It’s that time of year again—the winter/halloween jams are upon us.
S&box is in an extremely shaky state, so not many other groups survived this jam; a lot fell out partway through. However, we persevered and made one of our greatest games yet!
This time, all the previous developers were present, except wheatleymf. BUT, we have another developer joining us
Ubre, Grodbert, Ceitine, rndtrash, Gio, NotGaylien, and our newest member… CyberAgent, who will be helping with maps!
The theme this time was “Urban Legends.”
We dove into a retro PSX-style game to speed up the art side of things while having the flexibility to experiment with special post-processing effects. The concept was a dungeon crawler gameplay within a mansion, with multiple runs and levels, each representing a different urban legend.
I pushed hard to produce models this time, taking advantage of the PSX style to mass-produce them—60 models in total. The goal was to fill three different maps with unique props and items.
Given the unique art style, there weren’t many materials available to fit it, so I created various custom materials with ceitine/shlakos custom shader.
It was my first time making many materials, but they turned out quite nice.
Recognizing that we might fall behind on the shop and the third level, I decided to step in and create them.
While I had never done maps before, I approached it with the mindset that they are somewhat like models.
0: shop_1.jpg
0: bathrooms_1.jpg
Additionally, I set up various map prefabs for myself and Cyber to use in the final two levels, and they turned out really nice! Helped making the maps SUPER quick
For the original idea I had for the game jam, I wanted to go with a home invasion game. I had been watching many clips on youtube of people hearing things outside their house, people screaming, strange noises etc.
I thought it would be super interesting to have a game where you have to prepare your home before some sort of creature invades it. We realized that most “folk lore” happens from within the home and it would kinda make no sense for a person to stay and defend a home from something like a spirit. Most people would run!
So I changed the idea to be more of a home invasion, where YOU’RE the invader breaking in to a house to steal from it not knowing there was a creature inside.
We needed it to be more gamey, since we wanted it to be multiplayer, so we combined my idea with ceitines idea for an rpg voxel explorer game, where now the home you invade has multiple floors, and big areas to loot from. I think this worked out perfectly, and the combined idea was wayyy better than what I originally came up with.
For the final level, I wanted it to be sort of a joke, and it just be straight up the backrooms. We were originally planning to have four levels; the mansion, the dungeon, a library, and the backrooms as a stretch goal if we could.
This got cut back because of time constraint, but the backrooms got changed into the bathrooms by ubre, because honestly, its way funnier.
For the lore, I thought that them slowly figuring out the mansion was a slip into an alternate dimension, where a lovecraftian creature was slowly devouring their emotion would explain the absurdity of the different levels. The lore didnt make it in due to time constraints, but I want to expand the gameplay, and the lore so I will revist working on it.
For the time being, the lore will go under a complete overhaul, also a possible name change, and ceitine and I wrote up a document adding new and unique features to the game so that we can release it to steam when the time is right.
God I love lovecraft.
For the actual work I did, besides being the hideo kojima brain child to the game, I worked closely with luke to design the maps and have the general layout for each level except the bathrooms, which luke and ubre soley did on their own, because during the final day I got caught up with work.
Going forward, I want to use my modeling skills to add things and items to the game, but since I didnt want to throw off luke, and designing the maps was so time consuming, I left that task to him. All the props that I requested he made in less than an hour. He is an insanely talented modeler, and the beauty of the maps is because of his help. Props to luke.
The design for the mansion was inspired by the Ao Oni rpg maker game. Since we were doing an oni, it seemed like a good fit, and I always loved the vibe of that game, and I felt it would translate well to our game. It definitely did. The stair case in the grand area was actually my girlfriends idea. It was originally going to be a small staircase region, but my girlfriend suggested it should be a grand entrance if we were going the mansion route. This worked out perfectly and I think it looks insanely good. Shout out to my awesome girlfriend!
as for the dungeon, I wanted everything in long lines and clausterphobic, I believe there is only one area in the map that is pretty open. I actually made the map too big and ubre had to cut down on the size as to not compromise gameplay. I decorated and set up all the props after I had the layout done, and luke came in with extra models to clean up and make it look extra good, such as the chains and metal balls. luke was truly an mvp for models this go around.
All in all, I think I did an amazing job with the level design, and luke did an amazing job with the props. for the bathrooms that was all ubre and luke and it is amazing as well. It’s probably my favorite level.
early designs of maps:
