Development Process & Playtesting

Game Development:

We wanted the art style of the game to be dark and have a gloomy vibe, keeping in tone with the game’s story. Our initial idea for the game was to have the player escape from some place and give them a maze like layout to navigate through. 

 Our core idea we came up with in the beginning was to have multiple paths to the end, all of which including different rooms which the player must explore to progress. We wanted the player to be able to explore as much as they wanted and therefore linked all the paths together at the beginning and the end of each one. 

In the beginning, we wanted to create a rogue-like game with randomly generated rooms and paths. We wanted the player to have a new experience during each play. However, this idea became increasingly difficult to implement with a fixed number of collectibles required to reach the end. For this reason, we decided not to make room generation random. 

We also decided not to give the player the ability to fight. 

The story that the game tries to tell is that the player is a patient/prisoner in a prison full of death-row inmates, but the prison is corrupt. They are performing experiments on the prisoners and when some of them go awry, no one notices because they were all scheduled to die anyway. Your character has had enough, he decides to escape but not without first acquiring enough evidence to take this place down when he goes.

There are 13 different “rooms” in the game. The rooms are essentially different levels for the player to explore. The description for each room is located in the Room Description table below. Check the Level Layout below for the layout of the prison as well as the locations of each room. 

There will be 11 notes for the player to collect, but only 3 are needed to unlock the last corridor. They are scattered throughout the different rooms. See the Notes section below for descriptions of each note. See the Room Description table below for the locations of each note.

Room Description Table

Debuffs

Poison debuff - loses 10 hp every second

Nausea debuff - slows the player speed by half. 

Level Layout

Notes 

Note 1 - “Patient XE-89 seems to be showing signs of change. The growth is significantly higher than other patients. This seems promising. I will make a new report after a few more tests.” 

Note 2 - “Queen Rene came through to check on us the other day. Her presence, her gaze was more intimidating than the warden himself. We had to muster the courage to keep things under control and show the results of our findings.”

Note 3 - “Drat! Another failed experiment. The rotting smell of this prison is growing day by day. Our scientists are slowly being driven mad by the smell. I even heard Maurice talking to himself in the middle of the day.” 

Note 4 - “Ah shoot! Some of the patients have broken out of their cells. They are starting to attack each other, wrecking everything they see. The guards are trying to get the patients under control but I fear it may be too hard on them. I hope peace will return to this prison soon.” 

Note 5 - “These highly developed energy drinks seem to trigger innate responses within the patients. We had to tone down the dosage after multiple patients died after an intake of a single energy drink.”

Note 6 - “The cans seem to emit an iridescent glow that only disappears once the liquid has been consumed. The red drink seems to increase the patient’s physical strength and the white drink seems to heighten the patient’s speed.”

Note 7 - “Not all drinks enhance the patients’ senses though. The orange drink seems to hinder the patient’s senses while the green drink seems to contain unknown toxins.” 

Note 8 - “Patient XE-89: Male, Age 27, 180 cm, 72.5 kg. Athletically fit. Status: Alive. Patient XE-88: Male, Age 34...”  Note 9 - “We woke up this morning and headed to our respective workstations. Only to find a broken cabinet and cut up electrical wires. There seems to be a bunch of energy drinks missing. I wonder which cursed brat stole our supply and why. The energy drinks are a big concern but why the electrical wires, and how were they even cut?” 

Note 10 - “Some of our patients seem to have developed immunity to some of our tests. This is great news. I can not wait to share these findings with the warden. I am sure he will be overjoyed at this result.”  Note 11 - “Oh no no no no… The last experiment went so horribly wrong. Patient XE-89, among other patients, has broken from their cells. The research staff are running away in horror. I too am hiding away and secretly writing under this tiny tiny flame. I hope the guards can get everything under control. I hear footsteps, I think someo...”

Play testing Feedback:

• Movement instruction
• Can’t find the door
• More instruction for combat
• Music is kind of loud (frequent)
• More mechanisms
• More storytelling/more instructions
• The environment is engaging
• Gap between shooting
• Shaking the camera might be great

• Doesn’t realize that the doors are interactable (!)
• Rigidbody (physics needs to be fixed)
• Death screen doesn’t fit
• Atmosphere and music choice
• Interact with objects
• Have an inventory

• Lost in the corridor
• Nice graphics
• Getting stuck in the wall
• Add a health bar, show that the water actually does something
• Can’t go to the door (mesh, box collider)

• Background music is too loud
• Assets are good
• The boss can drop item

• Bullets/Weapons can be collectables?
• The best