The Hassles of Game Development

Hey Everyone,

Sorry for the long wait! I had hoped to get the new version out in March, but the project completely fell apart due to some poor management on my end when updating the Unity editor version. I'm not exactly sure what specifically went wrong, but from errors like being unable to build the game, assets missing, dependencies missing, things not working like they should - it all became such a hassle that I decided to port the whole project over to a clean slate. Unfortunately, again for largely unknown reasons, this time imported fonts no longer worked so i had to redo the project a second time.

All of that to say at the brink of having the next game version out a bunch of weird stuff happened and I'm just now able to release it in a playable state.

The Update

This update is mainly about a new puzzle I've included in one of the rooms. I'm happy to share it with everyone and I'm excited to hear what you guys think about it's difficulty and placement in the game!

Basically, the puzzle is a cipher - my first clue for you guys is a sub-puzzle that has you order cards. This was a fun system to design and I'm excited to make it a bit flashier and what this could mean for future games! But basically by using some materials found on a table, hopefully you'll piece together the right order of the cards. You can click and drag the cards and then confirm the order with a button at the bottom of the screen. This mainly utilized Unity's grid system within the UI components of Panels and Canvases. Basically each card position is stored in an array - when you move a card, it's position is updated in the array. When you hit the confirm button, the  code  checks the order of the cards and matches it to a secondary array which contains the correct order of cards. I'm not sure yet how to make this more responsive in solving as it's only a secondary puzzle - let me know what you guys think!

So the primary puzzle then is a cipher. Having a friend playtest this game a bit ago, he mentioned some sort of help would be great in figuring out the cipher since There was too much of a logic leap from the card order to the cipher. This actually worked almost the same way as the cards - the code checks a current string against a correct string - and this was fun because it allowed me to add some more story elements to the game. I'm not gonna give too much away on my methodology so I can give you guys a chance to solve it cold. I really loved this puzzle and I think it's a textbook combination of gameplay and story. Hopefully you guys will love this puzzle too!

As always, please let me know what you think of the game so far! I'm really open to criticism so let me know what works and doesn't work. As a horror game this should be atmospheric, spooky, and challenging - let me know how it addresses these categories. If you have any questions, itcht.io is my main platform right now as I update the game, so reach out to me on here through comments!

Next update I want to do another puzzle for the house or the sewer and make those areas a bit more engaging. Also, my GameManager has become a bit bogged down with all the code, so I may rework that too. I also need to work on the main menu. Stay tuned, and thanks for taking the time to play my game! You guys rock !

Sincerely,

Parable Engine Studios