luck (finding a safe path to the top).

As a classic thinking sort of game like minesweeper there is too much randomness that can affect your score and too great an emphasis on fast thoughtless movement at the moment. You have a solid base, though, so with more iteration you can definitely clear that up.

Good work so far, looking forward to what comes next!

I'm a big fan of chess puzzles so this game is interesting to me.
Mechanically it's quite solid and leaves a lot of design space open for different challenges like enemies that change their threat areas on each move, ways to manipulate enemy positions, or new ways for your characters to move.

However I had some difficulties with the visual side that prevented me from enjoying the game.
Light green and light blue are very hard to tell apart and was starting to give me a headache once I got to enemies with both robot and spirit attack spaces. Changing the hue or the brightness would help tell the two types of danger apart at a glance with little effort. In the future, as the attack ranges are such an important part of the game play, it may be worth developing different art assets for the different dangers. Targeting reticle or electric wires for robots, runes or ghostly hands for spirits.
A similar effect can be found when the two controllable characters get close as the yellow of the lantern, the light on the floor, and the orange-ish of the robot all start to bend into each other and become a visual mess, which is a shame as the sprite work is quite nice otherwise. Consider borders around sprites, differentiating of colors/values.
Some greater feedback for character selection would be nice. The feint yellow box below them is hard to see on some spaces so a confirmation sound from the unit, like you can hear in may RTS games, or a quick animation would guarantee I know who I have selected and will prevent accidental moves.
It's a minor point but on the dialogue boxes an "A" in a circle made me think it needed a controller rather than hitting the "A" key. Either putting it in a box to better indicate a keyboard or allow other input like space or left click to also cycle through dialogue might be good.

I'm seeing a lot of potential here, though. Keep up the good work!

It's a pretty solid and serviceable brick breaker!

It does need something to make it stand out, though. Maybe the bricks can move down the screen to give some urgency or blocks can fight back with projectiles so you can't always sit still and set up the perfect shot.

Music in the options screen would help with balancing the volume and a time limit on the more useful power-ups could bring some difficulty back. It's pretty hard to lose with a max size sticky paddle.

Overall: Well done!

Greetings and salutations!

My name is Joe and I'm jumping into the deep end of game development after some years of university and brief stint in an e-training company.

I've ended up in a Jack of all Trades, Master of None situation as I'm lacking the experience that years of success and failure can bring. To put my skill set to the test, and see what shines and what stinks, I'm in the last stages of making a demo with Pokemon Snap like photo mechanics in a horror themed office. Hopefully I'll get that demo out on here soon once I can get the UI scaling in Unity to stop twisting itself into a twisted heap of pained text boxes and sprite images that beg for the sweet release of death.

I grew up on old Shareware CDs, playing demos and trials, so I'm looking forward to reliving that a little bit though experiencing all the games I can find on here.

I've always wanted to get more involved in the indie communities so I look forward to getting to know the people on here and talking games, design, or just whatever comes to mind.

Have a nice day!

I really liked the buildup and payoff for the closet scare. The premise of someone who's suffered so many nightmares they're starting to predict them is quite interesting.

When I interacted with the sink the first time the camera spun around but there was no audio or visual change. Was something supposed to happen or is it just spooky ghosts grabbin' my camera?
Great work, keep it up!