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[rocket5tim]

Story
The Phantom P.I. Mission Apparition is a spooky, puzzly adventure game starring a paranormal investigator who specializes in helping ghosts who are being bullied in the afterlife.

When deceased rock & roll legend Marshall Staxx finds himself being pushed around by a larcenous ghoul named Baublebelly, he calls on the Phantom P.I. to help rid him of the foul beast.

Upon arriving at Ravensmaw Manor, an infamous haunted house which Staxx bought shortly before his sudden (and some say cursed) rise to fame, the Phantom P.I. quickly realizes that the old house is a maze of strange passages and interconnected puzzles that will require his keen investigative skills to solve.

Links

• Indie MEGABOOTH
• ThePhantomPI.com
• The Phantom PI presskit()
• 
  
  
• rocket5studios.com
• twitter
• facebook

History
The idea for The Phantom P.I. started last summer as a family project when we made a little arcade game called Ghost Hunter with our nieces and nephews for the Toronto After Dark Film Festival’s Darkcade. We changed pretty much all of the gameplay since that version of the game, but the main character, Cecil, and the horror and humor themes remain.



Gameplay evolved from a prototype game that we made at TOJam 7 with our friend and artist Mujia Liao called Koloro in which you play as a cat burglar exploring a house viewed in cross-section. In The Phantom P.I., players explore a haunted mansion, solve environmental puzzles, capture poltergeists and help the ghost of a dead rock star (Cecil’s client) who is being hassled by a ghoulish bully. There’s a strong story component too which you’ll piece together from bits of old letters, newspaper clippings, photos and secrets that are hidden inside the house.

Inspiration
The visual themes and overall vibe in Mission Apparition are inspired by 1980’s era TV shows, film noir, steam punk and Wes Anderson films. Gameplay draws inspiration from adventure games like Maniac Mansion, Costume Quest and The Castles of Dr. Creep which is one my favorite Commodore 64 puzzle games from when I was a kid.



The Team
My name is Tim Miller and I co-founded Rocket 5 Studios with my wife Cathy Feraday Miller. We're primarily a 2 person team but for The Phantom PI we enlisted help from some family and friends. I do the game design and programming, Cathy does the character art and animations, Christine Feraday wrote the story and she's also our assistant producer and Kevin Feraday is doing level design.  Modeling and texture painting is being handled by Ashley Miedema-Vanchu and Jen Schollen who also did the interface art. Blain Kramer and Ryan Henwood from Blue Sound and Music are on board for the sfx and music and Aaron Robertson is doing the original soundtrack.

[rocket5tim]

Update: we cut the ghost capture features as described below because it didn't support the core game mechanics.

When interacting with certain things in the game, Cecil (the main character) will sometimes trigger a minigame. One of those mini-games is a ghost capture sequence (haven't come up with a cooler name for it yet) where Cecil uses his Phantomizer to collect ghosts.

Here's a low res gif showing the gameplay as it is now.  The mini-game starts when Cecil kicks a box and ends after he collects all the ghosts.


Currently the mini-game isn't very challenging and the ghost's movement isn't very ghostly.  A lot of the art is placeholder too - the background art, phantomizer effects and HUD are all 1st pass.

Gameplay:
I want to increase the difficulty a little bit every time you play the minigame.  The current version is clearly very easy and would work fine for the first few times that it's triggered and for the tutorial.  Or any time I just want to give the player a break with an easy minigame.

To increase the difficulty, I'm thinking of spawning some kind of enemy - like a flying book with teeth - that would attack Cecil.  If the enemy hits Cecil, that would end the minigame and he wouldn't be able to collect the rest of the ghosts.  Or if we want to be really evil, we could release any ghosts that you had captured up to that point - so if you get hit by an enemy, you get nothing (too harsh?).

We also have a boss bad guy that I'm thinking could spawn and slowly move across the screen (kind of like the ghost in Spelunky). If it reaches Cecil before you capture all the ghosts, then the minigame is over.  One thing I'm worried about with this is, will the player expect the Phantomizer to work on the boss?  What happens if you try to shoot him?  Should it do nothing or maybe hold him in place or push him back a little bit?  Obviously you can't collect him like you do with the smaller ghosts, that would be too easy.

Visuals:
The background art is already getting a 2nd pass by Jen.  The background and foreground elements will be separate objects so that the ghosts can spawn from behind the grave stones and stuff.

There needs to be a transition between the 2 worlds, I'm thinking some kind of screen wipe.

The Phantomizer VFX need another pass. I'd like to do some kind of lighting effect for the line but haven't figure out exactly how to do that yet. And there needs to be an effect and sound effects when the ghost is captured.

Ghost movement needs to be more ghostly, they need to evade a little so that it's difficult to grab them.

[Games Inquirer]

Looks pretty neat, aiming for iOS release (that mini game seems a good fit)?

[rocket5tim]

Looks pretty neat, aiming for iOS release (that mini game seems a good fit)?

Thanks! Yep it'll be on iOS and Android and hopefully some other platforms TBA.

[rocket5tim]

Here's a graphic that illustrates our level design process on The Phantom P.I. High-res image

[hube]

Gotta say the game is looking great. The animations are especially well done. Cecil has so much character. How does the mini-game work? You have to keep the beam on the ghosts as it sucks him close enough? Or does the zapper let you move them around?

[rocket5tim]

Gotta say the game is looking great. The animations are especially well done. Cecil has so much character. How does the mini-game work? You have to keep the beam on the ghosts as it sucks him close enough? Or does the zapper let you move them around?

Thanks hube! The animations are all being done by my wife Cathy.  In the minigame you basically catch one by touching/holding on him and then drag it Cecil to collect him.  I'm going to make them a little more squirmy so they're harder to catch and also add in some dangerous things flying around that you'll have to shoot and/or avoid.

[SirNiko]

I love the idea of piecing together a little story by reading clues left around the house. Hopefully it offers some amusing details and some opportunities for players to read between lines and figure out deeper elements of the tale that may not necessarily figure into solving the mystery.

Action-based minigames might not be appropriate for a slower, more cerebral game about reading clues and solving a mystery. Rather than making the ghosts squirmier, maybe go for something where you have to spot an odd-ghost-out or capture the ghosts based on a logical order.

Or maybe the game is more action-y than I'm seeing from your description and action-based minigames are totally fitting with the overall design.

You can deal with confusion over what the Ghost-buster thing can and can't catch by making up some simple internal rules to teach the player. Maybe green ghosts can be captured, but red ghosts cannot. Or maybe just red eyes signal an uncatchable ghost, to give you more freedom to play with colors. Maybe a ghost you can catch flashes gold every few seconds, or an uncatchable one shimmers like he's reflective when the laser passes over him. The important rule is to pick something you can apply consistently through the series that won't interfere with your character designs.

[rocket5tim]

Hi SirNiko, thanks for thoughtful reply.

I love the idea of piecing together a little story by reading clues left around the house. Hopefully it offers some amusing details and some opportunities for players to read between lines and figure out deeper elements of the tale that may not necessarily figure into solving the mystery.

We're really excited about this idea too, you summed up our goals exactly. We want the player to piece together the story through exploration which has given our writer the freedom to write in lots of little stories and clues that traditional storytelling through canned cinematics doesn't really allow for. They also provide the player with additional motivation to explore the levels more carefully and solve side puzzles.

Action-based minigames might not be appropriate for a slower, more cerebral game about reading clues and solving a mystery. Rather than making the ghosts squirmier, maybe go for something where you have to spot an odd-ghost-out or capture the ghosts based on a logical order.

Or maybe the game is more action-y than I'm seeing from your description and action-based minigames are totally fitting with the overall design.

You can deal with confusion over what the Ghost-buster thing can and can't catch by making up some simple internal rules to teach the player. Maybe green ghosts can be captured, but red ghosts cannot. Or maybe just red eyes signal an uncatchable ghost, to give you more freedom to play with colors. Maybe a ghost you can catch flashes gold every few seconds, or an uncatchable one shimmers like he's reflective when the laser passes over him. The important rule is to pick something you can apply consistently through the series that won't interfere with your character designs.

You're right, the pace of the game is intended to be rather relaxed with more emphasis on exploration, puzzle solving and tension than action.  The ghost capture minigame (and others we have planned) are designed to break up the exploration from time to time. I do need to be careful to not make these side elements too "action-y"; I don't want to change the rules on players to the point where they don't understand how things work or by making the game all-of-a-sudden too difficult. 

I like your idea that the ghosts are elusive rather than merely "squirmy" so that it's more of a puzzle to spot the ghosts and grab them while their visible instead of the current skill-based approach.

You've given me a lot to think about here, thanks very much for your feedback! 

[rocket5tim]

Just a real quick update, I've been working on revising the ghost capture interaction based on feedback from SirNico and further discussions with my co-designer Kevin.  I'll post more here when it's ready to show. I've also been working on adding an event system that will be used to trigger various scary events (slamming doors, particle systems, sound effect, etc).

Update: Here's our new pre-release trailer:



And here's our original teaser trailer:

[Games Inquirer]

Makes me think of Luigi's Mansion

[rocket5tim]

Quick post for Screenshot Saturday. Here's the latest iteration of the VFX for the ghost capture mechanic. Also note that the capture occurs within the context of the adventure instead of in a separate minigame like I was originally planning.



Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

[rocket5tim]

Cecil's new chops!
We noticed during play testing that a lot of the time is spent looking at the side and 3/4 back view of Cecil's head. Cecil's head shape is kind of boxy and this view needed some more visual interest.  When we went back and looked at the original concept (below), we noticed some missing details (like the mutton chops and ears) that would help improve his 3D silhouette.



We wanted to quickly see see what the new Cecil would look like before going through the whole rigging and weighting pipeline so Cathy modeled a new head and then pasted it on the old animated mesh (which is why you see a gap on his neckline). Here's the new version with mutton chops, ears, bigger mustache and bangs and a new hair style (mostly around the sides and back).



And here's the current character for comparison:


This change also allows us to simplify the mesh - the current character has 4 different facial expressions (default, happy, surprised, angry) which are individual meshes that are weighted to the skinned mesh.  The idea was that we would change  his expression based on what he was doing in the game by showing/hiding the different faces.  But since his facial features (eyes and eyelids) are rather small and his mouth is mostly hidden by his excellent mustache, the different faces didn't read well so we decided to cut the face swapping. 

Usually we wouldn't make such a risky change to our main character at this stage of development but we feel like the improvements to the character's silhouette and overall simplification of the mesh outweighs the risks.  What do you think of the new vs. current Cecil?

[rocket5tim]

Makes me think of Luigi's Mansion

Sorry for the delayed response, I somehow missed your post!  So yeah it has a bit of the Luigi's Mansion vibe since the game takes place in a haunted house that you can explore and there are ghosts and things to jump out and scare you! 

We're also taking cues from classic LucasArts adventures like Maniac Mansion, The Castles of Dr. Creep by Broderbund which was one of my favorite C64 games, and more modern adventures like Double Fine's Costume Quest and The Cave.

[hube]

Cecil looks great with the chops. I'd try some bushy eyebrows too for those super inexplicable encounters!

[rocket5tim]

I'm working on a new level for a build that we're sending out to gamercamp (an annual game festival here in Toronto) for review. I have to get this level and a ton of other tasks done before midnight PST tonight!    If all goes well, I'll send up pics from the final version later tonight.

[rocket5tim]

Here's the finished version of the level in Unity that I made for Gamercamp the other night (this is the same level from the WIP version in the previous post). I submitted the game with about 3 minutes to spare before the deadline! I really need to stop cutting these things so close.  



And here's how it looks in the game:

[Games Inquirer]

Nice, pretty big and complex

[Panurge]

Really nice atmosphere. Puts me in mind of 'The Fighteners', amongst other things. I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

[rocket5tim]

Really nice atmosphere. Puts me in mind of 'The Fighteners', amongst other things. I look forward to seeing how this turns out.

I have to admit that I've never watched The Frighteners, but I just watched the trailer and wow yeah there are some similarities! Definitely gonna watch it now!