Dev Log #6 – Writing up a script and Creating Enemy Sprites

Date: 24th April – 30th April

This week heavily focused on finalizing any extra, smaller tasks as well as completing my main goals for the game. Writing up a script took up the most amount of time due to the amount of interactables that I wanted to add into the game. As a group, we have also acknowledged that, even if we didn’t have enough time to include all the dialogue into our project, the script would be able to give us an idea on how to move forward narratively or when we decide to further develop the game in the future.

Whilst making the script, I also decided to fully finish creating the enemy sprites for the game once again following the deterioration system I have mentioned in prior. This week, we have also decided to cut down the amount of levels for our game now going for only 6 levels rather than 8 due to further time constraints.

Writing up the Script

As I continued working on the script, I decided to add small notes for our programmer throughout as I split the script into 6 levels – each with their own set of unique items our main character could collect or read through.

I have also included two small cutscenes into the game – one being the elevator scene where the main character realises he’s stuck in the office building. This is the moment where his main goal of finding the stairs is presented to the player.

Another cutscene follows shortly afterwards, introducing the monsters to the player through the characters first encounter with them. This also plays as short tutorial which provides a small hint on how to deal with the monsters within the game.

He’s just as clueless as the player but as you pick up and read more information from certain items, the player can start to piece together what happened to the office.

Whilst these items are optional pieces and don’t necessarily provide large amounts of hints in terms of keycard locations it does further explore he narrative as well as expand the world building that surrounds the game whilst also not giving away too much information about the cause of the ‘outbreak’.

This sort of narrative exploration also draws in a niche player demographic as it allows them to come up with their own conclusions for the story and also gives them an opportunity to analyse the office further. This week, in total I’ve made 7 pages worth of dialogue for the game and this will be fully implemented by the end of next week.

Finally, here’s the script to review if you’d like to see the different dialogue and cutscenes added to the game.

Creating New Enemy Sprites

Over the last two weeks of work, I’ve been working on creating more enemy sprites whilst working on my main tasks. As mentioned in previous posts, I plan to make 6 different enemies for the game. Now with this cutback, however, this means that (potentially) a new enemy is introduced in each level. This system means that not only are the visual decay of the monsters still present within each floor but also means that it serves as a subtle visual indicator for the player, showing how much progress they’ve made throughout the game.

These are all the enemy sprites that have been made for the game, some design changes had to be made due to the 16px aesthetic limitations. However, the decay is clearly present within each mutation. I tried to stay close to the enemy designs as I possibly could especially when it came to colour schemes.

In terms of the movement for these enemies, I decided to only make forward and backward facing sprites as they appear more threatening. They were also a lot easier to animate given the time constraints. Once again this style of maneuver is also heavily inspired by Faith’s design as they move in a very aggressive and intimidating fashion.

The decision to only make forward and backward facing enemies also comes from our test enemy as shown above. They’re much more taller and faster than the player but their movements are also obscured by the ‘blink’ screen. This compromise saved quite a bit of time during development as well as create some horrifically unnatural movement

Upon our final week of development, we will discuss the results of playtesting and some final touches being added to the game, including rewriting certain bits of dialogue and trying to add hints for keycards that will be directly conveyed to the player.