The Idea

faircall on 2014/10/05 13:40 of Not Alone

I was hoping this would be the theme. I'm not a good programmer so this constraint is something that fits nicely within my skill set (famous last words, no doubt). My band had a show on today so I wasn't able to get started until late afternoon. I started by thinking a point and click game would be cool to try. I haven't made a game with mouse controls before. I spent a little while getting the basic screen up and getting something to move to where the mouse was clicked. At this stage I was drawing a circle on a white screen. Ideas weren't really coming in that fast. I had considered the idea of "there's something outside" like a serial killer, zombie, whatever, but it seemed a bit overdone. I switched the colors up so I was drawing a white circle onto a black background, and all of a sudden it looked like a light passing across darkness. I like the aesthetic- one of my aims for this week was to keep graphics super simple. I then figured out a cool trick of drawing black objects across the white circle, and it looks like a shadowy outline. So the idea that came to me is this. The game takes place in pitch black darkness, in a fairly large room. You control an avatar with the keyboard- a small, weak figure. There's a small flashlight you can turn on which you'll need in order to see where you're located- within a tiny radius. In addition, the mouse controls a huge spotlight that moves (slowly) around. This can also be switched off. You have to get to an exit that you don't initially know the location of. Within the room are cosmic horrors of two types. One large, immobile type which will kill you if you step close enough. Another small, dormant one that will go into a rage if a light is on it for too long.