-=- -=Game Synopsis=- -=-
You are locked inside of a mansion haunted by a wisp that wants to help you
escape, with the help of the wisp you solve puzzles to look for keys, until
the wisp is fed up with your shortcomings and enrages into a monster. You
must hide and risk being caught, or do a task to appease the wisp and return
it to normal. Once you find the keys to the basement and attic respectively,
you need to solve one big puzzle in both areas to unlock the main door which
the player has to use to escape. Post-project, there was a secret ending added,
however I haven't gone back to check it out.
-=Floor One=-
The floor you start the game on. You spawn in the entranceway of the main doors
to the mansion, on your left is the dining room, ahead is the stairs to the second
floor, and to the right is the kitchen. On the floor there is also a living room,
three storage rooms, bathroom, theater, boiler room, incinerator, laundry room, and
library. The entrance to the basement is located in a sideroom next to the stairs.
I would've loved to shrink the map and improve the design but my team wasn't
being professional about the subject to put it lightly.
There are 5 puzzles on this floor, and one extra for appeasing the wisp.
In the kitchen, interacting with the fridge opens the refridgerator puzzle.
You had to spell a specific word using the magnets on the fridge, We didn't randomize
the way the letters appear though so you can just put them in the order you see them in.
In the dining room, interacting with the table opens the chandelier puzzle. There was a
sticky note on the chandelier with a symbol on it that is meant to be a hint on how to
arrange the lit/unlit candles on the chandelier. You would click each candle to light or
put them out, and once the candles match the hint you would complete the puzzle.
In the living room there is a fish tank with a piranha, interacting with it opens the
puzzle. You need to click around to find a secret drawer under the fish tank with a stovetop
inside. Using the wisp, you light the stovetop to cook and kill the fish. After it dies,
you reach in and grab an item from its mouth and finish the puzzle.
In the library, there is a password written on a sticky note. You need to click on books
in the order of the authors names matching up with the password.
Around the house are several wood logs. Bringing all of them to the incinerator is also a
puzzle.
For wisp appeasement on this floor, the player has to find a candle in a random room, and
bring it to an also randomly placed glowing rune.
-=Floor Two=-
The last main floor of the game, reached by going up the stairs on the first floor
while the wisp is not enraged. Rooms include a study, observatory, spare and master bedrooms,
storage room, gym, music room, bathroom, an empty room we never planned and a purposely empty
room serving as a bit of an easter egg. Other than the one unintentionally empty room, I like
how it all turned out. I wanted to make the floor feel more maze-like than the first floor.
There are 5 puzzles on this floor, and one extra for appeasing the wisp.
In the study there is a computer with a creepy survey on it, depending on your answers
the wisp can get angry at you but there is no wrong answers necessarily.
In the observatory you look out a telescope into the garden to find whatever the hint in
the puzzle tells you to look for. Admittedly some puzzles were done last minute by someone
in my group and I was busy with other things so I don't know how some of them work.
In the spare bedroom is one of those place the colour on the correct number puzzles
except its a blank painting with the numbers on a grid.
In the bathroom is a sliding 3x3 tile puzzle. The art on the puzzle is meant to be a
picture of the wisp before "dying and becoming the wisp," I was not responsible for
the lore so I'm not entirely sure.
In the master bedroom is a spot the difference puzzle where you look in the mirror and
one of several possible anomalies can be in the reflection that arent in the room.
The wisp appeasement puzzle for the second floor is to find a bellows and bring it to a spark
that spawns randomly to blow it into a large flame.
-=Attic=-
You enter the attic by bringing the appropriate key to a ladder and trapdoor on
the second floor. At the entrance, a mannequin points to writing on the wall giving
the hint for the attic puzzle, that being the mannequins all tell you where to NOT go.
the attic is a maze filled with mannequins all telling the player to go in incorrect
directions. Solving the maze is meant to be mind games of remembering to not follow
the constant instructions and pointers everywhere by the mannequins. Taking a wrong
path in the maze sends the player back to the beginning of the attic. At the end of the
maze is a room with one half of the main entrance key, which is necessary for winning.
-=Basement=-
You enter the basement by using the appropriate key on the door next to the stairs
on the first floor. The basement is a small maze of boxes with the puzzle itself located
around the end. The basmeent has a lot of things that were to make future features easier
to add but we didnt have the time for them. I added the box maze to spice up the walk over
to the puzzle, but also because I wanted to make an enemy that roams a set path through the
maze that you would need to avoid to get through. Someone in my group also put an ominous
skull door at the end of the maze which we didnt have time to make do anything. The puzzle
itself involves grabbing different coloured wine bottles off of a rack and holding them up
to indecipherable runes carved on the basement wall, and a safe with 4 coloured numbers.
In the colour of the bottles, you can find the respective number for the safe on the wall.
Doing that with each bottle for all the numbers completes the puzzle and grants the player
one half of the main entrance key, necessary for winning.
-=Hiding=-
When the wisp is angered, there are two ways to continue progressing. The
safest way is to do the respective appeasement puzzle, but the easiest way is
to risk hiding. There are 6 hiding spots on each of the two main floors. If
you use a hiding spot, there is a 1/6 chance the wisp will check your spot
and kill you, and whichever one the wisp checks will be destroyed, lowering
the chance next time to 1/5, then 1/4, until you cant hide anymore at 1/1.
-=The Wisp=-
The wisp is used to create a gameplay loop. The wisp forces the player
to temporarily pause progression and enter a horror state until the phase
is faced and overcome. Initially presented as an ally helping you with puzzles,
the wisp loses its temper and becomes a lose condition for the player, wandering
the mansion hunting the player. When the wisp is enraged, the lights go out, the player
is locked on whatever floor they are on, puzzles are no longer doable, hiding spots are
useable, and the wisp appeasing puzzle appears. My group made cool death animations
for dying to the wisp as well.
-=- -=Experience=- -=-
Rekindle was my first project in Unity, and it was a 2 month long project I did with the same group I made my Lua and Love2D games with. I was a bit behind but the project was a great way for me to catch up and learn unity. I made it clear that I didn't want to get stuck into the trap of making all the sprites and learning nothing, so I instead focused on coding and directing the game's direction. I'm very grateful for one person in my group for taking the responsibility of making sprites instead of me.
I learned enough to go back and catch up very quickly on the previous unity projects, and I am very happy with my work. We made Rekindle every step of the way planning to eventually put it on steam, but just one month after finishing the project I have a better grasp of what we really did and while the amount of content is certainly equal to 2 months of work for a team of new developers, I am not content with publishing that content whatsoever. I also learned a lot about how I fit into teams, lessons ill carry with me forever. The only thing I didnt get a good grasp of in this project was handling all the implementing of assets, which I figured out in my following solo projects.
