Hello everyone!
In this post we'd like to introduce you to a game project we're developing. We'll explain you the game and the story, as well as show a prototype we've started developing.
So to start off, our project is a single player, narrative driven 2D side scroller, tentatively named The Railroad Murders, but it will very likely change during development. Set in the 1950s, it'll revolve around the player having to solve a murder by walking around in a train, talking with the people there and finding clues that in the end will point towards a specific suspect. If the player finds them they complete the story and win the game. Due to the era it's set in, we've decided to go for a darker aesthetic in black and white.
A simplified version of the story is that the protagonist is a detective who is taking a trip on a train to the next town in order to solve a case. As he is looking out the window, the lights go out and screams are heard. He then goes to see what happened and as the lights turn on again, a body is found.
As to not spoil the game, we'll only say the murderer is someone located inside the train, and is the one behind many of the events such as the lights going out.
Now onto the prototype we've started developing.
So far we have created a simple template for the train carriage for the Player and NPCs to exist in. We've added in the ability for the player to walk around and also a way to interact with the NPCs.
In this first image is a showcase of the player inside the carriage.
In this one it's a zoomed out view of the environments and the different train carriages.
Now in this gif we show some of the things mentioned in action. The player is walking, and once he gets close to the NPC, a button prompt appears to inform what they can press to interact.
Here's a case of an object or NPC that isn't interactable with so no button prompt appears.
Finally, we've made a video to showcase the interaction mechanic. It shows the player walking around and the button prompt appearing and disappearing based on the distance between the player and NPC. The video also shows what happens when the player presses E, in this case it just switches the NPC from being active to inactive (symbolized by the exclamation mark above them).
Disclaimer that the Player and NPC sprites are not ours, but modified versions of assets available online for free use (created by Hugues Laborde and Kronovi respectively), which we're using now for ease of testing programming elements of our game, but will be changed in the near future once we have art assets ready.
With this we conclude the first look at our game.
We're very excited to share more progress with you next week, and we're ready to give you a look at some of the initial concept art we've created for the game, which we'll be sharing over on our Twitter, so be sure to follow us there.
See you again soon!
