lost contact devlog 7
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/arqFQVt
Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/exodrifter_
itch: https://exodrifter.itch.io/lost-contact
Extremely late devlog because it’s late, I’m dealing with mental health, and I’m worrying about the unmarketability of the current devlog format.
I tried a new thing in this devlog where I explain how what I did this week relates to the central theme of the game and why that’s personally important to me, but I’m not sure this really gets the format to a place where I’m happy with it. I feel like my devlog videos are missing something but I’m not sure what it is. To that end, I’m thinking about not making devlog videos anymore; I don’t always work on things that I can talk about in a focused way and doing a non-weekly format would let me make more focused videos that group anything I’ve worked on to show a specific aspect of the game.
Anyway, that’s a longer ramble from me than usual for this week’s update. I guess I’m insecure about everything because I feel like I don’t know what people want. What do you think? What do you want to see? Let me know. In any case, thanks for your support as always and — oh gosh — I have to make another one of these in a few days.
The following content is a transcript of the video.
Welcome to devlog 7 of lost contact, a narrative-driven, hidden object game about loneliness.
One of the ways loneliness really affects me is the home that I live in. Put simply, I have too much space. I live here by myself and there is more space in my living arrangement than I know what to do with. I’m quite aware of how much more better the space could be used if more people lived here as it was originally designed for. I want to make this sense of excess space a really important aspect of the game, and one of the ways I want to convey this in the story is by creating a very large space station for you to explore. I want you, as a player, to feel the same kind of emptiness I do when confronted with such a large, underutilized space.
Of course, I wasn’t able to create all of the rooms for the station this week, but we did add three new rooms: The hallway, the study, and the activity room.
In order to connect all of these scenes so they can be explored, the transition system was refactored to support elevators and stairs. It’s quite a feeling to explore all of the rooms together, and I feel excited to see the rest of the station get made.
All of this additional space doesn’t really do anything gameplay-wise if you don’t have something to do with it. One of the things I want you to look for are drives that have recorded conversations on them for you to listen to. So, I’ve implemented a basic system for reading the drives that you find.
I also want to make the game as diagetic as possible, so to keep you trapped in the expansive space station, the dialog system is displayed in the world on screens using the code from devlog 5 instead of in an overlay like in the prototype.
I’m still streaming development of this game four days a week on Twitch if you’d like to come by to see how it’s doing. And, if you’re a patron, thanks for your support once again — and, sorry for releasing the devlog so late. If you aren’t a patron, I hope you’ll consider joining my Discord server. I’ll see you in the next devlog!
