Devlog 3: Slowly Getting There...

This week was a slow week, sadly! With many assessments to be done, the project team was forced to slow their progress in order to focus on other urgent work. Some team members were also away, travelling to be with family.

Team Discussions

Despite the lack of work, the team congregated via Discord to update one another with their current commitments and what gamedev work required prioritising. This included modelling, level implementation, and savepoint mechanics. Members discussed inspiration for enemy designs, with our designer mentioning The Knife Queen of Friday Black, a collection of short stories by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah.

Though this discussion goes beyond the scope of the protoype, our designer thought it would be compelling to stage the game's final battle around a character defending a life-sustaining machine. This scenario would serve as a commentary on escapism, allowing exploration of a character who seeks refuge from their reality in this manner. It would also provide an opportunity to explore the theme of violence as a form of escapism, a concept seen in games like Undertale, Hotline Miami, and Pathologic 2.

An in-battle scene from Undertale, one of the inspirations for Amensalism.

Enemy Concepts

Displayed below is a potential enemy design, which spawned the above discussion. Keeping in the theme of a spooky facility, this character is imagined to be another victim of the facility's mad scientists. Like the player character, she has also had her eyes removed, and wears a hospital gown with bare feet. While we like this design, it will be shelved in favour of characters who fill the role of medical/science staff, whom the player character is trying to escape from.

By drawing the character in this symmetrical, T-pose fashion, the artwork can then be imported into Blender to be 'traced' with 3D shapes. This is done by placing the image vertically, and modelling the character directly in front of the image. It's a very convenient way to make use of references.

A potential enemy design. Created by Georgie.

Thank you for your time, and we apologise for the lack of content this week!