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[micng]

Greetings comrades! We, a collective of student game developers, are engaged in the creation of a Cold War-themed stealth game.

A short introduction to our game:
This game is a stealth horror game based around the concept of spatial audio! Using both Unity’s built in audio spatialization tools and the Steam Audio toolkit we are aiming to create an immersive auditory experience that will help guide you through the game to eventually escape the Soviet laboratory you are currently stuck in.

For this iteration we focused on improving the game's storyline, player guidance, and audio levels.

What’s new:
Added original textures to the environment
Changed the player’s camera movements
Changed the audio test scene to be more dynamic
Added new events to the lab level
Improved audio levels.
Added a new feature - sound mimicking
Revamped the office level and added more events
Added more specific story elements, including original voice over content to better guide the player through the facility

Motivations:
We made these changes to:
Fix existing bugs:
L1: Player being able to jump over the blockade
L2: Some characters walk past the player without any interaction
Improve gameplay:
Player couldn’t tell they were walking forward or not
Giving player the ability to adjust mouse sensitivity
L1: Making the collapse more clear
Narrow down our focus to a Cold War themed game:
More theming

Looking ahead, our plans for the forthcoming iteration include:
For our next iteration, we are planning to further develop the Cold War theme, with the possibility of a third bonus level in the game!
We also are attempting to further develop the auditory environment, especially in the second level, giving the player more objects to interact with and discover through.
Fix glitches in the level geometry (getting rid of overlapping textures and making current textures more appealing)

In solidarity, we stride forward toward the realization of our vision!

~note - for mac builds if it doesn’t work, then try cd-ing to the folder and typing in “xattr -rc *.app” into terminal.
Download here! (idk how to do hyperlinks sorry comrade): https://www.indiedb.com/groups/eecs494-2024-group/downloads/cold-war-stealth-game-version-1

** we changed our game name from Sleeper Lab to Shadow Lab

[micng]

Shadow Lab Devlog #2:
Greetings comrades! We, a collective of student game developers, are engaged in the creation of a Cold War-themed stealth game called Shadow Lab!

For this iteration, we focused on improving gameplay and guidance.

What’s new:

• We added a new player-object interaction system, so players can interact with objects in a variety of ways
• Added objectives
• Redesigned our maps
• Added more story elements
• Added more Cold War theming
• Made the lab way cooler
• Removed sound mimicking
• Changed our game name from Sleeper Lab to Shadow Lab
• Added more memorable story moments, animations, and voice overs
• Improved the echolocation feature: interactable objects glow

Motivations:

• Improve player gameplay experience:
• Players were often confused on what to do when starting in the level, so we focused a lot more on player guidance through different means
• Before, players could only press to interact with objects
• While we had an overarching storyline to players it felt a little unfinished. We tried our best in this iteration to make the storyline integral to the gameplay.

Looking ahead, our plans for the forthcoming iteration include:

• Continuing to theme our levels 
• Improve audio levels and settings to give the player a more immersive experience
• Fix small guidance issues such as the discrepancy between E to open images and Enter to close them.
• Make small fixes to the UVs and other slightly broken parts of our map.
• Make a title sequence that will play during the power outage and a credit sequence to play while the player travels through the tunnel
• Add an environment outside the tunnel to give the game a more satisfying ending.
• Fix soldiers’ movement and attacks to be more threatening
• Theme our UI more

In solidarity, we stride forward toward the realization of our vision!

Check out out game here: https://www.indiedb.com/games/sleeper-lab

~note - for mac builds if it doesn’t work, then try cd-ing to the folder and typing in “xattr -rc *.app” into terminal.!

[micng]

Greetings Comrades!

our favorite soldier

This week was a week of polishing and bug fixes.
Here is what changed:
- New environmental assets in your jail cell, our little alien experiment is now allowed to draw in its cell. These images also help to continue the storyline of the game, which is central to the gameplay.
- Made both levels brighter and took away echolocation. We found that too many players tended to spam echolocation without actually listening to objects to figure out where to go. It was our hope that by making the level itself brighter, and therefore easier to navigate, that we can eliminate the need for echolocation as a navigation tool and better force players to listen to audio sources to figure out where to go.
- Made new graphics for the death scene and for the escape scene, last week both were just white text on a black background. This week they are themed in order to have a smoother, more immersive experience for the player.
- Debugged the office sequence, added new assets for the guards, added animations for the guards. Last week the office level, while fully realized, was not always triggering things correctly at the right times. We relooked at the sequence of events and continued to work on making the game run smoother, look better, and feel more immersive.

What’s Next?
- If we choose to continue working on this game we would love to continue to add more theming. Currently the only interactions/audio in the game are the interactions and audio important to the gameplay. In future iterations we would love to continue to flesh out this world and these characters and we would love to continue developing this story to become more and more central to the gameplay.
Thats all for now! Thank you comrades for joining us on this journey.
Batool, Maddie, Michelle, and Vanessa

Download mac or windows build from: https://www.indiedb.com/games/sleeper-lab/downloads/shadow-lab-gold-mac-build#downloadsform

GameJolt page (has web build):https://gamejolt.com/dashboard/games/891718/packages/897939