Dark Space Friday #5

Happy New Year. I hope you got through it somewhat well.

Overview

Today I wanna talk about my plans for the castle in the next few weeks and how the start area is coming along.

Alpha 0.4

Over Christmas and New Years, I wasn’t able to get as much done as I hoped but it is getting there most things are in place and I’m currently testing everything and adding some smaller things here and there. So, productivity will be back to normal next week and this part should be ready in a bit.

Castle Underground

First of I want to change and expand the castle underground since it is the area you “arrive” and it could use some more space since I feel like it also has a better atmosphere at the moment than the upper keep anyway. In addition, it is also super story relevant in terms of actually opening up the lower layers, which currently near the ending point is blocked off, and then progressing further from there. So this part will be extended with the actual tunnels leading further down.

Similar to the start area you will also have to do more to progress not just picking up a random key from the floor to get into the upper keep. You will have to be sneakier to acquire the key, going through some scary events or solving some puzzles and with that I come to enemy changes.

The guy walking around and showing himself every now and again will play less of a role for now. His name is Guardian btw. And some people thought of him as a sort of Monster which he never really was supposed to be. Do not get me wrong he should be scary but more in a way how powerful he is and what he is doing there, not necessarily his looks. But I will see what I can do to put him into good angles and situations. I do have plans to overhaul him and give him more detail at some point as well. Other than that, he is more of an antagonist at least he will be and pushes the narrative forward at some point. He will need quite a bit more work in the future to get him there though.

So you may ask what is there then instead in the castle. In replacement I will add some other entities to the castle which probably will be scarier anyway. The entire feeling will be a lot more dense. I do not want to say too much about the design yet but it will be based on what is going on below the castle. It will paint a clearer picture that this place is not normal at all.

Upcoming

Next week I might make it a little more technical, not entirely sure yet. But my idea was since I’m currently also fiddling around with how I can create a denser atmosphere in terms of sound design and all the involved systems, to give a bit more in depth look on how I layer different systems and where I want to go with that. In A0.4 and there might be a first light version of that.

There is also a lot of other stuff I’m working on which I will present over the course of the next weeks, like item changes, more survival mechanics and separating the game into smaller chapters.

Cheers, Leon Drace