The House [Nano18][Escape room] demo out

NaNoRenO is an event where creators make a game from scratch during the month of March.
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korova
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The House [Nano18][Escape room] demo out

#1 Post by korova »

Hi! fellow VN players and devs.

It's this time of the year again when I miserably fail at NaNoRenO
But, as usual, I will try anyway.
So, people, welcome to :
Image

As you can guess, it will more an "escape the room" game than your traditional VN.
There won't be characters on screen, but you will have the MC (you), and a mysterious voice over talkie walkie that may (or may not) help you.

The story ? You know it already! You wake up in a mysterious place with no idea how you got there, and your one and only priority is... GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!

Game begins in a very sinister and classical crypt... But there will be plenty of other rooms, from bedrooms to kitchen, including a game room, a library, a music room and, of course, a secret room.
Creepy crypt to begin... What else!
Creepy crypt to begin... What else!
I don't plan to reinvent everything, so this wiil be a very classical escape game: interact with the environnement, to find objects in the rooms (especially keys to open doors to go from room to room), for clues to riddles and puzzles (that can open doors too) and understand what happened to you, what is this house and how and why you got there.

As usual, my project, that was so small in my head, grew way too big when I started planning it. Oh, look, only a few rooms after all (no wonder why I fail each time...)
So few rooms in this house....
So few rooms in this house....
But I stay positive: after all, it took me only 3 days to get out the first room of my house (that counts more than ... wait... what? 20 rooms >_<')

No, seriously, what took so long is the programming of the basic features you expect from an escape room : you can explore the place with your mouse, interact with objects in the room. You can collect objects, that go into an inventory, and you can drag&drop items in your inventory on objects in the rooms.
Hopefully, the next rooms will be faster to code and write.

See below the prototypes of the features
WIP features of the game
WIP features of the game
In case you're curious, as my drawing skills are virtually non-existent, my backgrounds come from Minetest (free voxel sandbox game very similar to MInecraft). So the house which the player will struggle with is entirely built and really exists in Minetest.

Enough for a presentation, I think. I hope I will be able to get out of my house on schedule, so that you will be able to have fun trying to escape...

Oh, and don't worry! No spoil in the last screenshot: as you can imagine, this is not really the exit, only the 2nd of the many rooms that awaits you in The House...

01/01/2018 : get a taste of the game by dowloading the demo
Last edited by korova on Sun Apr 01, 2018 7:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#2 Post by Godline »

I love escape rooms. I'll be watching this one!

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#3 Post by korova »

NaNoRenO day 9 : it's time for update!

The dev process goes on slowly but goes on anyway.
I added two other rooms to the first one (the Crypt)

First: the yellow room (Or what the player will believe is the Main Hall at first)
yellowroom.png
Not a lot of places to search in this room, but several items to find.

Second room: the Sun Lounge (You thought this was the exit? You fool...)
sunlounge.png
Not a lot of items to find, but a lot of cacti to prick you...

I hope the next rooms will be coded faster. But while making these 2 new rooms, I had some more features to add.
A notebook screen screen (to keep track of the clues you'll find while exploring the house) and a screen to show buttons to access the features. I also tweaked the inventory screen.

That's it for now. Back to the hard work!

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korova
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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#4 Post by korova »

New for those interested in my escape room project. (Thanks Godline and Nay)

A 4th room can be accessed. : the Playroom.
The Playroom
The Playroom
A lot to do (and code!) in this room. But there are a lot more room to be discovered!

At some point, I'll try to implement a mini-game for the Arcade machine (I saw code for mini-game in the Cookbook section). At the moment, I just implemented dialogue, to go faster with developpement (NaNoRenO is supposed to last only for the month...)

Stay tune for next room.

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#5 Post by PKLucky »

I love escape room games! I can't wait to play this one

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#6 Post by korova »

PKLucky wrote: Sun Mar 11, 2018 10:38 am I love escape room games! I can't wait to play this one
Lots of escape rooms fans in here! I begin to feel a little pressure...

The game advances slowly, but still goes forward.

A new room is ready : the Japanese Room.
The Japanese Room
The Japanese Room
No objects to find in this room, but a code to enter to open the door to the next room.

I struggled a little to code this screen, but eventually it works fine.

Next room : the TV Lounge. (to be continued)

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#7 Post by korova »

New room finished : the TV Lounge.

Maybe you didn't want to play games in the Playroom. Well, you can watch TV this time! Huge plasma screen for your entertainment.
tvlounge.jpg
A bunch of clues to find in the room, but don't get sucked in the TV programs, you're not out the house yet!

Developping news:
The development takes longer than I expected, so I'm afraid it won't be finished for the deadline (nothing unsual here, my Nano projects always end bigger than I thought). I have good faith to release a demo for the end of the month that will represent 1/3 of all the rooms planned.

COding the rooms takes time because the "explore the room" part is based on imagemaps, and I have to verify where to put the hotspots for every background (at least per room, sometimes more. For example, the TV Lounge has 12 different backckgrounds!)

For the TV Lounge, I also programmed a simple animation (like a slideshow of images) to fake TV program.

Anyway, even if things are slow, I'm happy with the game and I planned all rooms and accesses to the different rooms.

Stay tune for the next room!

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#8 Post by korova »

A new room is ready !

New doors leading to new rooms, and even stairs! meaning you'll have another floor to explore.
Stairs Hall
Stairs Hall
There's a phone in the room! You can phone for help now (or not...)

Will you figure out the right code to go to the next room?

If nothing works out, you can still get to the upper floor...

Next room coming soon...

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#9 Post by korova »

Eighth room : The Stairs Hall of the first floor.
Stairs Hall (first floor)
Stairs Hall (first floor)
No phone here, but a nice fish tank. Will you dare to wet your sleeves to find something in it?

Two more doors to open (do you have the right keys?) and if nothing works, you can go up to the roof.

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#10 Post by korova »

I spent my evening implementing a dynamic map feature for the game (The House is big, after all....)

Still WIP, but how it look like as for now
Dynamic map
Dynamic map
The map is dynamic as you can see on it only the rooms you've already visited.
After a while, the rooms will also be colored, according to the colors of the rooms themselves (already coded, but I don't want to show too much at this point...)

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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#11 Post by arachni42 »

Nice; I always appreciate a map. I look forward to playing!
I, Miku (NaNoRenO 2014)
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Re: (Escape) The House [Nano18][Escape room]

#12 Post by korova »

arachni42 wrote: Sat Mar 31, 2018 11:59 am Nice; I always appreciate a map. I look forward to playing!
You're right! A map always comes in handy.

Well, if anyone want to get a taste of the game, I've released a demo. It's still very unpolished, but I keep my fingers crossed in hope that it's fully functional.

Go to the itch.io page to download (and enjoy!)

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