Hi. I am pleased to report that between laundering burp rags and comforting feverish toddlers and holding competitions with my wife to see whose eye involuntarily twitches more (separate award captions for twitch frequency and amplitude), the release-a-month cadence lives on and the game looks incrementally more like…well, a game.

Key Updates

I’ve written in the past about plans for some light puzzling in the game, inspired by images of brain synapses. The basic logic for that is in place now, which means the game has a playable puzzle prototype!

Puzzles are completed by wiring up a network of nodes so that every node is connected to the system. The connections are made by matching up compatible, color-coded ports.

This is a new mode of play from the traditional, walk-around-in-first-person-and-do-stuff that the rest of the game is based on, so it required a new control mapping —

Memory Network Controls

Mouse Movement - Orbit

W - Move to connected node

S - Move back to previous node

Mouse Wheel - Cycle port selection

Left Click / E - Connect/Disconnect Ports

Right Click - Exit Network

— a control reference is also available in-game on the pause screen (Esc key).

Future Puzzle Plans

Solve a puzzle, reveal the story - In repairing these Networks, the player is rebuilding records of their father’s memories, and revealing portions of the story for playback. The plan is for more portions of a memory to be unlocked by repairing the network more thoroughly — a basic playback of the memory will be achieved just by connecting each node to the network in some form or fashion, but figuring out how to use every port available will present the full picture. Sometimes the “full picture” will mean interesting extra details that give the world and its characters color and texture, and other times rushing through the puzzles might rob you of some necessary understanding and affect how you progress through the game. I hope. There’s a lot of track to lay here. 🙂

Full art pass — A puzzle design/art pass is scheduled later this year — in the Fall, somewhere, I think? All the audio and visuals currently in-game are stand-in tech art to just get the basic play prototyped. Excuses excuses, I know.

More puzzle pieces — I also want to add other types of ports and elements to give the puzzles somewhere to go in terms of complexity and challenge as the player moves through the game. This game ultimately isn’t intended to be a “puzzle game” at its core, but I do want the player to feel like they’ve become adept enough at something to feel satisfied.

The Month(s) Ahead

I’ve done a lot of writing in this and other posts about these “memories” that get played back to make up the actual storytelling in the game — time to get some version of those prototyped. June is blocked out to work up a basic version of the visuals — this will involve getting some pose-able characters into the game and for me to get my hands dirty in Niagara (the memories are meant to have a sort of digital/holographic quality), both of which are new territory for me, so wish me luck on that. Then, July will be about developing a workflow and proof-of-concept for the audio side of things — dialogue, sound effects, and getting all of that connected up to the game logic and visuals.

Download v0.5.0 now!

Huge thanks to anyone who has taken the time and the hard disk space to check this project out so far — it’s so early on and just a fingernail of what it’s meant to be. Getting these builds out there in the wild this early has been more about a kind of digital exposure therapy for my perfectionism than anything else — proving to myself that I won’t die by having this live out there in the world, and giving me a small public milestone to celebrate every month, punctuating what can otherwise be a bit of a run-on, solitary process in a dark room at night, after the kids are in bed.

Enjoy! See you in June.

-Tyler