Haunted Playstation 1 is a community for game developers and enthusiasts, focussing mainly on the aesthetic of Playstation 1 era horror games.
Through collaboration and management of projects on Discord HPS1 releases compilations of games from independent studios and single developers on the indie game marketplace ‘Itch.io’.The most popular of these are ‘Demo Disc’, an annual(ish) release of upcoming game demos; and Madvent, a ‘one-a-day’ advent calendar of 10-20 minute long games focussed around Christmas themed horror.
I helped out with character, environment and sound design for a Madvent game in 2022 so in April 2023 when the call came I threw my hat in the ring for that year’s Madvent calendar, this time as a developer.
The Madvent Calendar is a collection of short game vignettes from members of the HPS1 community, headed up and managed by Vladimere Lhore (vladimerelhore.itch.io). Through a themed launcher one game is presented for each day of December.
The theme is ‘Christmas/Holidays’, though anything snowy, or tangentially related is fine. The umbrella theme of horror is normally present.
Every couple of days into Madvent there is a video that connects the games together or tells an overarching story about the characters in the launcher.
As I work primarily in Unreal engine we decided to try and create a dialogue system in there. Because of the time difference we could push the project to a Git repository and work from there without getting under each other’s feet.
I eventually settled on a barebones dialogue plugin which could be adapted for our use.
The idea was always to expand upon the game at a later date so this was something we would bear in mind when creating the gameplay mechanics.
Since our HPS1 release we have added in 2 more characters, 4 more NPCs, and a whole ton of QOL updates and items, including controller support and Steam Achievements for the collectors.
I left the demon creations up to Conor, who came up with some great characters. As I was modelling, texturing and animating them I was happy to see that they were mostly humanoid.
We decided that Hell should be less ‘fire and brimstone’ and more tedium. After settling on the most boring place on Earth, an American strip mall, I blocked out and built abandoned suburban wasteland around it.
I wanted to have explorable buildings so we made some of the stores in the mall enterable, and added a few extra buildings, such as a cafe, bar, and nightclub; for the player to investigate
I used Unreal’s blueprint system to code up the game. As this was my third full game outside of the many demos (and prototypes that I need to finish!), I felt confident that I could develop the game’s underlying mechanics without outside help.
The game eventually had the following mechanics:
- Ability to pick up objects
- Ability to interact with objectsSimple physics for small kickable things
- Talk to NPC
- NPC animations based on ‘mood’
- Rich text styles to clue in players
- Branching dialogue options
- Fixed perspective and focussed camera areas
- Ability for pick and choose items
- Inventory system with item descriptions
- Save/Load game (This was just utilised in the back end per game session)
- A ‘scoring’ system for the final screens
Dipping back into my classic UI training I was able to create a consistent UI and using Unreal’s UMG made it responsive with some tasteful interactions and motions. Due to feedback on my last game I decided to keep text on the screen until the player moves it along.
Each item and activity in the game was weighted to different characters, the final scoring would depend on if the character liked the item or suggested activity. This was handled with a few csv datasheets.
Balancing the game took a lot of trial and error, as most play-testers were not able to get the optimal ending.
We adjusted the scores per item and this made players score more generally across the board, showing them the many different outcomes for the end game.
Blackout wanted to build a profile that would allow employers and educators to prohibit the use of mobile functionality, such as cameras, voice recording apps, and web browsers based on user GPS location, geofence, or proximity to beacons. This project included a wider brand application and the development of mobile apps and a desktop PWA.
