Where This Project Is At

I’ve been posting screenshots of this project on my social media for a while now, and now that I have a better handle of what I want to do with it, I’d like to start posting about it here.

Some core gameplay ideas have been retained, but a lot has been changed (I believe for the better).

What This Project Had Been

I started a version of this project in December of 2023. The original idea was for a procedurally generated first-person roguelike where the player character survives a plane crash in the woods and has to make their way out. The woods are filled with different enemies and traps, and the only method of combat is hacking the traps using a device called a HackRabbit. The plan has been for this to be a game that works well in single-player while also allowing for online cooperative multiplayer.

I’d say that until this year, this project has actually been a tutorial for me in game development. Instead of doing a bunch of game jams¹ or small projects, I’ve used this to learn how to use Godot, Blender, and other software for game development.

I’ve also learned a lot about game design, unfortunately mostly through trial and error. To put it plainly: setting the game in the woods was a very bad decision that created tons of issues. You have to create a physically large space, which then needs to be filled. That led to performance issues with the number of game objects and foliage, and gameplay issues with making enemy encounters and traps interesting. If there aren’t enough physical and visual obstructions it can be easy to avoid enemies completely, and there wasn’t enough reason to initiate encounters in something survival-focused. I was also very dependent on a third-party terrain plugin that I didn’t have a good handle on how to use effectively for procedural environments.

Having to find some way out of the woods also made navigation completely aimless. There was no clear goal to move towards, and this was also true about my own development of the project. I was spending more time on character customization menus than on gameplay, I was unmotivated, and I was not actively working on the project for large chunks of time.

What This Project Is Now

The core gameplay of combat through hacked traps is still central to this project, but the setting has changed completely. The player now is now traveling from the top to the bottom of an underground city in search of an item that they then need to take back to the top while avoiding all of the enemies that have subsequently been put on high alert.

This makes for tighter spaces, better visual blocking, and better performance. The horror aspects work better, and encounters will be less avoidable despite spawning fewer enemies.

Without getting too much into inspirations, my vision board as it were for this project includes things like Lethal Company², Legend of Dungeon, the Flipper Zero, Dreams of Amputation, and WarioWare.

I’m still working on some fundamental aspects of world generation, but I’m moving towards the end of it. Floors and tunnels are traversable, and I’ve built out a grid system for placing the buildings and rubble that make up the underground city. Next is actually placing assets and working on lighting for the procedural environments.

Past that, there’s a lot from the initial project that will be able to be carried over: enemy navigation, trap hacking, and item inventories should all function largely the same. I’m looking forward to passing a milestone with the systems work soon so that I can move on to making more assets for the game.