Death Pending

Welcome to my little game "The Lost" which was a game made within 72 hours for Mini Jam #89!
Despite this game being my best jam work ever, and the crunch time rather successful with only one idea being dropped and one feature being dropped; which I'll get into later. I still wonder "Did I do my best?" and the answer is simply no; no I didn't.

I'm not familiar with Unity much so trying to do anything is a step forward and a stumble and fall on my back. After this project I'm definitely far more capable at Unity thankfully. But, I'm also not a super experienced artist which is why as of late I've been doing all my art. And audio design is not really my forte. The game itself I feel like ended up with low amounts of content making for a short and difficult train ride to the afterlife. Which is probably for the best since you only get one life. What honestly has me hung up the most is the name, to me it makes since; the lost because they're lost souls. I could've called it Soul Train which sounds just as generic to me honestly. Spirited Away brought to many Ghibli memories and I don't want to compete with that. I just couldn't think of a name that was better and wasn't super focused on the title like I usually am.

My social media engagement also hasn't been very good at all for this whole event. Despite me keeping updates fresh, tags always plenty of; and nice GIFs to show off the update and game. I even took some tips from a game dev veteran who made a video on game page presentation. Compared to my usual posts I thought this whole jam's posts were top tier; but my engagement was once again lower than usual. Deltarune Chapter 2 also came out so maybe that's an issue with it. I've been holding off on playing until I move, I want to enjoy it from Chapter 1 again in my new home. So that has me a bit down, I sacrificed time with my fiancée for two days; which she wasn't happy about. I would come home fresh off my overnight shifts at my local 7-Eleven after our two busiest and most chaotic nights in weeks. I even drank some Monster to keep my going at my lowest and worked on the game during my shift's break at 7-Eleven. I guess this game is the game I really polished my skills on, it's probably the most cohesive and complete game I've made to date; but I don't feel like that reflects the results so far. A typical indie dev "Damn dood, I was hoping to do some numbers on this one..." feeling. I've been very fortunate lately so I guess this isn't that big of a deal if the engagement doesn't go up. I'll keep posting a few times a day to plug it and keep it alive.

The Concept Process
This phase of development honestly came super quick for me. I saw that the Mini Jam had a jam up after it had been going for a couple of hours. I was on my break at 7-Eleven and decided to join up and see what I could do. I was feeling a bit community driven so I looked up legends from my own state in the United States; New York. I found this one about Hell Gate's Bridge which was said to have a ghost train of those that had died around the bridge taking them to the afterlife. 

This had me hooked. 
I started writing a story about a kid who had died on Halloween around the bridge, and they'd be travelling through the 5 stages of grief to pass on at the end of the train. As you passed through the train you'd lose more of your costume and eventually you'd lose your pumpkin bucket. This would symbolize your acceptance of your passing. This is where I fit in the theme of the jam, I know it seems a little cheap; but really the pumpkin bucket plays a subtle but huge part in the storytelling.
This was also inspired by or somewhat blatantly taken from Infinity Train that I've recently been watching; it's so good! If you're not sure how they relate; go watch it. I don't want to explain it because I don't want to spoil one of the first big reveals that doesn't fully get revealed until the end of the first season. 

But yeah! That was the concept phase for me, took about 10 minutes.

Day 1 Progress
You're probably thinking I must have gotten a lot done the day after I came up with this concept and had a lot to get going with. But I'd be here laughing in depression, because I didn't do anything on the first day. 
Actually no, I did contemplate just taking back what I said on Twitter and not participate in the jam. But, I just don't have a quitter mentality I'd rather fail a jam than give up.

Day 2 Progress
Now we're talking! I got home and went to the store for my fiancée. I was waiting to get a reply from her about which item brand she wanted before I checked out. But, I look alternative, Walgreen employees stare at me and tend to follow me. So standing in front of a bunch of higher priced items with a backup wasn't something I wanted to do. I was thirsty and went to check for a drink while I waited. I ended up finding a Swiss Chocolate Monster which was wild! I forgot they even existed! They're the thing that got me into drinking Monster. All my major caffeine addiction and money spends all stemmed from this one, beautiful, chocolatey goodness; amazing drink. So naturally I bought the little monster and signed my soul back off to the devil. 
I went home, she went to work, I told myself if I could create all the art in the next hour I'd be set to finish the game in time. Honestly, this was probably a way to put myself under a lot of stress because I work really well under stress. I actually have a hard time working when there is no immediate stress. So, I grinded up all the art for the game in an hour. Of course some art got added later like the new train wheel, the water sprites, the red goo and spikes; and the lost souls art. But, I had enough art to complete the game.

After I had all this art, I went ahead and made this title screen:

If you compare this to the current title intro you'll notice I've created actual buildings for the background; not just Unity grey square sprites. And I've added railings to add some more detail to it all. Some things I wanted to add was background smog and smoke from the train; maybe even allow the player to walk around an actual train station platform to start the game. I just didn't want to change this later on when I had these ideas. It's a game jam so it's not like I had a lot of time to do it all in.

This took about 2 hours, I felt like that was a lot but I was super happy with the result. So I just went on ahead and started creating the train cars for levels and player controller. Originally I had each car as a scene but quickly redecided on a new and cooler idea!
I would create each car as a prefab, then I'd randomize most of the cars each playthrough to create a new experience for the player. Since the 5 stages of grief are often no supported by psychologists or are redefined as steps that usually never follow the expected order. So, I thought this would be a great move for the longevity of my game. But, as development of the cars went on I ran into less and less time.

The train and generally the entire game's art style is based on 1916 styles. Why? Not only have I never worked on an old fashioned style like this, but because the legend originated around 1914-1916 so it works out.

This was the first bit of gameplay I had made:

Not super crazy but this quickly became this as I worked on the car for Denial.

And this little bit quickly became what is now the first car in the game:

If you play the game now you'd notice there's no falling chairs in the game. So why did I remove such a good obstacle that made up half the challenge and was the highlight of the first car? I have no idea what happened I did a playthrough; game ran fine. I then added doors to keep you from going backward; to symbolize how life only goes forward as depressing and horrifying as it is. Every time I went through the doors the chairs would just fall. Quickly running out of time at 3 hours; I wanted to die. So, after several debug attempts and inability to solve the crippling bug; I said screw it and deleted them. Acting like nothing ever happened.

I went from car to car on Day 2, I knew I didn't have much time the next day; I had to at least finish a block out of each car and finish a game loop. 

So! I did what I hate doing; which is known as making a death loop. No not the Arkane new game that has been melting computers! But the function where you die and the game restarts! However! Now that we're talking about requirements, my game will run on the most piece of shit toaster laptop you could possibly have! I've heard rumors there's thoughts of an Android device port as well :D

But I quickly moved onto the other cars and this is how the other cars went!

The Isolation car was one I knew would have nothing but grey walls and a decently lengthy walk through some writing on the wall to visualize the inner thoughts of those who have past through. It's meant to be a depressing and personal walk which is why the camera zooms in. Camera zooms are actually a whole system I made JUST for this one car; but used it a bit throughout the project.  

The next car was the Anger car; and holy F#CK this one got me down pretty bad. You might think my first or my last car would be the hardest; but know this edgy pinstripe room was my nightmare. First, it's the only car with falling hazards after the chairs in Denial decided to just bug themselves. But it's also the only car that has spawners that spawn this red goop that kills you. 
Due to time constraints and my brain level at this point in the day I didn't record the early progress which was basically the same as this. Just the spikes were red squares, there was no chairs for décor; and the red goop wasn't there so you'd just get hit by red cubes falling from nowhere.

There was game design atrocities being committed by me in this car. I  spent too long trying to get the red cubes to spawn correctly and splatter. Then I couldn't get them to kill the player. Fast forward to me going to work and working a hellish party night where I finally had a few minutes of peace; kind of. I pulled out my laptop and started working. Said F#CK the splatter they'll just fall through the world for now. And then got them to kill the player! After that I decided to add a warning that red goop will end your existence by creating a couple red goop piles for the ceiling. I also worked on some spikes for the flooring as well. By the end of my shift I had this room finished!

Day 3 Progress
I got up after sleeping for 8 hours and had a great day!
Well, I actually did the responsible indie dev thing and got off from another terrible shift, I hate frat guys so much, got home and grabbed my 2nd Swiss Chocolate Monster and listened to Slipknot and Korn while grinding out the last work. Now I didn't actually finish all the cars day 2 due to the Anger room's annoying hazard issue.

I started by finishing  the Sorrow car that would symbolize the sadness and depression over the fact of dying. Shit does kinda suck ya know especially as a kid/teen just wanting some candy. I knew before I started working on it I wanted an ocean theme. So, I added some still water sprites because animating water with 16 hours left would actually lead me to my own grave.

After some playtesting I added this blue and purplish walls that looks low effort; but honestly it was. And I made up some crate sprites to add to that at sea feel. I didn't really put a ton of effort into this car beyond what I initially planned due to my time constraint.

Then I moved onward to the final car; Acceptance. This room would be like Isolation where it's an atmospheric room that gives you more of a sense to the mood and setting. I whipped up some sprites for NPCs based on 1916 and 1960 fashion. 

After this I spent time working on various things in the game such as new buildings to replace the grey blocks in the title.

I also added new wheels to the cars in the game to give it a more train feel.

Woah! What's that in the background of what was the default Unity skybox?! An actual procedurally generated background. I took a few spawners from the red goo, messed with them; and got them producing some buildings that'll pass by! Now I'm not gonna flex too much but to make the buildings even more diverse I gave them their own script. This script will assign them a random sort order to put them in their place within a range I set. Then it scales and darkens them to a fitting degree to create a more interesting cityscape. It probably still sucks but hey, I had like 3 hours left and I was doing my best to polish the game in that time.

I also created some walkway sprites and railing you'll also see in the title screen to create bridges between cars! I think this is a pretty nice way to bridge the gap between cars in a way that'll let you see the outside world some too. I like trying to open up linear games like that; adds some more immersion and detail.

This included with the original idea where you'd lose parts of your costume as you progressed to symbolize your passing. This was actually a pain in the ass to do because I originally was small brained. I tried taking three sprite layers for each part of the character and animating it all and moving it all into position and slowly dying in the inside as it all fell apart in front of me with 2 and a halfish hours left. 

So, like a smart person I just exported the sprite sets with the different part combinations since there's only 3 phases to losing your look. And then made a system that would turn the sprites on and off as needed and then re-animated each layer. There's probably a better way to do this but I was too tired and too low on time.

I also populated some of the cars with NPCs that had little dialogue bits to give insight to the car and sometimes the world you're in. I chose to mainly focus on people dying due to suicide or murder for being queer or a sex worker; sometimes hinting at racism. Not because I'm pushing a woke agenda for any side of politics; but rather because of the time period and how those things are still relevant today. I am queer and alternative so being judged and treated different due to my mannerisms and appearance is a constant thing. I also live in upstate New York which is still pretty racist and homophobic and generally resistant to modern day America. I just had a scare where I was worried a landlord was going to deny me and my fiancée because I had a tiny bit of black nail polish scraping away. I played it off as my little sister and acted like "Ah makeup is for girls my guy!" which worked out for us since we got the place and are moving in real soon like in 3 DAYS!!! Insane. So these points are not only a choice due to time period but because they're things that personally impact my daily life and things I have feelings towards; like that people shouldn't be judged in passing because they do sex work or look different. 

This game isn't focused on pushing politics but rather pushing humanity and moving through the process of dying.

I also added SFX to the the train wheels with position so it sounds like it's coming from the train, outside of the cars it gets louder; and yeah pretty sick stuff. I also added some gibberish talk in the background of the Acceptance car since I thought it added more immersion and atmosphere to the car. I added a slam sound to the doors when they close and it sounds really good. I added the train sound to the title screen and it made the title feel way better. I also created 3 songs for the game! One for the title, one for the Acceptance car; and one that grows with your progress for the general gameplay. Every car adds an part of the track creating in the end a full song. This adds to the progression of the game alongside the visuals.

There was some adjustments and bug fixes as well; but that in general was it! That was the entire process of creating "The Lost" a game I think I should definitely re-title.

What do you think of the game? 
Would you play an updated more rogue-like version of the game?
Let me know! I might spend some time working on it more to create a bit more content for the game.