Dev Update 5-Dec-2017

Hey there! Long time no see, but I can say I’ve been pretty busy! I did work on Biosignature some more and ran a new live test session with my coworkers which went well. I then decided to move on by adding gameplay, and what I wanted to do next was terminal hacking, which would naturally be minigames with reward for success and penalty for failure. This is when things went “sidewards”…

From minigame to side project

I wanted to do something similar to the Alien: Isolation minigames. While I wanted to have it look like hacking, it should be easy to understand yet demanding. It should draw the players attention so with the chance of being attacked anytime, I wanted it to be very tense. I played around with text rendering, because I wanted that Matrix look in there:

The idea for my first minigame was that it can be controlled with only directional inputs from the keyboard or controller. The required input is indicated by the triangle. The player has to enter the right input ten times to succeed, false input drops the progress again, and three wrong inputs fail the hacking attempt. I could add variation and difficulty by simply adding more lines and shift lines or rows, and include or exclude the triangle from shifting.

So on to the second game. With that I wanted to try something different. I’ve been working on my level generation systems for pretty long, and I had the idea to reuse part of it to generate a labyrinth. I also wanted to keep that matrix look, hence I kept it textbased:

The player has to find the way to the exit to succeed the hack. I also added hazards (the ‘X’s) that have to be avoided. If the player gets hit three times, the hack would fail. This is also only be played with directional inputs.

Now, this second minigame turned out to be quite fun! So on the evening I finished it, I decided to make a standalone version. I added a background scene and some atmospheric ambient/music to give it a more meditative and dark feel. I then gave that version to my coworkers:

And they really enjoyed it! Which made me think about why not try to turn this into something bigger?! It feels like the right thing to do, and I honestly could use a break from working on Biosignature and start a fresh and smaller sideproject.

I have some free days after christmas this winter, and the plan for then is to build a solid alpha. I already have written down some core features, and I think it’s going to be surprisingly refreshing. I can’t wait to show you more!

So, see you next time!
Philipp 🙂