Hello friends, I hope you are all doing well on your end!
I wanted to provide you all with an update regarding my learnings for Within Skerry (after gathering all sorts of feedback from you all) and provide some teasers for
Is Simon There? (New development currently up on Steam).
First of all, let me begin by saying that Within Skerry is doing fairly well. We are maintaining a fair amount of positive reviews, there is an endless array of YouTube play throughs out there for reference, and overall, there appears to be very little problems with the game (performance wise). This is good, that makes me very happy. However, there are a few takeaways that I have gathered from you all:
Some issues noted that many of you all have highlighted for me: - A dislike in backtracking. I understand that many of you did not enjoy some of the backtracking and wandering throughout the mansion. It was my intention to include a bit of backtracking in order to access areas that were previously inaccessible earlier in the game. However, the map is fairly large relative to my previous games, so I understand that there may be many instances of
"unintentional backtracking" - assuming you need to go back to progress when in fact that is not the correct path. Nonetheless, I have taken note of this and I will be mindful of highlighting a clearer path in the future to eliminate "unintentional backtracking".
- No save and controller support: If you have played any of my previous 15 or so games, you know that I am notorious for not including save game functionality. This is, of course, intentional. I believe that to create a proper horror experience, you need to commit to the experience from start to finish. Taking a break cuts you out of the immersion and kills some of the immersion that the game relies on, quite heavily. However, I understand that some of you may not have the hour, or something unexpected may arise within the hour (Life events, game crashing, etc) or even wanting to achieve multiple endings without having to start from the very beginning. I hear you all 100% and I have decided to include a checkpoint mechanic in my upcoming game. This will be a very simple mechanic which will only checkpoint ONCE (in the mid-point of the game). I still stand by my statement that a single play through is the way to create immersion, so I will do my best to complement both sides of the equation :)
As for controller support, the way my systems are setup (the dynamics of the game) are setup does not easily allow my to implement controller support without gutting the whole system and starting from scratch. This is not an approach I will be taking now, but this is definitely something I will attempt in 2023 going forward. Sorry about that! I know its frustrating :(
- Not enough immersion and reliance on jump scares: This is something I tried to master heavily in this game. I tried to balance immersion, jump scares, and puzzles, all while managing a large environment. Unfortunately, what I found is that creating a REALLY scary game is actually VERY difficult the larger the environment is. I am not sure why that is, but based on what I've read, and based on a good chunk of research I've done, smaller environments are much more terrifying than very large ones... strange. All that I can say right now is that I will focus dearly on immersion and creating a VERY tense environment in my next game. I will leave it at that for now.
Knockout knockout and knockout:Not much needs to be said here.
I won't include any 'Getting knocked out --> buncha story text --> Wake up' going forward - or not as much, at least. I know I've been using that method of story telling quite a lot. It's more than past time to move on from that.
SO WHAT'S NEXT!??I have been working on a new game these past few weeks (before Elden Ring took my life away...) and figured I would share a very very early screenshot of the environment.
For this game, I am going back to my original roots - A small map, few puzzles, a heavy focus on environment and creating a terrifying atmosphere. The story is very neat, and the two endings will be VASTLY different from one another (in comparison to previous games). And of course, this game will have a mid-point checkpoint for you all trying to achieve multiple endings or restarting from an unexpected crash :)
I am also focusing heavily on quality and graphics. You will notice the game looks quite nicer than my previous games - this is because I have been using 2k textures instead of 1k (some 4k's scaled down) and I finally took the time to properly texture some of my assets instead of slapping a texture on an asset and calling it a day. Because the map is a lot smaller in this game, it affords me more time to be focusing on quality over quantity!
This is still quite early, but here is a screenshot of the game's current environmental progress - please let me know what you think; but once again, keep in mind that lots of the environment may change prior to release.
Thank you all very much! and apologies on this very long note. Please give me your thoughts and let me know what you would love to see in my new game (
Is Simon There?). Everyone's welcome :)
cheers,
Stan. T
