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