Hello everyone,
This posts references a previous community post. If you haven't seen it yet, you can check it out here: View game page
Unfortunately, the past month or so has been pretty horrendous in my personal life with lots of illness and lots of loss as well - my girlfriend and I have had to euthanize both of her cats within the span of a week. Managing my full-time coursework with grief has been a challenge and I've had little free time to work on the update, and as of right now I can't give a good timeframe for its release. However, I do have some updates to give in the meantime.
My main focus with the content update is focusing on depth of gameplay, and I gave these bullet points in my last post. I'll keep the same format and give a progress update with more specific details to my plans.
Large addition of features to the core gameplay loop - at the moment, the core gameplay is a simple cycle between phone -> map -> light -> repeat. The 'new interaction' I mentioned involves the cabin windows, where the monster will appear and must be scared away with the player's flashlight. Point 2/3 will be more specific on this. The gameplay-unaffecting feature I referenced is the cabin lights going out, which is currently just for a little spook. I figured that since the monster is repelled by light, I could update this feature to be a moment where the monster can enter the cabin and the player must quickly hide. Of course, the tutorial will be updated accordingly.
Better utilization of outdoor space - most of my tangible progress has come here. To make the outside scarier, I've updated the wind physics of the ambient trees to be much more violent, as if in an actual storm (this was very obnoxious). The monster in the window will force players to get outside around the entire cabin, rather than just back and forth between the searchlight tower.
Better animations - As mentioned in part 2, I've updated the trees to better fit the spooky environment. I've also updated the monster to receive wind physics, so it no longer just stands there. Both the features mentioned in point 1 will be reasonably animated as well.
Again, thanks to everyone for sticking around. I'd love to get this out quick, but I'd prefer prioritizing the quality of features at this point in the development cycle. I really want this game to be good.
Matt Karge