Don't Die: Just a quick horror game/demo

Community Showcase Game Development
1

Greetings folks!

I’m not really well known on the forums, or in this community at all, but I thought I’d post this here anyways for the heck of it, and maybe get some feedback.

I released the “demo” (may or may not make more levels for this, depending on interest…) of the first full level for Don’t Die (working title… The name’s sticking with me though for some reason…) yesterday, and you can now download it from here.

http://dontdie.spritehaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/000001.png

http://dontdie.spritehaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/000002.png

http://dontdie.spritehaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/000003.png

http://dontdie.spritehaven.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/000004.png

About the game’s purpose:

I spent approximately just over a week putting this together partially as a test of my skills, partially to just finish and release something that people could actually play. The game was made partially by recycling some 3D assets from other projects I’ve worked on, and partially by making a few new 3D assets. Most of the textures were grabbed from CGTextures.com to save some time, some were edited, some were not. I assembled the main level over the course of about 3 and a half days(There’s a lot of walls/doors/doorwars and decal meshes…). The game mechanics and UI elements took about a day and a half, and the creature which I’ve taken to calling Timmy, took about a day to model, rig, and get working in-game.

I know the game itself is not exactly the most impressive thing(particularly the music, which was me more or less just banging on random keys/strings in the Garage Band app on my iPad… It’s a horror game, the music doesn’t need to be “good”, does it…? :wink: ), but hey, what do you want for a week’s worth of work? :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyways, let me know what you guys think.

The Game itself:

You’re trapped in an old abandoned lab facility, and the door you came in through locked behind you, so you need to find another way out. But careful, monsters be stalking you!

There’s a number of “documents” scattered throughout the level which gives small insights into game’s story, but are not required to “win”. All you need to do to “win” is survive, and find the exit! Can you make it out alive?

P.S.
I’m limited on computers that I can test this game with, so I’m looking for any kind of feedback possible on how the game runs, exc… So far, I’ve gotten feedback from one tester who says he was getting around 5 FPS, so I’m going to be uploading an updated version in a couple of days after the holiday with an added settings menu to see if letting people adjust their settings helps any… Should be up by Wednesday, and I’ll post an update then when it is…

2

Tried it out, and right off the start I was getting poor FPS which can probably be attributed to all the chairs in the world having physics enabled and most likely no culling for them. The game itself is a pretty generic slender-esque horror game, where you run around some place, look for notes, get stalked, and try to escape, so there isnt really any originality in the game as far as Im aware. Its pretty obvious that the game was made in about a weeks time as everything from the sounds, to the models, to the map are all clashing art style wise. I dont really want to criticize much because I know not a lot of effort went into any of this, but what I can recommend is that you do not reuse assets from other projects, and that you create everything with a specific art style. Produce music that is tense and frightening to match the mood and the environment. Make a more realistic layout for the level that makes sense, not leading you to dead ends that have no meaning, because at the moment, nothing complements anything.

Also, Im not sure how the monster is supposed to worth, whether or not it follows you, or what, but there was this room that I went into three times, and every time I left, I died because the monster appeared out of no where and killed me apparently. You should never have something that can end the game without the players knowledge to some extent, if it was intentional then you should think of other ways to let the player know not to enter that specific room or else the game will end.

3

simple solid

State of art.

Keep up that nice work :3

4

Added an updated version to the download page on my site with a graphic options menu to help cut down some of the lag issues some folks are having.

Yes, the game’s not very original, nor is it very stylistically pretty, but that wasn’t really the point of the game either… It was quick and dirty for the sake of being quick and dirty… The more original and better quality games I’m working on are far away from even approaching “done”, and some of the gameplay mechanics I still don’t have the first clue how to add in yet… Suffice to say, it’s much more complex than this was…

Anyways, the monster only has two spawn trigger types. One spawns the character directly in front of the player off of a dummy object attached to the player, the other spawns off a player start object. The first lunges at a high velocity immediately after it spawns, and should only not be visible if there’s a wall in the way, or possibly some graphical lag when spawned, so I’m assuming this one is the issue. Didn’t have time to setup some kind of trace to adjust the player based spawn location.

The second simply runs at a normal “run” speed to chase the player.

Judging by your feedback, I’m just going to assume it’s the first one that was having an issue, and if the graphic settings being turned down doesn’t help, I’m going to be looking into better solutions for handling it anyways.

As for 3 times in a row at the same room, it’s entirely possible since I setup each room that contained a trigger volume for spawning the “jump scare” monster after leaving the trigger volume to be randomly active or inactive on begin play, so it shouldn’t always happen in the same place consistently, and should be different every time the level is reloaded.