Ye I know the feel haha! I think it's essential for a game jam to be conscious of how a scope grows and it does grow hella fast! I'm still learning not to plan to many features so the ones I implement are well polished. I'd say something inspired but I got nothing. Something like doing less but better? Idk.
Viewing post in The Evil Clergyman jam comments
We did almost everything we agreed on before hands. We dropped some ideas as soon as we had them by questionning their relevance in the final gameplay as different steps sounds depending on the surface or being able to bait the enemy by throwing items. For the rest, we divided task into "core" and "stretch goals" and implemented the stretch goals after we were done with everything. For example the stress level of the character was added 3 hours before the end of the jam ^^ We all think it adds to the "immersiveness" but it was not mandatory for the game to work out.
I gotta mention the fact that we had some bits of code that we reused from other projects (part of the player controller and the AI were pre-existing) and also that the sound designer and I almost worked full time on this for 1 week straight.
most of Lovecraft's work share references from occultism and history of religion, the questions are an addition (I believe if I would change something maybe the info in the story button would be a collectible item, so it wouldn't look something you should guess as a file).
The original story is about an Anglican priest who is forsaken by banished books that were persecuted by the modern inquisition, in the original tale there is this hut, the man becoming the Anglican priest and gazing this apparitions in the mirror, also the weird flashlight with the purple glow.
The ID inside the lake is with the name of a character of another Lovecraft's tale, Asenath Waite which was the former witch wife of Derby Pickman, character that named the Derby Pickman Foundation which is mentioned in another tale called at the mountains of madness.
Her image is a reference of another woman called Lady Frieda Harris, which illustrated the Tarot of Thoth made by Aleister Crowley since Waite is a reference to a family of one of "Crowley's rivals", who else invented one of the most famous tarot decks.
Another references such as the Arkham Advertiser can be found in another short tales from Lovecraft 's works.