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[oldblood]

I like the idea of the girl being faceless. That's something which has always freaked me out, characters without a face, it's not so much horror but it makes me feel uneasy. The face feels a bit flat at the moment though.

Thanks for the feedback Zizka. I'm the same way with the faceless stuff. There is a lot of symbolism involved with ALL of the characters in this game, so there's a reasoning behind it but I think that it also adds some uneasiness to her character. Even though she is "good". Do agree on the face feeling "flat". It's a bit challenging to have a face devoid of features and still find a way to keep a face... It may need some work.

I prefer characters which trigger unease (like the guy in the straight jacket) than actual "monsters" like the wolf, which I like the least. It's like comparing Lynch to other horror directors. Lynch made you feel bad with simple things. I find the wolf is too stereotypical compared to the rest of the crew. It's still nice though, just feel like it's sticking out not in a good way.

Well, first off- I'm glad to hear that (generally speaking) the characters make you feel uncomfortable. As I've said before, this game isn't supposed to feel like "horror" but more like "horrific". So, glad that this is working for the most part. I also see where you're coming from with the Wolf. He is definitely unique from the others in his style, the challenge is that he is a very symbolic character as well. And, he must be a wolf. The idea was to blend wolf + old man (because I didnt want another traditional animal character) but he does feel very "Classic Horror" compared to the others so I certainly understand where you're coming from. Some have told me he is there favorite design so far, others like you, prefer him the least. He seems to be a polarizing character.

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement. Always good to get outside opinions of your work. And props for referencing Lynch as a horror director, he is definitely a great artist.

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 30.

I've been spending a lot of my time working on the interior of your families home...

I was very worried about how the interior rooms would look and I had the spent the past several weeks severely dreading them. I've come to realize though that I absolutely adore these interior rooms. And I typically don't like anything.

I spent an unholy amount of time yesterday getting some interiors into the game and I must say, the visuals seemed to be working really well. I'm able to experiment with "creepier" aesthetics in the house and I've been really running with that. I should have some screeshots to show later this week. Down to the final 2-3 rooms which I hope to have all done this week.

***

While I've been working on the interior, I decided that creepy portraits on the wall could be a great way to increase the "angst" in the rooms. So I decided to start creating some.

I got a bit carried away...

I probably will not end up using all of them, but it was very fun diversion to make these. Unfortunately, it ate up 2-3 days that could have gone to finishing up the other rooms but-- I think it was worth it.

You may recognize the 3 shadow figures I had done previously? I also did paintings of some friends of mine. Others hold significance as they tie into the true story behind the game and of course, one of the characters up there... is me...

[Fenrir]

I love those portraits, good job!

Hmm I would say that your character is maybe the number 16?

[metagrue]

Might be 10. You look the type.

Great images though, as always looking forward to more.

[lapinozz]

First sorry for my english.

I dont tink you would make a portrait of yourself like that, i supose is more an abstract an symbolic.
So i discard 1, 20, 16, 10, 19 and 9, but the 10 is the only one to have blood on it and to have the cadre decorated so i keep it.
You'r not a women so not 13 or 12
I dont tink you'r old enough to be 14, nor do i ink you are religious so not 2
3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 15, 18 and 17 are too abstract
that let us 8, 10 and 11
You'r unique so it cant be 8 or 11 cause the look too close
So the only one that can fit is 10
BUT (1 + 1 + 0 + 0) * 10 = 20 so we need to add 20
and 20 - (2 + 2) = 16 so we also need to add 16
So to finish 16 : look too normal, i feel like is a trap
20: doesn't fit whit the image you need to project to other, you need to look more "normal" and "acceptable"
10 is cool


Ok it was fun, but i probably got everything wrong lol
Like alway im really  impatiens to play your game, and the portraits ares (like all the others arts) impressive

[oahda]

Hey. Sorry for not checking in here lately, but you know how it's been. You saw it on Twitter.

I've gone through what I've missed in the last month now and the progress seems solid still. The test music is very fitting and I like the idea of adding effects to the text to convey various things.

Keep going!

[oldblood]

Thanks for the feedback on the paintings. Glad to see people like them. Felt bad for taking a few days out of the schedule just for some wall decorations but-- it was fun. Hopefully the extra level of detail will help sell the environments more. Some good guesses on which portrait is me. lapinozz, that is an impressive break-down. You actually made me smile. And so you know, your English is good. The "game" will be filled with a lot of symbolic elements that I'm sure no one (but me) will notice, but-- comments like yours make me hope that people may dive into the story and try to find out what it's all really about.

***

DEVLOG 31.

Been heads-down the last couple weeks.

Oh, how you complained... how you cried!

And now, I need to see if I'm on the right track here. Time for a teaser of the interior rooms with some new screenshots:

"Motherhood: All love begins and ends there." - Robert Browning

Albert. He was looking for "the boy with blood on his face".

The insanity crept in, and I heard a voice like the sound of many voices...

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 31.1

No reason to be this excited about fire...

But fuck it. Celebrate the small things in life.

Typically alcohol and fire doesn't mix well, but tonight- it seems to be working well for me. What I'm doing at this moment:

[oldblood]

I had a(scii) idea.

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 32.

I'm starting to feel like I have just enough to show an alpha demo now... Late? Yes. But it's not quite ready. There is always something else to add. I'm typically the type who will actually never show anyone a build till it's done because-- well, it's not done.

But I've been burned by that before. It's always important to get your builds into the hands of people not involved in your project. Sooner is generally better. Even if it's just to review something very basic.

Generally speaking, I'm really liking the visuals. I was really doubting how this all was going to jive about a month or so ago, but I'm glad I stuck to my gut. I'm also playing with the idea of some small parts of the game converting to ASCII (teased an image yesterday). It works really well with the whole TV/CRT themes, with the game already being laced with codes and numbers, it would make even more sense. I don't know that I will actually do that, but with this game being some experimental and weird, I can really mess with any aspect as much as I want... And I'm really just making this for me. So if I want small segments of the game to make a dramatic shift visually, I can do that.

Maybe I should embrace the crazy?

...So is the demo ready?

No, but maybe in the next week?

In the interim, I will share some more screenshots:

"His bedroom felt more like a prison than a room. He was caged like an animal..."

Your father's scorn must be a heavy weight to bear?

[karlozalb]

This is really disturbing, I like it. Looking forward for the demo!

[oldblood]

@karlozalb: Thanks for the feedback. I love the work you guys are doing, so hopefully the demo won't disappoint you too much...

***

DEVLOG 33.

I spent almost the entire weekend working on the demo. It was a beautiful spring weekend, but I didn't go outside. I just worked. And I drank. And I worked some more. I spent last night inserting and setting up some SFX in the demo and trying to remove out as many placeholder images as I could, and then it hit me--

I don't like placeholders. Never have. I'm a visual person and sometimes I have a hard time "seeing the potential" when I'm looking at white-boxes. While this trait does help me establish and sell the visuals behind what I'm trying to create-- I find that sometimes I get lost the art and the features suffer as a consequence.

That is the point of this demo. Alpha. Vertical slice. Whatever you want to call it. I need to make sure that mechanically, it is functioning as people would expect it to. Yes, there will be some narrative elements to it where you meet the family, but generally- I just want to know if its working. All that being said:

...there will be placeholders in the demo.

This is a ridiculous statement. Of course there are placeholders in a demo. But for me, this is an important fact to come to realization with.

This is NOT to insinuate that I wait to show products till I've crafted something that is perfect. Nothing is perfect, nothing is really ever final. I'm sure most developers would tell you that no one ever feels that their game is "complete". We just stop working on things when we can no longer stand the sight of them. I'm also not insinuating any work I've ever done is actually GOOD. My work (much like myself) is always very flawed. My games typically end up as failed products that offer brief glimpses of something special (on occasion), but generally just fall flat on execution. This is not self-deprecation. This is simply a fact. 

This is also me simply stating that I'm trying to change the way I work. I'm also hoping that when the demo goes up, that people will play it and leave me very real and honest feedback on it.

Just shut the fuck up already, when is the demo coming?

This week. Maybe Wednesday. Maybe Friday.

I just want to go to sleep and never wake up...

[Mya]

Keep at it man, your stuff is awesome. Looking forward to giving your demo a try.

I want to hang little printouts of those paintings on the bathroom wall.

[oldblood]

@Mya: Appreciate the kind words. That's an amazing idea on hanging the portraits in the bathroom... Hmm...

***

DEVLOG 34.

This is not an official teaser or trailer. I slapped this together in 35 minutes last night...

This is just a few clips from the demo I will be putting up this week. Take the viewing with a grain of salt as everything is "work in progress".

CLICK TO PLAY

[oahda]

I could actually really see (hear) some zeldaesque voice clips accompanying these characters. Maybe even a scream (if that fits his character) for the brother.

Hadn't seen the logo before. Looks very nice.

[oldblood]

Thanks. Originally I had planned on doing voice-over work for the characters in the game, but it's just out of my budget and I'd only want to work with professional actors verses going cheap and getting mediocre voice work. Then I decided to just use a narrator but that wouldn't work if just the narrator was voiced...

So at this point. Its all text-based at this point. Being honest, not opposed to that. But the challenge is that I'm discovering its really hard to convey some of the serious emotions with just text. In example, the Mother. Her dialogue should transition between sweet and loving to violent and angry as she battles her personalities. That's much harder to do with text than it is with voice work. So we'll see.   

[oldblood]

DEVLOG 35.

I need feedback.

That's sort of the point here...

Alpha demo is up and available for download for Windows/Mac. You can download a zip file at: www.masochisia.com (currently just redirects to itch.io site).

A few small notes worth mentioning:

● Parts from early in the game are missing so you will hit some areas that you can't access.
● There are placeholders (art, SFX, animation etc.)
● Some features (pills, insanity, inventory, monsters etc) are in rudimentary stages
● This is all subject to change.
● This is a short narrative experience dedicated to just "meeting the family".

Mostly what I'm looking for is just feedback on:

● Aesthetics: What is working or not working...
● Mechanics: Is movement and interaction work. Suggestions for inventory? Exits? etc.
● Dialogue & Narrative: Working? Not working?

Leave comments here. Feel free to be brutally honest. Or you can email feedback directly to: [email protected]

[Cakeprediction]

ehhh, pressed all the buttons on my keyboard and mouse, but couldn't get past the first screen(which did look extremely pretty btw, also the music was pretty great) D:
Anything I missed?

[oahda]

Played through it!

Took a couple of minutes to boot up and then it got stuck on the menu after the 18+ notice (presumably while loading the game) until it started, so you might want a loading screen there. Then it started, played half a sound clip and froze for about a minute before the first line finally appeared ("Hello, Hamilton"). No problems after that. Ran smooth throughout the game.

So, ~brutally honestly~, as you requested, it's a great start. The art is, again, fantastic. Everything fits well together. I hadn't seen the title screen before. Looks great too.

Are you using a bunch of shaders?

It was neat to see that the mother had different lines to speak after I had received the medicine, but since she kept repeating those lines after that, I don't know if it would be better to make her untalkable to after that.

I found it it a little weird to have to click before getting options to reply with, with the same line from the character appearing again. After clicking through the first chat, I came to expect every click to bring up a new line. So you might want to have the options come right away with a line that has them.

Mood is great, of course. Lacks music, but I know it's WIP.

It got even creepier during the beating, hearing such a young voice; I'd expected someone much older.

I didn't understand the point of having keyboard keys assigned to things when you couldn't select things with the arrow keys and would have to click anyway. I think mouse movement and clicking alone is enough, really. The key icons actually confused me, because I didn't realise for a little while that I was supposed to drag the key to the door. I thought I had to press I or E since those keys were mentioned there, but that didn't work. So yeah, I don't think you need keyboard at all for this game.

The TV screen effect is really cool, and you should definitely keep it in the menu, but the lines across the screen got really heavy on the eyes in the actual game pretty soon. Especially when moving. I think you could pretty safely remove those and still have the game look great. The art is solid.

I found the text and clicking sound effects to be too loud compared to the music, so you might want to decrease their volume a bit. On the contrary, the heartbeats should've been a lot louder, I think. Great visual effect alongside those, by the way, zooming in and out.

Same goes for the dynamic camera during conversations. Really good job on that.

I assume names like "Valley 2" and "Interior 1" are temporary?

Then of course as has been pointed out before, various weirdnesses in the text (exclamation marks where there should've been question marks and weird uses of commas and capital letters), so just have someone look at that before you ship in the end.

I'm not disappointed! Great first demo and a great time to be showing it off. It really had the mood in there and it looks gorgeous. Very unsettling. I'm just as intrigued as I was before. Looking forward to seeing more progress.

[oldblood]

ehhh, pressed all the buttons on my keyboard and mouse, but couldn't get past the first screen(which did look extremely pretty btw, also the music was pretty great) D:
Anything I missed?

Were you stuck in the menu or in the first room you start in (the Shed)? Sounds like there is some confusion on how the inventory works. I will have to look into this. To pick up the key, just click it. Click "I" to open the Inventory and drag the key from the inventory to the locked Shed door. If the menu, you have to click the "Play" button on the left hand side to launch the game.

Played through it!

Took a couple of minutes to boot up and then it got stuck on the menu after the 18+ notice (presumably while loading the game) until it started, so you might want a loading screen there. Then it started, played half a sound clip and froze for about a minute before the first line finally appeared ("Hello, Hamilton"). No problems after that. Ran smooth throughout the game.

Thanks for playing. That's interesting. Just curious, was this with a Mac or PC? I won't press you for specs but I haven't really tested on a machine that wasnt mine. I get some latency there for a second or two on load but that may just be on my machine. Glad to hear it ran smoothly after that point... Thanks for sharing. Something to look into.
 

Are you using a bunch of shaders?

It's basically different filters applied to the camera. But yeah, use them pretty extensively throughout the game with more coming (and going) when insane, when you hear voices, menu etc. Thanks for the feedback on the TV effect getting heavy on the eyes. Interesting. Curious to see what other people feel about that.

The idea of the TV effect is I really want to play with the whole "meta" approach that this game is going to touch on with what we do when we play video games. We do a lot of terrible things in video games and never really think much about it... this game is going to routinely call you on that. The TV effect is supposed to help reiterate that this... is just a game. But obviously if that effect is negatively impacting people, might need to reconsider this.

I didn't understand the point of having keyboard keys assigned to things when you couldn't select things with the arrow keys and would have to click anyway. I think mouse movement and clicking alone is enough, really. The key icons actually confused me, because I didn't realise for a little while that I was supposed to drag the key to the door. I thought I had to press I or E since those keys were mentioned there, but that didn't work. So yeah, I don't think you need keyboard at all for this game.

Interesting. Something to consider. I set it up to work with mouse, keyboard or a game controller. Sounds like this needs some fine-tuning.

And yes, there are some issues with the dialogue not being 100% edited. Most of it needs to be revisited to be honest. And yeah, the "tooltips" that show like "Valley 2" etc are mostly for my benefit to help me insure that exits are going where they need to without me needing to actually click every exit. I've been playing with the idea of replacing this dev tool with narrative like "Head deeper into the woods..." or "Head back to the Shed..." to help keep the player from getting lost.

Mood is great, of course. Lacks music, but I know it's WIP.

It got even creepier during the beating, hearing such a young voice; I'd expected someone much older.

Yeah, getting music in will really help the mood a lot I think.

And yeah, that "scene" is probably really the first unsettling scene in the game. It will get dramatically worse. The game is supposed to make you more and more uncomfortable as you go. It's not fun to create but it's necessary. It all has a point. I hope people figure out what that is...

I'm not disappointed! Great first demo and a great time to be showing it off. It really had the mood in there and it looks gorgeous. Very unsettling. I'm just as intrigued as I was before. Looking forward to seeing more progress.

Glad to hear. It's still pretty rough around the edges but glad to hear that generally the mood is working. Thanks for all the detailed feedback, VERY helpful.