Godot Wild Jam 46 Submission

The game has been submitted and I made use of the extended upload period to fix some of the game-breaking bugs that plagued the non-debug build versions of the game. I thought I'd rundown a quick little list of things I was trying to do with the game, what I achieved, what didn't get done and how I'd like to improve the game in the future.

Features

The game was designed to be a sneak-em up with the player running through the levels, avoiding detection until, finally, they make it to the possessed house and defeat the evil eldritch eye!

Basic movement

Basic movement works fairly well though the camera can be a little temperamental.

Jumping

I ended up not implementing jumping though I have some ideas how I could use this if I flesh out the game, clambering onto ledges away from danger, a bit of sewer platforming etc.

Sprinting

Sprinting works as I hoped though the stamina might be a little punishing. I did try increasing the regen rate and decreasing the stamina drain time but I think it still needs some tweaking.

Crouch/Hiding in the environment

I added several areas of long grass in which the player can't be seen, as long as they crouch. This works pretty well but it doesn't adapt to the terrain or allow for customisable areas so I feel like this could be improved upon. I also added a mixture of hedges and plants that

Collectables to Unlock the House

My original idea was that the player would have to sneak around the level, collecting, say, 5 objects from the map in order to weaken the eye and allow entrance to the house. Unfortunately while this was largely in place, I didn't manage to finish it and it's now just a straight shot to the house, avoiding the eye's gaze and any nearby enemies.

Enemies

There are two basic enemy types in the game. The children who are forced to do the Eye's bidding and the Shadow Self who awakens when alerted to the player's presence by the Eye. The idea was to have many children working around the level, either digging at the ground or patrolling. If they spotted the player they would give chase and grab onto the player, slowing them down for a time before falling off. I realised early that this would be too hard to implement with all the other things to do. I settled on the idea of having the children kick the player but I had some trouble with the state machine. I think with a little more time this should be solvable, perhaps even adding in random behaviour between kicking and 

The Shadow Self works almost as I had hoped it would. Once alerted it ceaselessly chases the player, however the one thing I didn't get to implement is that it should speed up when it can see the player. This just requires a detection area and a raycast, it will be very easy to implement. I have a niggling feeling that the Shadow Self should speed up when the player can't see it to rubber band and make its sudden appearance a little creepier but once the level is fully fleshed out I think it might be better to keep it as it is, perhaps allowing it to "cheat" by traversing certain objects the player can't.

The Eye

The eye works mostly as intended. It might be nice to smooth some of the behaviours a little, like when it stops tracking the player it snaps back to its previous route. It might also work to have the fireballs track the player just a little, maybe even calculating a falling trajectory.

The Neighbourhood

My original concept was to generate an entire, stylistically realistic neighbourhood to explore, hide and find the best optimal route to the Eye. This stayed my goal throughout but certain engine bugs just kept me from being able to fully flesh out the layout as much as I wanted.

The House

The house I'm quite proud of, it works almost exactly as I wanted. I would have liked to maybe make some weirder endless corridors like a left-right zig zag or an infinite loop around but these can be added. My main concern is with one of the transportations that tends to flip the player model for a split second, slightly ruining the effect. I also really would like to flesh out the design to make it look REALLY worn down and possessed.

I also feel like it might be a little hard to decipher the positioning of the "exits" from the endless corridors. I made it so the door pops open slightly. I feel like adding a little light behind the door and some more varied textures would really help sell it. I was also considering making it so that each door slams closed behind you but I feel like leaving the doors in the state that they were left by the player hopefully helps show that there is a repeating pattern to solve.

Things to Improve Post-Jam

• Improved camera
• Dialogue/exposition and/or a tutorial
• The neighbourhood map needs finishing
• The enemies need better navigation and state machines
• It would be nice if some of the houses had interiors
• Better lighting, materials and shading
• Some extra enemies might be good
• A few levels between the start of the neighbourhood and the house
• A prologue of the player's house with a similarly non-Euclidean layout could sell the weirdness occurring before they even get outside.

Some of the above improvements were already in the works during the jam but the weekend ended up being less free than I had hoped.

Conclusion

Overall I quite like this game, mechanically it's probably one of my simplest games, however the scope of the levels and some weird engine bugs caused me some issues with completing the game. At one point I spent several minutes adding fences to some of the houses only to have those fences just vanish from the scene. I was also plagued with not being able to use the undo function to reset accidental moves objects and this all served to slow me down.

All this said, I think I would like to continue this game after the jam as I feel it has a lot of untapped potential and I think the scale vs simplicity could really lend itself to a good developmental learning experience. I will perhaps make this one of my "stream" games going forward. I frequently stream game development on Twitch, either for my upcoming card game A Taste for the King, currently available in early access or random Godot game dev games like this one or Streamer Logo Graphics, the Twitch Chat. I'm also open to help with general game design and development issues if I'm able (and not focused on the current project).

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