Dream of Me - First-Person Adventure/Puzzle [WIP]

Dream of Me

"A game about questioning reality."

You wake up in your own room disturbed by a knock on the door.You have no memory how or when you got into bed last night and while everything seems familiar, there seems to be a certain uncanny feeling around you.Who knocked on the door?What happened last night?

Dream of Me is a first-person adventure/puzzle game with a strong focus on storytelling.Step into the shoes of David, an aspiring photographer who gets his taste of reality when trying to follow his dreams, while struggling to make a living for himself.Progressing through the story and the game will require you to immerse yourself(explore, read, and compare).

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Release Date and Platforms:

A demo has been released : First rounds of testing ended.Thanks you all who played it!

The game will(hopefully) be released on steam, though it wasn't submitted to Greenlight yet as it's not polished enough.

Key Features:

• A deep and surreal storyline spanning on multiple levels along with David's personal touch.
• Immersive worlds intertwined.Where does the dream end and where does reality begin?
• Explore different puzzles to advance through the story and discover new aspects of David's life and the world around.

Current state of the game:

THE GAME IS STILL IN ALPHA.SO A LOT OF THINGS CAN STILL CHANGE.THE SCREENSHOTS ARE ONLY A REPRESENTATION ON HOW IT LOOKS NOW, NOT THE FINAL RELEASE.

The game is in alpha.Most of the core features and the environment for the game have been completed, though substantial work still has to be done in order to deliver a finished and quality game.

This thread will be updated regurarly as the development of the game continues.Meanwhile here are some sneak-peeks of one of the scenes:

Screenshots from inside Unity(with image effects applied) :





Stay tuned for more!
Have a nice day!

External links :

 

New screenshot of David's room.Slowly put surely this place starts to reflect David's life.

 

Sounds a little too close to Life is Strange.

 

How so?

Yes, both David the Max are photographers/ have a passion for photography, but apart from that there's nothing in common between these two games.In Life is Strange the main story is about following Max's high school journey and her relationship with Chloe while experimenting with her rewind powers.This game follows a reflection of David's stormy mind while uncovering his past, no rewind powers, no changing time or making choices.

Both Chloe's and Max's room have been an inspiration artistically along with other games.

 

Small update!

I've been working on setting up a hidden object mechanic.With your camera you can see hidden objects(objects which belong to other worlds or previous past-times) and by taking a picture will bring the object into the current world.It's still a very rough concept.

Testing Purposes Cube

 

Nightmare Chase​

Working on a new level.Still early WIP, some objects are placeholder.

 

Hello!

I haven't posted in a while but the development of the game is still going, though at a bit slower rate.Lately I've been trying to flesh out a better story for the game and polish it along the way, while at the same time thinking of interesting puzzles and mechanics which would fit each scene.

I've took some time going back to the drawing board because I felt that the whole premise of the game did not have enough substance and it felt too much like an interactive story-book rather than a puzzle game.After a lot of thrown ideas I've come up with a much better setting for the game which focuses more on the aspect of questioning reality.I do not know yet how much information I should give without spoiling the game, but I can surely tell that the game will expand on areas other than just David's life.

Right now I am working on puzzle designs and implementing them one by one.Locked cases, using item combinations to acquire things or get things moving, finding out codes and secret objects and so on.I've implemented the camera mechanic from the video above but I'm still a little confused on how I can make it a more interesting mechanic.

Environment related, I did significant changes to David's room because it felt too much like a girl's room, too neat and tidy and it didn't reflect his lifestyle too much, and also it's bigger(thank you, Captain Obvious).The nightmare chase had some small changes too.The images below have post-processing effects applied and have been taken at the highest quality level.

If anyone has any good suggestions on how to improve and integrate the "taking pictures" mechanic, I would appreciate it a lot!

 

New screenshot of a new area of the game.Exciting news coming soon!

 

Exciting news!
After a long wait and many months of work, I am proud to announce that a demo for testing purposes will be released soon.The demo will feature the first two scenes of the game, introducing you into the story of David and the world around.Feedback from the demo will help me improve the gameplay and storyline, bringing in the end a fully polished working game.

Meanwhile, here's a new screenshot.Enjoy!

 

Very good screenshots! I liked your style, principally about the story. I learned that if you want good puzzles, you create the scene, and then uses what you could use in real life if that scenes is real. Are you planning how much time the player could finish the game?

Keep going!

 

Hi, and thanks for replying!

Yes, that's what I did during the development so far.I first created a visual scene, a static expression of the main character's life.After that I used pieces of the environment to figure out interesting puzzles which would fit the scenario. Of course, I had to go through many iterations to get a nice stream of puzzles, but in the end it turned out pretty nice.We'll see what changes after the first few rounds of feedback.

Right now I don't know how much time the player will spend to finish the game.It depens on everyone's play style and how fast they will figure out the puzzles.I don't know how many hours of gameplay it will have, I'm trying to keep it short, especially because I am a one-team team and each level takes a tremendous amount of work.I'll see.

 

Last few steps and preparations before releasing the test-demo.I will send the demo to friends&family first to they can catch the initial game breaking bugs.After they give me greenlight for launch, the demo will be released.I have no idea how much this will take, maybe between 1-3 weeks.

It's my first actual to-be-released game and it's been a long journey for me.I started with almost no programming experience and managed to get something worth playing with a lot of hard work and sleepless nights.Having someone to actually play my game is a very big milestone for me.

Meanwhile here's another screenshot.This time, the Main Menu, yay!

 

Small update(25/04/17)

Haven't posted in a while.Though the development of the game slowed a little, it's still going at a steady rate.The feedback from the first temporary demo proved very useful and I have managed to fix most of the issues, while coming up with different ways to interact with the world :

The new way to solve and interact with the puzzles is by "equpping" the required item from the inventory(with the use of the scroll wheel) and then try to see if the item fits.The old way was just hitting the "E" key and the system checked if the item is in inventory.The new way will check if the player has equipped the required item first.While it may not be the most groundbreaking thing which I have come up, I do believe it will be a much more immersive experience.

I also started working on a new level with a very dark, atmospheric theme.There's still a ton of work to do.Here's a sneak peek!

 

I didn't update for a while, but now worries I'm still working on the game.Small post for now, until I come up with a longer detailed one on what I've been doing in the last few months.
The demo of the game is available on itch.io!

ITCH.IO Page