This is the second devlog of my third-term project, All Eye Shall Be Closed. It’s an autobiographical game, mainly talking about depression and my anxiety about being watched by others.
Design
After the final decision of making this game in 3D, I followed decided the process of the whole game. In this game, there would be two main events, the first one is to leave the school, and the second is to buy some stuff in the market.
I just sometimes can’t remember to bring keys and cards with me. This caused a lot of problems for me. Every time I went to reception and talked to them that I ain’t bring my key, I feel uncomfortable. I couldn’t help thinking they might be mad at me and then hate me. Every time I would feel I bring a lot of trouble to them. This is the first idea of the events in the game. As an idea, the player wants to leave the school, but he finds he has no keys and then has to ask for the staff’s help to get out. Once the player asks for help, there would be some text showing up, showing how upset the staffs are. Then, the player would find everyone near starting looking at the character.
I’m afraid of crowds, and I think going to shop could be an example showing this. Because this is a thing that most everyone feels there is nothing to be worried about, it could be an idea showing I really have some problems when I do this. In-game, similarly, players could simply get into the market and buy something, then suddenly find everyone is watching.
Environment
I want the environment as real as possible. I think mixing a realistic environment with very abstract and strange elements that are unreal, could bring players a more interesting, curious, and uncomfortable experience. Because I live quite close to LCC, and there is a market located on the way I’m walking home from school, the game is set based on it and I’d like to follow the real location in my game.
However, there was too many useless building for this game, so I decided to only keep the position of LCC, Market, and my home, and deleted some building.
Model
At first, I import the ghost low poly from the unity store. The idea for the human model is, that I want it to keep simple and only focus on the facial features. At first, the white ghost on the right represents the initial state of the people in the game. Once players trigger the event, they would transform into the black ghost with glowing red eyes. At last, players would find a mirror, see in the mirror and realize that I’m the weirdest one, a ghost in between two states.
Playtest
I only have limited feedback, because at this time the project has just started. During the playtest section, I mainly talk to them about what is going to be done in the future and ask for advice, showing them the first-person perspective movement and the environment.
Regarding the model, someone mentioned that this model is too cute. They thought a more realistic mannequin could be used with exaggerated head features. For example, David’s proposal is that the head can be a camera. This suggestion is very useful because I also think that the current model does not fit the theme of the game, and the head features are not obvious enough.
About the environment, people are discussing the light and building’s location with me. First, the scene is too bright for this depression theme. I’m considering disabling the directional light, making the text glowing, and adding some area or point light to make the scene looks darker and depressed.
Also, as I have already deleted some roads and buildings before, people still think there are too many useless places. For example, the player would take a 1-minute walk from the school to the market. They suggest either continuing to delete to make the distance closer or adding something interesting along the way, like interactive stuff, etc.