itch.io

Thank you so much for playing, and for 2 hours?! Well I'm either humbled you enjoyed scanning through every nook and cranny in the game (which is something I love to do when playing games), or I sincerely apologize that you had to spend 2 hours in the game! Either way, prepare for an essay to address your detailed feedback.

Yeah I liked having the sort of logic puzzles interspersed amongst the creepy atmosphere. The balance of horror to puzzle/escape room game is planned to lean towards more horror in the future, but I definitely want to retain the puzzle/problem-solving aspect. The Penumbra and Amnesia series were a huge influence on this project if it wasn't obvious, Penumbra in particular. And I think those games were quite good about having decent puzzles and strong horror elements.

The use of lights was definitely deliberate, especially for the first vent and the tunnel sequence. I knew I didn't want any form of map markers and I wanted to avoid the player having to wander around too much, which so far seems to have been mostly avoided. Using lights for telegraphing the way forward I think was good for immersion, atmosphere and clarity.

I'm happy you liked the music, it was my first ever attempt at crafting music on my own and I was kinda worried it might clash with the mood of the game.

Yes the monster sneaking into the elevator has been an issue ever since I submitted the build for my final project in university. The AI is supposed to be locked once you hit the button inside, but I wasn't able to sort that bug out. I assure you, I plan to fix that in the next major version hahaha!

The controls were initially intended to be editable, which is why they look like they can be changed. But sadly getting the game together took priority over allowing controls to be changed. I should have changed it to just a simple list, but for me the AI and interaction fixes were a greater priority than odds and ends.

Yes UI is effectively default with the exception of parts of the widget screen. I still consider this a prototype, as indicated with the low version numbers, so basically my goal was just that it worked and was mostly intuitive.

The texture for the monitor is very rough, it was a free asset from the unity store so it was used for expediency. Doesn't make it any prettier, but saved me time and effort.

The ability to move doors and drawers by the player moving around is definitely planned to be added. It actually existed in earlier versions of the prototype, but when I changed the mouse interaction to be more refined per interaction type (door, drawer, level, wheel, etc.) that feature was lost and I didn't have time to add it back in. The reason for going with the mouse movement rather than just a simple button press is I find it to be more immersive (and a number of players have said something similar), it can allow greater granularity in stealth sections (granted this part wasn't properly explored in the demo) and it can create more tension (debatable as to the success of this part in this particular demo). Early on I had planned to just have simple open/close animations if the physics interaction was received poorly by players, but so far it seems to be liked with a few exceptions that I plan to address in future updates. The single up/down movement I had tried at one point but it felt off to me, but that may be more subjective.

So the computer doesn't add a hole and rubble, the implication is that something tunneled out of the hole in the wall and collapsed the passage back to the long hallway. That something being the monster encountered at the end of the demo. Now of course the tunnel is kinda comically big for the monster to have been able to dig it, especially so quickly. That I attribute to my lack of experience and knowledge of Realtime CSG, the map editor I used to make the level. Because I didn't know how to precisely set the size of the opening, so the default sizes it would "snap" to were either too big like it is in the demo, or too small for the player to even fit through. Fun fact: this collapsing/digging of tunnels was an alleged trait of the "Toronto Tunnel Monster" a fairly obscure cryptid the monster in Sub Mortis is based off of. Also you're correct, opening/unlocking the door on that particular computer does nothing, the tunnel collapse triggers when you exit the monitor.

Save system is a big issue for this game, I have a save system made for a later game that was initially branched off this game. But adding that save system back to Sub Mortis would've been a herculean task,. And since I plan to basically reboot this project with the improved mechanics of later projects it wasn't worth the time.

Yeah the time on the computers is always 12:21 too, I wanted to add a realtime clock, but that fell down the priority list pretty quickly.

I know another player mentioned the smartphone blocking too much of the players view, which is an issue I can address easily enough. But the lack of fun or depth with the phone I think is just due to how little its required for 90% of the demo. Once you're past the first room its not required (outside of the flashlight) which is just a result of my horrible design choices brought about by lack of sleep and crunching my last week of school. I envision it serving basically every function that a traditional 2D menu would provide, but more diegetic and thus more immersive. With the phone UI I also found it fairly easy to convert the more gamey aspects into something a bit more believable. The inventory app and the visibility widget are probably the least realistic, but I think once you actually play around with it a bit its not as ridiculous as first thought. I did initially think about having a separate inventory screen apart from the phone, but it didn't make sense to section out just one part of the UI by itself. So for this prototype build, I think you're right it could've been done with a typical inventory  screen, but for what I have planned I'm confident I can make it more engaging and sensible.

The object manipulation as you said suffers from the same issues as the phone, kinda cool but serves no purpose at the moment. For the larger extended game I'm planning to create from this (I estimate a 2-5 hour game made over the course of a few years) I have several ideas planned out for how it could be used. Now it could very well be that those ideas don't work as well when the rubber hits the road, but I want to give the manipulation options a real chance before scrapping them.

Yeah the feedback regarding stealth in the game has made me realize just how poorly the enemy encounter is designed. The vent sounds signaling the monsters entrance are too quiet, and the monster takes too long to walk to and drop down from the ceiling (its not a one-off scripted animation, the monster can jump/crawl through vents dynamically). And the fact that the stealth elements in the game are never really utilized before this point magnifies the issues. The visibility meter could be easily missed by players, as once you turn the flashlight on you never need to turn it off. And the audio level could be ignored for most of the game.

I should note that there is a scripted chase scene if you manage to sneak past the monster. It drops down out of a vent outside the storage room as soon as the player crosses that pit. I wanted on chase scene, especially since I wanted to test how much tension having to manually rotate the wheel crank could cause compared to say just holding down a button.

The "vent-loop" was meant to be used either by players who wanted to try to hide from the monster by going around the long way, or to be used as an attempted escape route by players who were spotted by the monster. This latter reason was so the monsters ability to crawl through vents like the xenomorph in Alien: Isolation could be shown off, and scare the player by demonstrating that the monster wasn't a dumb chase AI. Of course to my knowledge, that has never happened.

As I alluded to earlier, there actually is a visibility indicator. The light bulb icon displays how illuminated the player is, with the center section changing from black when the player is in shadow and basically invisible, to white where the player is fully illuminated and visible. Turning the flashlight on not only makes the player visible, but it makes them visible from further away. It also changes the monster field of view to 360 degrees. But, as I said once players turned the flashlight on and they saw the lightbulb go full white, they probably assumed it was just a flashlight indicator. And the fact that its a visibility indicator is only really mentioned in a brief hint. In later version I plan to make a more subtle tutorial than having a popup explain the stealth system, mainly because I hate those types of tutorials lol.

The file size is exacerbated by the number of imported assets that were never used. It used to be 500mb+ before I changed the compression for textures and audio files. The file size will definitely be smaller in future versions.

I'm aware of that bug, its actually since been fixed in recent projects, same with the item highlight not moving when rotating an item. So that will definitely be fixed in the next version.

I'm not sure the exact cause of this bug, there's only one option per resolution when I play in editor, but in the build I get two. I'll have to look into that since I still have not figured out an answer.

The black colour on the back of the seat is actually part of the texture the asset came with. There are no baked lights in this game, they didn't work with the light-based visibility system.

That is actually fully intentional, hence why the button on the door is rotated slightly and has no emissive light coming of the button. Its to make the player go into the storage room and encounter the monster.

TL;DR You have excellent points but I like immersion and I screwed myself over by working on the mechanics for 3 months but put the final level together in 3 days.

Thanks so much for the detailed feedback and for trying to break my game in multiple ways! I love hearing about people playing around with the jank in my games and exploring the weird ins and outs. I'm glad you enjoyed it overall and hopefully when I come out with a vastly improved version next year, you'll enjoy it even more!