Stay hidden, find your father.
About finding your father. One of the tools we'll give the player while searching for hidden clues and solving puzzles, is the journal.
Early on in playtesting we decided we wanted a journal that would help the player organise information. The journal has two functions.
Guidance– Johnathan keeps you on track
The first function is to help you along. Each time you find a piece of the puzzle, or an object you can interact with, Johnathan will write a note of it in his journal. This helps you keep track of all the different puzzles you've come in contact with, what it is John is looking for, and sometimes even holds clues to the nature of the things you are missing.
Our 2D artist started making little sketch pictures to each of the entries. A crazy amount of work, but we liked it so much that we decided to keep the feature!
Detective – Delve into the chain of events
Secondly, the journal is to help make sense of the story and all the collectibles you find. Engaging with the history of each of the characters isn't mandatory, as not each player likes sifting through old photo's, recordings, secret government files to search for clues.
But for the players that do like that sort of stuff, you are in luck. Depending on the subject of the collectible you found (be it recording or a secret file), Johnathan will store it in one of three timelines. Chains of events that somehow explain the situation you are currently in.
At any time during the game you can open up the journal and browse your timeline entries, to see if there are any connections you've missed.
We're very happy with how this makes you feel like the detective, instead of just giving you all the background information through a narration line.
What do you think of the journal? You can already test it out in the demo on Here on Steam.
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