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Specter Scenes

Specter Scenes is a puzzle mystery game which I had been solo developing until very recently. Re-watch a crime scene, manipulating time as you see fit to try to figure out not only what happened but also everyone's identity.

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Time Rewinding 

Control time at your will, going back and forth, re-watching shady deals, innocent conversations and even the moment of someone's death.

 

Who is who?

Nothing is known to you. You might follow someone's footsteps, but you don't know their name or even how they look like. Its up to you to use context clues to figure that out.

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Intertwined Story

If you can't figure  out a detail, maybe you don't have the whole picture. Not all levels will be able to be completed on a first run through, having to retrace your steps with knowledge acquired in future levels.

SpecterScenes.png

Gameplay Concept

  • The game centers around the idea of the player not knowing anything when they start.

 

  • They are given an objective (to answer the questions on that given level) and its up to them to figure out clues on what exactly happened. 

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  • This is the Core Loop I was working under while design the levels. The "explore" bubble encompasses both exploring the map and going back and forth through time.   

  • The player may also encounter items they may pickup, giving them extra clues and context to the overall story. 

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  • Some levels may not be able to be done on first visit. This will never be because of a mechanic that is locked, but because the player doesn't have enough knowledge to interpret all of the clue within that level.

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  • All of this feeds into a larger Gameplay Loop, that I'm using to determine the overall flow of the game.

Mechanics

Scene Time

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In each level depicts a certain time before a murder. How long the time is depends by level and is defined on the level's JSON file.

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There are 2 ways the scene timer can change: 

  1. By pressing the Play button, a coroutine is toggled which increments the time in real time.

  2. The scene time is visualized by slider on the screen, changing it's value will put the scene time at the same percentage as the slider.

Pros:

  • Easily changeable 

  • Modular

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Cons:

  • Prone to bugs with slider 

Dialogue

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Character dialogue is stored in a JSON file, which stores which character is speaking, what they are saying, and the time frame the the text should be displayed

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Pros:

  • Easy to create new dialogues

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Cons:

  • Changing the display timing is very time consuming

Characters

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Each character is spawned and has a predefined path with determined checkpoints. Where the character should be is determined in a JSON file, by giving the time frame between checkpoints and doing a Lerp of those values.

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Each character has a name and an image, however the player won't know them. The player can record who they think each character is by associating a photo and a name.

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Pros:

  • Modular

  • Easy to create and iterate characters

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Cons:

  • Editing movement timing can be difficult

Inspirations

  • Inspiration for this project came from the game The Roottrees are Dead, developed by Itch.Io user jjohnstongames. This game is in turn inspired by my favorite game of all time  The Return of Obra Dinn. 

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  • Also as inspiration and reference for the development of this project is Unheard, by NExT Studios

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  • All of these served as a basis that I then expanded and fleshed out into the concept it is today. 

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  • Although it is heavily inspired, I went to great lengths to insure that this game would be unique and not feel like a copy of these amazing games.

Development Timeline

  • I started this project's development in November of 2023.

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  • I hit a wall, around January of 2024. Although Design and Programming were going great, I was  aware that my artistic skills (especially in 2D) were not up to par on what for what I wanted.

 

  • I tried to recruit an artist, but being fresh out of college, it was hard to get anyone. So I stopped working on it.

 

  • Until May 2024, when I had already moved on to another project, I found  someone who liked the idea and my vision for it and jumped on board.

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  • Following that, one of my artist friends, who manly focuses on UX/UI Design, had their schedule open up and yet another friend expressed their intent to start making music for games.

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  • In the span of a week the project I had almost abandoned suddenly had team of 4 people working on it. â€‹

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  • This is our artist latest studies which will be along the lines of the game's art style.

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