Somnus

You just knew a day couldn't pass without someone posting a horror game, right?

This is my first try at a game in Unity. I started this about three months back as a project to learn unity, basic game design, and coding. Mostly the coding part. Long story short, I mistakenly thought that an Amnesia-like experiential sort of scary game would be the easiest kind of game to make. It's just an FPS without the S, right? So I built this thing out of code pulled off of Unity Answers and painstakingly learned to modify it to suit my needs. That was the easy part. The next part came when I visited this forum for the first time and saw that there was a bit of a Slenderproblem. I would need to make this thing stand out if it was going to compete with the hundreds of other horror games in development, some of which look like they'll be really good. So I decided to take another approach to it, avoiding heavy-handed scares and haunted-house theatrics and focusing instead on the mood and story.

This is what I got so far: (WEBPLAYA) http://gamejolt.com/games/adventure/somnus/11135/





It's still got a long way to go, but I figured It finally at a point where I could show it to you guys and hopefully get some feedback. So far, I'm the only team member, and I've been kind of working in a vacuum, so I think I probably need some second opinions.

AH! Almost forgot to describe the game.

Somnus is an afterlife few would have guessed awaited them. It is a prison built from the dreams of its captives, ruled at the capricious whim of an unseen master. You must find a way to free the souls who inhabit this place, or face an eternity trapped among them.

It's basically a physics driven puzzle platformer that I'm going to use as a framework to experiment with different moods, storytelling devices, graphical tricks, and ultimately have an encompassing story arc that carries the player through several chapters. With each new scene, and later, new installments, I will add and compound new game mechanics, as I figure out how to implement them. There will be many more characters, environments, and plot twists as it all unfolds, but for right now, I'm concentrating on just getting the thing to work. So please, play it, tell me how bad it sucks, and what I have to do to make it not suck, because I don't want to make a sucky game. I want to make a cool game.

Oh yeah one more thing. Two of those pictures up there aren't in the game yet, but those scenes' presence is felt in the hefty file size I uploaded. It'll take a little while to load. Here's another picture to look at while you wait:

 

After trying for 5 minutes to understand what to do in the first scene if give up and closed the webplayer. Couldn't see anything clearly in that room.

 

AKK! something else I forgot to mention... To get out of the first chamber, you simply have to jump and left mouse click the fusebox up close (it's located above the image of the pointing hand). Sorry about that, at some point I had intended to graffiti the walls with instructions... the idea was to ensure that by the time the player escaped, they knew how to jump (space), how to carry objects, and how to trigger the switches. I just never got around to making that part painfully clear, mainly because I was planning to add some more elements to the switch system for later puzzles... This will be amended in the next update.

Right now, in this build, the invisible trigger that opens the fuse box is positioned so that it blocks the collision to the switch. All I need do is lower the trigger area a bit so the switch can be clcked from anywhere in the room, and I'll save a lot of frustration.

Jeez, I can't have people ragequitting before they even see the game! What was I thinking?

 

I just tried it out and had a similar experience... only I figured out the box thing. It was really hard to push it over there. It would be nice if I could just pick it up by holding the button and then put it down.

It was also a little too dark to see things.

A suggestion: Put lines/cables up the wall from the door leading to the fuse box. This way.. when I see the door... and start tracing the lines and see the box. Then my next thought would be... "well how do I get up to that fuse box"...ahhh.. there is a crate in this room...

I walked around for a while. This is really great and definitely creepy (in a good way). Keep it up!!

There is a great video of the people from portal explaining how they teach mechanics a little bit at a time.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TBIfsPGeQ0

 

The game is really well made, although like everyone else It was hard to understand exactly what to do. I think you should brighten up the fuse box and make it more eye catching so the player will be able to see it more.

Great start, amazing in fact. This looks like an promising project, I'll defiantly be following this.

 

I agree.. this is even simpler than my idea.... just add a little particle effect of sparks on the fusebox and maybe an audio cue like an electrical/fuze/freeaking out noise. If it's the only thing making noise in the room, it'll be clear it's important in some way.

 

screenshots look awesome. nice work

 

I got out of the first room, and into the second area. I quit when I saw those ghost things, they gave me a fright

Its amazing. The only critiques I have have already been said, except for the fact that you need to reduce your camera clipping a little bit. Sometimes I could see through objects, and the lightings too dark.
Love this game already.

 

I took that into account, somewhat. It's possible to NOPE right back out of the infirmary door when the whining purple guys start appearing and then continue the game without ever finding the staircase. but you have to go inside to trigger it.

Okay then.... Camera clipping, set up tutorial room properly, ambient light, got it.
I’m also optimizing the shaders so it’ll run a little better on slower systems. I tried playing on the laptop and got the worst frame rate I’ve seen in a game since I that time I tried to run Doom3 on windows 95. This will not do.

I should also add some hints about the interface in the game itself… The trick to the mousegrab function is that the farther away the object is when you pick it up, the wider the arc of movement, the greater the force you can toss it with, etc. The player object doesn’t exert any force, it only responds to influences from colliders. However, rigid bodies DO exert force, and the player can control rigid bodies. This becomes important later on with the lantern… objects you’re holding close will block your movement, but objects held at a distance will not, and can be used to interact with the environment (the lantern objects will have hit points in later builds, to limit the amount of times you can bump into things with it.) .... I don't think there's a range limit for how far away an object can be to pick it up. I know there's a range limit in the "click_me" script for the switches, but right now, the only limit on dragging an object is if there are no colliders between the player and the object.
To prevent the invisible event trigger areas from interfering with that too much, the trigger areas are scaled to account for this so that ontrigger enter and exit areas are in doorways, and they sort of follow the topology of the environment.

I appreciate the feedback, this is really helpful. As a token of my thanks, here's the rough normal map I made for the Shantytown light pole assets:


In fact, I'll probably have more like this for you as this proceeds... anything I use out of the Asset Store will be modified in some way, except some of the trees. It stands to reason these modifications would be helpful to others using the same assets elsewhere. Most of my prefabs are original, but the Shantytown stuff just meshed really well with the textures and assets I was already making...

 

Was walking around for ages. Stood under lamp outside, turned around, and there was this strange light. I hear a click, and walk up to it. Realising it's just a particle effect, I turn around- and it was there. Right under that lamp. It actually scared me. Good job.

 

Good stuff man! Made me happy to see some use out of those scripts! Keep it up!

 

Very nice, environment is good