Hello again,

Since our first level prototype, we've made a lot of changes to the game that we wanted to share with you!

Layout

We've updated our game layout to be a lot smaller than what was initially showcased. We've shrunk the main room laterally so the area doesn't feel too stretched for the player. We also added the static layouts of both the Mother's and Father's closet puzzles that the player will be working through.

With this, we've also created some concept art that would show what these rooms would look aesthetically. Specifically, what kind of assets would we need to make this room follow the theme of this game.

Gameplay

For this week, the team focused on building up the necessary framework and systems to ensure game development of the puzzles and scripting would be a lot more streamlined.

With these, we put focus on honing in our reflection mechanics. We've made it so that the player sees directly the lighting and aesthetic of the past or present counterpart and can freely traverse between the worlds if the mirror allows it. We have some more gameplay features in mind like orientation the player's camera to make them feel like they haven't left the room they're in at all but this would be implemented later on.

Additionally, we've also implemented a working inventory that fits with the Art team's assets. We'll be incorporating icons here to indicate the player if they can perform functions on any object they're looking at or in range of.

Finally, we hope to add a menu system for the player to start the game and to manipulate any notes they pick up to read later.

Decision Pivots

Incorporating these systems and frameworks has taken a considerable amount of time and effort. We hope that this will allow us to accelerate our progress on a level, story, and asset implementation but we will see in this coming week when our Alpha Prototype will be released for playtesting.

As a result, we've decided on avoiding a potential additional puzzle section and will for now focus on perfecting the puzzle mechanics and assets of our existing three puzzles.

Please let us know what you think and if you have any comments, questions, or concerns! Thank you for following the process of Reflection.

- Zuhab