The desire was to create a game that looked like it was taking place on the surface of a cave wall. I used very high resolution meshes straight from Zbrush, and Unity3D's blob shadow projector to create the effect of moving cave paintings.
The Summer Show version of the project is currently too poorly optimised to run on most computers; due to my focus on other projects it is unlikely that I will fix this any time soon. This version is also very thin in gameplay, due to time constraints and the aesthetic focus. Now that I have more time to work on the game, its gameplay will be very different from the simple platformer that it is right now.
You're welcome to download the Summer Show build HERE (50.6 mb, 716 mb uncompressed), but it's highly likely that you will be unable to run it without a high-end computer, and even then you will definitely encounter framerate issues. Don't try to run it without at least 4gb of RAM and at least a fairly decent graphics card. You have been warned, be kind to your computer.
Einsam is a side-view thriller game developed by team Indifference Engine at the ExPlay Global Game Jam of 2013.
The theme for the game jam was a soundbite of a steady heartbeat. The basic premise for Einsam involved Nigel's (a 3D modeler and animator on our team) revelation that in space, the only thing you're likely to hear are your own breathing and heartbeat.
From there we explored the concept of these sounds as gameplay mechanics - specifically as health (or sanity) indicators. Alex devised the narrative, involving the lonely survivor of an incident that tears her colony ship into hundreds of little pieces. She wakes up after the incident and must work her way to the ships distress beacon (or whats left of it), while avoiding a mysterious entity that strips her sanity.
Based on these themes and narrative specifics, the gameplay was designed to evoke a sense of trepidation. The main character (Sam), uses a jetpack to travel between pieces of ship debris. Since she is in deep space, there is no gravity; as such, movement is omnidirectional (along 2 axes). While Sam is in the space between debris, she slowly loses sanity. Sanity is represented by distorted field of view and quickening of the heartbeat. Periodically, a large shadow obscures the screen, indicated by Sam taking a deep breath. If Sam is not over a piece of debris when this happens, her sanity is pushed to the limit; if this happens again while Sam is at minimum sanity, the game ends. Sam can pick up items that stabilise her sanity.
The intent behind this design was that players would be careful travelling between debris and when they were hit, it would put them on edge. I facilitated the gameplay design by writing a word document that described the mechanics in depth. This allowed the team to focus on their tasks while providing a comprehensive and specific reference point. No one was ever unsure of what they needed to do and what the game would play like.
I also developed some rudimentary gameplay objects to serve as pickups, using my (then) recently acquired knowledge of the Zbrush retopology process.
Game jams take place over short spaces of time, so it was inevitable that our game would not be complete, especially given its scope. We planned for a more functional menu, passive breathing sound effects and some artwork of a monster to replace the shadow wave when Sam is insane. While these features were not present in the final game, our programmer (or code wizard) still did an amazing job of implementing what we do have.
I like Einsam as a concept and in future I would like to take it further. Much further.
You can download and play Einsam here (requires Unity Player)
