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Today we had two meetings, one with our programming master and another one which we as a group arranged with one of our tutors within design. Well the programming meeting was short and it was a matter of meeting our master, so I’ll skip to the important meeting with the tutor. We began pitching our idea and our visions for the game as well as some general thoughts about game design.

The first thing that were discussed was whether we should reconsider having two tools with you at all time or if there should only be one tool. We came to a conclusion on that decision that we should let the players pick first if they want the pick axe or the sledge hammer. But this isn’t written in stone and may or may not be rewritten further down the line of planning.

Another thing was that we may remove the “exit”  from the game and make it about surviving and staying away from the monsters as long as possible. This would open up for a longer game duration which would’ve otherwise lasted a couple of minutes.

This leads us in on the next big subject of the day; What is fear? What is scary? Because our game is made in 2d we have to focus on other things than traditional scare tactics. I’m personally a huge fan of the silent hill series and I’m really amazed how the play around with just the sound to create the feeling of unease for the player. And the fear of the unknown is also an aspect we intend to play on, ’cause what is scarier that not knowing what’s behind the next corner in a dark and unknown place. And to really nail that feeling of not knowing what the hell is going on, we have the intentions of regenerate the terrain the player doesn’t see. Like this: You have just passed a T-crossing and you decided to take a left turn but later on decides to go the other way in the crossing. What feeling will you get when the crossing you just passed is now gone and replaced by a whole new corridor.

This aims to capture the uneasy feeling of not being in control of what’s going on. When I’m writing this I feels as there are a lot of questions that needs to be answered. But we are producing a prototype of both the light-mechanic as well as a prototype for the re-generation of the level to get a feeling of how the will co-exist and if it “feels right”  for the game.

Tomorrow there is a couple of lectures in design and after that we are going to have a meeting with our scrum master. When that meeting is done, the whole group is going to sit down and finish the scrum document so we can hand it in (well, share it with the course responsible)

And we have to make sure to hand it in on time because otherwise we have a risk of having the group split and that’s something I really don’t want to happen.