Hello everybody! I've recently released a beta demo of The Mask of Man for you all to play so please, give it a try [link]. Have in mind that the demo does not properly represent the final game and I would very much like to know of problems that you might encounter or even suggestions.
I think it is very important for adventure video-games to move from just problem solving into a more interesting field. I think there should be a human factor in the midst of all of this. That is the main reason why i chose to create dialogues over the audio-logs or whatever. Granted that The Mask of Man has its puzzly moments but they are generally easy and don't disturb the flow very much. There aren't currently any kind of audio-logs or diaries telling a story to the player as it is normal on horror games. How do I pretend to make the story work? On my previous update I talked about this and said that I would try to make the player talk with characters through computers in order to understand what is going on. I've been working on that since then (not all the time though). At first the dialogues where very rude and the player only needed to press one of the two buttons that where presented with different answers. Although the theme of, for example, the first conversation was kind of interesting, it was lacking something. Then I realized that the player should be able to type their answers instead of just clicking on a pre-made one since all the player does during the game is typing. Of course this is much more complex than the previous option and because of that the system isn't fully fleshed out yet but you can already see in the demo that it works and it is much more compelling. In the future I pretend to give more depth to each dialog giving them additional themes and etc. I would very much like to know your experience with them so that i can know of problems or malfunctions that might happen.
The Mask of Man has went, since the beginning of its production, through many changes in direction and mechanics - at first it was a FPS, than a Point-n-Click and later on a Text-based hybrid. The game itself has acquired a more philosophical quality as time passed by. This as to do with my concern for video-games in general being more about systems than about human problems. So, this time around the title of the game (previously The Silent Water) had to be changed in order to make more sense with the content. In the demo, you will only be able to get a bit of this philosophical taste in the intro through some questions. You may already have an answer to them but I will explore those themes in order to come up with an interesting dilemma.On another subject, I've met a nice guy called Ted Reglis that wanted to create music for the Mask of Man. After a change of a few emails he composed the main title [link] that you can already hear on the demo as well as some different versions of it, one of wish you can listen too. Hope that you guys like it has much as I do.
