Its purpose was only to fill the information gaps in order to help players understand some plot developments. (We call those types of dialogue "barks.")īut we didn’t stop there: Originally, Eliza’s portion of the game was supposed to be about an hour of gameplay with some simple puzzles. Aside from greatly expanding on their backstories and personalities, as well as their dialogue options, we also implemented a “Barking System”-a system that allows those NPCs more freedom within the gameplay, letting them interact with other NPCs in their vicinity or comment on the situations currently happening around them instead of just sitting there idling until the player clicks on them. We spent a lot of time going over what made them tick, trying to make them feel more alive than your average NPC. They were static and flat, which isn’t particularly rare in this genre, as they are mostly there to fulfill a purpose and little else, but it was something we felt had a lot of room for improvement. One egregious example of this was-at least in our view-the NPCs. You just need to find it.)Īfter several sections of the game underwent a complete rework, other sections suddenly felt like they were “not good enough” anymore. Even if it looks like there’s no way forward, there is always one. For example, a lot of puzzles’ fail cases now trigger their own unique animations and some of them even involve plot consequences that lead to gameplay changes down the road! (But do not worry. We thought, “That’s it! This is what will bring our game to the next level!” and so in 2019, three years into development, we went ahead and began redesigning the way in-game combinations worked up until that point, i.e., essentially rebuilding 3 Minutes to Midnight from its roots.Īs a consequence of modifying the in-game logic, we now needed to write thousands of new dialogue lines for all the possible item/NPCs combinations, as well as create hundreds of new animations, many of them unique for very specific occurrences. One of the first pitfalls encountered was when we decided to eliminate the infamous “It doesn’t seem to work” sentences that have always bothered both new and old players alike. Thus, we looked for ways how we could improve our game and turn it into something more unique. However, over time, we started seeing the same flaws in our game as many other games of this genre face. (I know! Can you believe it?!) It’s 2023 and the game is still not finished! So, what happened?Īfter we presented our game at E3 in 2018, we were very confident about the game we had created. The initial release date was planned for early 2019. Did you know that back in 2016 when the original idea for 3 Minutes to Midnight was conceived, we had quite a different concept in mind? 3 Minutes to Midnight was supposed to be a linear game with one ending, one solution per puzzle, and approximately six hours of gameplay.
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