Where The Eyes Don't See
Game Jam Entry
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Survival Horror Themed
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Not to overwhelm player with controls
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Environmental storytelling
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Role: Designer & Lead Programmer
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Game: Where the eyes don't see
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Tool: Construct 2
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Development Time: 48 Hours
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Game Type: Single Player
Game Files
Game Intentions
Project Overview
Development Information
Game Summary
Where the eyes don't see is a survival horror platformer created for the Game Jam Titans 2015. The game had to be a horror game based on the constraints. The game revolves around a boy plunged into a world of darkness with limited sources of light. The reason we decided this is because the fear of dark is essentially the fear of the unknown. We could replicate this by restricting the view of the world in-game by making it pitch black. The entire art of the game is based on silhouettes which are revealed when the player interacts with a light source.
We soon hit a roadblock while designing when we realized that the player would not be able to navigate his way to the light sources without having some sort of visual in the first place. To combat this problem, we made the game take place during a storm and added lightning in the background that would illuminate the screen for long enough for the player to form a basic idea of the level immediately in front of him.
These lightning strikes occur randomly throughout the level. We also created triggers for scripted lightning strikes and placed them in some key areas where we found the randomness of the lightning too unfair for the player.
The lightning mechanic
The rain mechanic
Even though we fixed the visibility of the level with lightning strikes, we found the players being afraid to walk distances and waiting for the lightning to strike. This made the game rather boring and too slow. To combat this, we decided to make the rain hit the walkable surfaces and make it visible to the player.
So now the players could had a brief idea of the walkable surfaces in front of them so they could make out if there was a pit or a hazard that they needed to be careful about without having to wait for a lightning strike
What I Learnt
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Before this project, I had little to no programming or designing experience. This project gave me enough confidence to design and prototype projects without needing any help.
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This was the first game jam I took part in. I learnt a lot about managing time and polishing a game.
What went wrong
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Programming the rain was something that took a lot of time. Generating the rain at first created a huge memory issue since all the raindrops were different objects. I tried to use a particle system instead but the engine did not allow particles to react to other objects and therefore it would not allow the splash effect that was intended. In the end I figured out a way to spawn the rain just on the screen and around the player so it would fix the performance issue.
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Layers were also something that I could have handled better. Towards the end, the project had a lot of layers with all- black objects that it became time consuming to manage them.
What went right
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Creating the concept was something that happened very fast. Since we were on a time limit due to the project duration being 48 hours, we managed to come up with the concept of using darkness in a 2D game and went with it.
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The levels were created within the first couple hours on pen and paper.
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Since we were using only simple black silhouettes as art assets, it gave us more time to focus on design and programming.