The Team
Hello! My name is Caleb, I'm the developer for my team's game. Our team consists of my girlfriend and I. I'll be doing all of the coding and putting everything together in unity, and Lauren (my girlfriend), will be doing the art, and helping me come up with design ideas, whether that be for the character or how the UI will look.
The Premise
So, our game is all about hiding the evidence of a murder. You play as a killer, given the alias "Snowman". He is a deranged hermit, who lived in a cabin he rented from a greedy landlord. But, his greedy landlord kicked him out to turn all of his cabins into vacation cabins, instead of permanent homes. This enraged him, as he loved nothing more than the quiet, serene environment surrounding his isolated cabin, but now he had a choice to either live in the city, or to enact revenge on the owner. Obviously, moving back to the city is not a choice for him, so he decided to get his revenge. But instead of killing the landlord and that being it, he decides to tank the owners business before killing him by murdering every one of the guests in his vacation cabins, leaving the owner with a terrible reputation.
So, the premise is that you watch a cut scene of him murdering the victim, and then, within a certain time, hide the body and all of the evidence within the cabin your in, and leave without a trace. The plan is to have several levels where you have to use a bunch of unique items and interactables to hide/destroy the evidence. Some of these will work brilliantly, the others, not so much. Depending on how well you do, you might get busted, and have to replay the level, or you might succeed, and be able to move onto the next level. I would also like to make it where you can pass the level in several different ways, but depending on how well the development goes, I might have to cut some of these ideas out. No worries though! I can always continue developing it after the jam.
What we have so far
Well, to be short- not that much. I have the basic movement done, and the item system working, but I need some sprites done so I can implement some of the other stuff. As of right now, Lauren is working on a character sprite, and will probably have it done soon. But other than that, I am so excited for the next 2 weeks of development, hopefully this isn't the last time you'll hear of The Snowman! Farewell!
1/25 Update 0 - Character Sprite!
It's been a hot minute, and Lauren has finally finished the base character sprite, and I thought it would be a great idea to post it here, so here is the main character, "The Snowman"
Original Size:
Upscaled:
Welp, that is the end of the first update, hopefully there will be more to come!
1/26 Update 1 - Items, Interactables, and Movement!
Well, it's the second day of the jam, and things are going great! So far, Lauren has that front sprite, and hopefully by the end of the day have some animation for the character and finished UI elements.
I've been hard at work for the first two hours of today, as well as doing some work yesterday. Things are going quite slow, because I'm having to use placeholder assets at the moment, and my art skills are way below average! So far, yesterday I added player movement, and the ability to pick up items. Today, I've added full pickup/drop item functionality, and I've added interactables! Interactables are items in the game that you use, which might play an animation, or do something funny. I've recorded a clip of what I have so far, but beware, it doesn't look pretty at all at the moment.
Due to some cropping issues (whoops), you can't see the item slot fully. But the golden/yellow circle in the bottom right will show what item the player is currently holding. You can see the orange I's, those are the items. Obviously the items in the final-ish product won't be colored letters, its just a placeholder. If the player is within a certain area of the item, you'll see the 'E' button pop up on the screen, meaning the player can pick up the item. Once the player has an item, he can press 'Q' to drop it at his feet.
You can also see the pink X. That is the example of an interactable. You can see that if you are in a certain area of it, just like the item, the 'E' button appears, meaning the player can interact with it. In this example, when the player interacts with the test interactable, it will rotate 360 degrees. Hopefully this is the beginning of some really cool items and interactables.
Well, that is the end of progress update 1. Hopefully I'll have some more to show later today!
1/26-1/27 Update 2 - Bodies, Blood, Evidence, and Animation!
Well, I didn't exactly make it to "later today", but we've been hard at work adding some stuff to the game, and it has progressed quite a bit from the last time I updated it, so here we go.
First off, now we have some cooler (still placeholder) looking items, that actually look like things in the game. Not only that, but we now have a body that the player can carry around, and a weapon the player can carry as well. Also, I've implemented hiding spots, aka places to hide the body, and destructables, which are places to destroy the evidence (weapons).
Not only that, but Lauren got me some wooden floor tiles that look much better than that pesky brown cube! So that's really cool, but let me show you what we have...
So, in the video you can see those new tiles I talked about, very nice in my opinion. Also, you see the new UI elements in the top left. That is the players checklist. In every level of the game, the player will have to Hide/Destroy the body, clean up the blood and other gore, and then hide the remaining evidence, like weapons. The mechanic is fully implemented, as you can see when I complete each task the X turns into a checkmark. The plan is to have a door where the player can leave at any time, but if he doesn't finish the checklist, he'll get caught. You can see that I pick up the testing Body, and bring it to that weird crate. That weird crate is the placeholder for a spot that the player can put the body in. What happens is the body gets removed from the players item slot, and then the body is marked as hidden in the checklist. For the blood, you have to interact with it when you have the mop equipped, and it will be cleaned and checked off the list. The evidence works exactly the same as the body.
You can also see that now when you're over an item, it will display the name of the item, and the item slot also displays what item you are holding.
Other than what has been implemented, Lauren has been hard at work for the latter part of today/yesterday, working on the player's walk animations. So here is what she has.
Here you can see the players walk animation when facing towards the camera
And here is a progress shot of the walk animation from the side-view
And this is another frame of the side-view, which just needs the arms moved
Overall, day 2 was a really productive day for me, and Lauren has done some really good work so far. Hopefully school won't get in the way too much tomorrow, and I'll hopefully be able to post an update!
1/27-1/28 Update 3 - Character Animation Complete!
Well, I completely missed the chance to work yesterday, except for the very early morning, AKA like 1 am. I had school, and after me and Lauren both had some things to do after school, but she did make some significant progress, but I wasn't able to implement anything sadly. But, today I was! So, let me just show you what we have.
Yeah, not that much has changed besides the character, well- nothing has changed but the character. But you can see that each direction has a walk cycle AND a idle! Isn't it just so beautiful, lets just congratulate Lauren for her hard work! Sadly though, that is the only update I have for you right now, hopefully school won't get in the way as much anymore, and we'll be able to come back with a huge update soon!
1/29-1/30 Update 4 - More Tiles and Cool Sprites!
Well, it's been a hot minute, as I haven't posted since the 28th, but that doesn't mean progress has been stagnant. Lauren has knocked out a lot of the art, especially tiles, and I have- well, done nothing but implement them into the game. I'm at the point where I'm waiting for the art assets so I can add the finishing touches, which include an exit and a main menu, but I feel that I should wait a bit to do so. Anyways, here is a look at all the new sprites and tiles in action!
In the video you can see a lot of progress! Walls, windows, a painting that has an irl reference. Not only that, but the campfire has grown into a fully animated fire place! The body sprite is amazing, and the blood is as well. The new weapon sprite is great, and the mop sprite is too. The mop now also has a cool change once you use it on blood to be bloody, and I'm playing with the idea that that should become evidence as well... I guess we will see if that gets implemented or not. Anywho, that is the end of the update for now, I hope you guys are excited to see where this project goes, just like Lauren and I are. See you next time!
1/30-2/7 Update 5 - Game Submitted!
Hey everyone! First off, I'm really sorry about not posting to the devlog recently. I got sick last weekend, and spent all the time in bed dying. But after that, I started slowly progressing on the game, and well, its ready for submission. Now there is something else I need to address:
This version of the game, the one I've submitted, well, its not exactly beautiful or anything. Being my first game jam, I had to look over my most wanted features in favor of getting a working prototype out before the deadline. Thus, a lot of the features planned haven't came to fruition as of yet, but this is a perfectly fine demo/prototype to express what my idea is. I had more things I could have added, but since me and Lauren have been on meltdown mode in anticipation of the deadline, a lot of the stuff we have ready to put into the game, I decided we'll have to take a break before we get on it.
The future of this game is simple. While I truly love the game, it really is in an early state. But, the future is bright, because Lauren and I are definitely going to continue developing this game, and hopefully releasing it on steam! So if you really enjoy the idea/look of the game, I hope you'll be on the lookout for future devlogs from me. Anyways, the game has been submitted, and if you'd like to try it out, here is the link!
https://alpacus.itch.io/the-snowman
Thank you for following this devlog if you have, and if you're just seeing this, thank you for taking the time out of your day to look at it. I hope you enjoy the game if you do!
(My girlfriend insists that his real name is Gregorny, but you didn't hear that from me
