Haunted House — Dev Diary #1 (Jun 22 – 28)

Hi everyone — I'm Hoppy, producer at Change Entertainment Studio. This is the first dev diary for Haunted House.

I'll post an update every Monday so those of you following the game can see how development is actually going.

Here's last week's progress (Jun 22 – 28), reported by team.

WRITING

・Main scenario advanced to its 6th draft

・Finalized seven "environmental narrative fragments" (notes scattered through the rooms)

・Reworked emotional cues across the entire script

Notes: To match the new planning and art direction, we heavily revised the first draft. The script now sits much closer to how the game actually plays, and we've deepened the backstory and core of every spirit.

ART

・First pass of protagonist Alan's "walking-with-a-lantern" animation (4 directions × 3 frames each; still being refined)

・Lantern hand pose (held naturally at the side) finalized

Notes

We originally planned 8-directional movement, but it proved impractical and ate far more resources than expected, so we moved to 4 directions.

A small trick to share

to get the AI to generate a natural gripping hand pose, we first had the character hold a plastic bag in that pose, then removed the bag in Photoshop and swapped in the lantern — surprisingly more efficient than endlessly tweaking prompts.

PROGRAMMING

・Refactored movement, interaction, and dialogue into reusable, independent modules

・Movement finalized at 4 directions

・Automated build verification + one-click "double-click to play" test scenes

Notes: Technically 8-way (diagonal) movement is freer, but for a horror game like this, restricting movement actually heightens the pressure and the sense of tight corridors.

PLANNING / PRODUCTION

・Three rounds of major design revisions, using AI to fill in blind spots and gameplay ideas I'd missed on my own

・Built three workflow checklists — currently 142 items for Haunted House

・Finished the Steam store page in four languages + AI self-disclosure (though the new in-game visuals and trailer aren't ready — the store page still shows a build from three years ago; I'll try to ship new material this week)

・Four new system specs implemented

・Major art-direction change locked in: we'd planned to use character portraits for story scenes, but after review chose to focus on other art first — portraits may return later

Notes: Lots of direction changes this week, and that's exactly where AI collaboration shines. A 90% AI + 10% human workflow has hugely shortened solo indie development; talking things through with AI again and again surfaced blind spots I'd never have caught alone. More proof that AI is the best assistive tool we have right now — used well, it can compress a 1–2 year dev cycle into just a few months.

[About "AI Development"]

Haunted House is ~90% AI-developed, but that doesn't mean "press a button and out comes a game."

AI is, in the end, only an assistant — the one who holds the direction and the capability is still the human operating it. Many people have the wrong fantasy about AI, imagining it can do anything just because you use it. It can't.

And I'd love to hear about the problems you run into when creating with AI.

THIS WEEK

・Alan's 4-direction running, falling, and getting-up animations

・Upgrading the walk animation to 8 frames

・Map sprites for all characters

・Diagonal movement feel tuning

・Starting CG shot descriptions

・Testing & sign-off on 16 scenes

Thanks to everyone following Haunted House. If you'd like to keep watching it come together, please add it to your wishlist.

Haunted House — Steam, 2026.

※ Drafted by Hannah (our AI PR), revised and posted by the producer.