Hello!
As an intro to me, I wear a lot of hats, but primarily I am a writer, a composer/sound designer, as well as a programmer.
I began working on this project a few days ago as an exercise to learn Unreal Engine, but I also really would love to meet other anti-capitalist game people, so I am very potentially open to doing this in Unity!
As a writer I love to use Ink. I have my own Ink-driven Visual Novel-esque story engine written in Unity, and I'm planning to integrate Ink's c++ port, assuming this project continues in Unreal.
=== The Concept ===
The concept is a narrative-focused first person surreal horror-comedy-thing about living in a cursed apartment building run by a faceless corporate landlord. Your companion NPC in this game is a Support Technician from Bangladesh named Mira. Mira helps you figure out how to fix things around your apartment -- which keep breaking because the corporation which owns your home only cares about its bottom line.
Eventually, you realize that, even with as terrible a landlord as you have, the bathtub shouldn't break three times in 20 minutes, the TV shouldn't be cutting randomly between disturbing vistas into the depths of other dark realities. There's also that puddle of blood forming on the ceiling... Mira recommends you check out the apartment above you--Room 313, in case someone needs help.
Inside Room 313, you find the puddle of blood, as well as an answering machine in the middle of a huge ritual circle, a Seal of God. Mira recommends you leave the room. But the door is sealed shut.
And there's someone speaking to you, a man. Somehow, he's speaking through the answering machine. He says he's your neighbor. Can you please help him fix this mess and free him? All you need to do is complete the ritual he started, that will free him and the demon he was trying to summon will appear and grant you a wish...
This, along with some evidence to suggest that the man on the answering machine may not really be your neighbor after all, presents the player with a final choice: Free this "man" in hopes of a wish, or find out what really happened in Room 313...
===Planning===
The Protoype so far uses the Unreal first person template, and is very basic. I've got a basic low-res aesthetic, as well as 1 fully interactible Door. It really can go in any direction from a gameplay standpoint.
But the MVP plan is to build out several little interactible objects, such as Journal objects, light switches, doors, and broken appliances.
To fix an object, you need:
- The right Tool for the job, such as a certain remote for the TV, or a screwdriver to reattach a fallen light.
- The right usage of the Tool. Hit the radio hard or soft? If you guess wrong, sometimes nothing will happen. Sometimes, something horrible/surreal/goofy will happen.
So the basic game loop is:
- Find a Broken Appliance.
- Find the Right Tool.
- Use the Right Tool in the Right Way
- The Appliance is Fixed! Rewards?
===Programmers===
I have almost no experience in C++, so was hoping to accomplish this Jam mostly through Blueprints. If you have no experience in Unreal but would like to use this as a vehicle to learn, like I am, that's ok!
If you only program in Unity, but are really interested in this concept, well who knows, maybe we can use Unity..
===Art===
Due to the horror theme, and the general constraints of a Jam, I've been working towards a PSX horror style aesthetic. Otherwise, no strong art direction has been chosen yet. I'm very used to working with artists, so I can definitely help with art direction / finding a palette / etc.
The project is very open to ideas which leverage your particular skills, but some general use cases for art are as follows:
Opportunities for 2D Art:
Mira NPC Character portrait and expressions. This is technically a stretch scope-wise, unless we had someone really devoted to it, but would be nice for the companion character to have a portrait
Model Textures, such as a ritual pentagram drawn on wood), satirical corporate apartment art, etc
Opportunities for 3D Art:
Apartment Architecture. I have a first pass of the walls/doors of the apartment already drawn up in Blender for what I've been prototyping, but am not precious with my work!
Modeling Props. There's a lot of open source PSX style tools and props found online we can use, but there may be special props that need to be hand made.
Monster Model + Animations: This is a horror game. At one point, a monster just has to chase the player. There are open source PSX Monster models that I was planning to choose from, but an original monster design is even better =)
===Interested?===
Please contact me here or on discord @ mrgrumbles
I will ask if you have past work to show, but this is just to see if our styles mesh. I'm open to any and all experience levels.
Past Projects:
- Life in a Cube - short silly text adventure on my now 10 year old website
- Diary Of - GMTK 2023 Game Jam Entry, my first jam ever!
- DeadLabour, a surreal Twin Peaks-inspired Visual Novel/RTS project in Unity. I currently have a fairly buggy but decent demo for the game, but it's slightly too big to upload to itch.io. I can get it to you if you're really curious...
