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Devlog 1: A new beginning
We got greenlight!
After two days of discussions, conceptual tinkering and two very unorganized pitches, we finally got greenlight for our new project: Shadow Diver.
Story
Our story takes place in the SCP-Universe. You play as SCP – 6743, a young boy who had to endure gruesome experiments in order to get his body seperated from his shadow. When things went wrong, the research facility – originally camouflaged as a school – was closed, and SCP – 6743 was left to die.
SCP – 6743 has only one target: He wants to escape the facility and return to his parents.
Gameplay
Taking the role of SCP – 6743, you will have to solve riddles based on our never before seen „shadow diving mechanic“: Arrange light sources and shadows in the correct way, and use the protagonists special ability, the „shadow dive“, to move through them. The ability enables the player to enter and leave shadows at any point and use them as a medium of transportation.
Devlog 2: Raw material
The first day after the greenlight got everyone in the team excited: We finally had some material to look at and to draw inspiration from (see below).
Above you can see our concept arts for the protagonist and the test level.
Our programmers were already able to hand us some basic representation of how the mechanics would work in-game and also gave us impressions about how shadows can be utilized in the Unity Engine.
Devlog 3: Things are taking shape
Things are going quite good! Our programmers developed our core mechanic far enough, to offer space for some fancy puzzle design and we finally have the first assets at hand.
We also started working on a soundtrack and an introduction sequence, set to the soothing voice of Florian, who is not only our sole voice actor, but also one of our programmers.
But now to the juicy part:
What will our game contain? We already have the design for two additional rooms, we will have a fully animated, flashed out main charakter with his own story line. The puzzels will consist of several elements that need to be arranged correctly: light sources, levers, moveable crates and platforms. We will also have a very minimalistic soundtrack and some sound effects.
The prototype will be released via itch.io on monday, so stay tuned for more!
Devlog 4: Did he just say „polishing“?
This is it! The game jam is almost over, our game mechanics work and people start acting funny: It’s polishing time! (fun fact: programmers and artist actually don’t need to sleep).
But what is going to happen within the next few days?
Yesterday, the marketing team started working on our intro cutscene. A soundtrack will also be provided by the marketing team.
The particle effects and a final, overhauled version of the textures are coming! We will also have more object models, a menu-screen and a toned down version of the soundtrack, that will be played when players access the menu. Apropos sound design: There will be sound effects for object movement, player movement, button useage.
