Hi after having played Night Shift Secrets for about a few hours I would like to share some feedback. As of build 0.15 (&Patreon build)
First of all I’m quite surprised how well the game is made and animated for such a early build, What I rarely see in games of this nature is some form of restraint, I really got the sense that Matilda is teasing/playing with you and that she is the dominant one trough the animations.
I appreciate that the AI (Matilda in this case) is not too easy too avoid, she sure does gun it once she laid her eyes on you, furthermore the path finding is pretty good so far, In my time I have not seen the AI get stuck due to path-finding. Some of the random elements like a door being slammed near you to both scare you and cause AI to be lured to your locations sure got me good, good stuff.
Some issues/things I encountered:
- I’ve noticed that on stairs the camera jitters upwards, this is likely due to the invisible collision box forming around each stair-step, This could be solved by making a simple collision box around the entire staircase forming of a smooth ramp. I also noticed that on staircases you slow down significantly I don’t know if this intentional or not but for me it breaks the flow when chased.
- I encountered a black wolf character standing in the hallway on the second floor but seemed to not do anything, I assume this is a bug, it seemed to have spawned after lights flickered in the second floor area, I was not able to replicate this as of yet.
- The taunt/lure poses seem to trigger very rarely, and after having done a taunt/lure pose I noticed that the AI can get stuck into place until you trigger them by letting them hear you or see you.
- I noticed once you get grabbed if something interactable is within reach you can still interact with it during the grab.
- Performance wise I notice hitches I don’t exactly know how unity works but as far as I know the most straight forward answer would be that too many objects or sections of a level are combined into the same draw call. I suggest making sure things like this get solved early on as it can be a headache to combine and disassemble objects at the end of development.
- Onto the level/layout, overall the atmosphere of the level is great, it really is spooky, good use of lighting and some dynamic elements, what I am not too sure of is how many of the objective area’s or points of interest only have a single way of getting in or out of them, it doesn’t give the player many options to evade/navigate the the level. I would suggest to connect some places adding more routes between spaces, a possible addition would be adding a hallway between the upstairs and the hallway that leads to the basement.
- Right now you can enter a locker in front of the AI and they will have no idea where you went, but you can also use your flashlight and shine it into the AI eyes when you are in the locker and they will have no idea where you are, I assume this is something that is being worked on also, I suggest looking at other games like Alien Isolation for how they handled the Xenomorph’s AI being able to interact with players hiding in lockers and searching for them.
- When you enter a locker almost exactly at the same time as being caught, you are in the caught mini-game but Matilda is able to still move around with you, when you succeed the mini-game you get teleported back to where she caught you.
- Saw the AI play the animation to open door near a door that was already open, specifically the door to office 5.
-I saw that the printer model has the brand samsung on it, i would highly recommend to change the name on these models as that could lead to legal issues.
Suggestions:
- If I read this correctly there were plans to add voice-acting to some of the characters, Since there are stealth elements in the game I would highly recommend adding voice-lines/sounds to give the player some kind of idea what the AI is thinking, stealth game developers often refer to these lines as “barks”. To add to that I’m sure these lines could be fun and teasing and tell you more about the character.
- I assume this is already being planned/worked on but once you reach game over(after being caught) I suggest some kind animation plays of said animatronic overwhelming/catching the player before the loading screen shows and moves you to the game over scene.
- As for the taunt right now it doesn’t do much, I suggest making this a lure that when the player is close and sees them has to resist or else you get lured towards her and get caught, giving the AI(Matilda) more options to catch the player.
- This is personal preference when it comes to the 3D model of Matilda I feel like she could use some work still, the material/texture itself doesn’t feel quite right to me yet. Perhaps little bit of detail in places around the back area, back of her skull and her tail to make to make these features look a little more interesting. Her eyes look a little strange to me, mostly the eye-balls themselves feel quite flat. I don’t think Matilda’s current clothing looks good on her mainly her shirt (Is this still a placeholder?). What I would suggest, when I checked out the Patreon page the header of the page has art of her where she wears black lingerie clothing that I think would fit her more, of course it does not have to be that specifically. Overall I think leaning towards what she looks like in your references would have made her look the best but that may be too hard and too much work now.
- When I noticed the amount of interactivity I was pleasantly surprised. You can open cupboards, drawers, lockers and turn the lights on or off. Right now there is no reason to actually look in many of those places. If you intend to keep this feature I would recommend giving players a reason to search them. Furthermore to cut down on search time i recommend locking some of them that are empty. Lastly finding some key items to unlock a drawer could be interesting.
- Carrying items as of right now is a little awkward, mostly when you have to get past a door you have to drop the floating item in front of you, open the door and look back down and pick the item back up. When you are getting chased you are better off forgoing the item and running to a locker and hiding, and come back to the item later.
Some issues I ran across that are not the game’s fault by any means:
I’ve tested the game on Linux arch as-well with both Wine 10 and proton hotfix (Steam-deck seems to run the same software) and on those systems the menu background is not visible and the tapes are un-viewable, as-well as the tv jump-scare on the second floor the tv does not display noise. But other than that it is fully functional.
While I don’t often leave feedback on games I hope this helps, great work and good-luck on your project!