Progress Halloween 2024

Development progress

Halloween ‘24 is approaching… This year i managed to put in time to polish several parts of the game. Ill go into detail about several parts which may only be relevant to those interested in the development, otherwise skip to the part about content.

Behind the scenes

The UI has gotten an overhaul. No more Unity’s default sprites, look and feel. I handpainted buttons and sprites for the game, including spending way too long in Gimp trying to draw a good pocketwatch sprite only to cry in agony. Eventually switching to Krita and drawing a model i could be satisfied with, which on top of that has nice moving hands. Maybe you can spot the sillhouette when the hands align.

The visuals were only part of the UI overhaul, the entire system got scrapped and redesigned. I built an event based system where the UImanager activates and deactivates panels and canvasses based on the GameState. This proved to work really well, in fact as well as I did the same redesign on the AudioManager which now works similarily. The Audio system needed an overhaul as well. Sounds were a little too janky but now works a lot better. Its now much easier to implement new sounds into the game as needed.

Content improvements

Last year I had intentions on adding some interactivity to the lanterns scattered around the cementary. Now the player is able to light the lanterns with a pass of the pumpkin. Zombies escaping will now fear the lit lanterns which add to their fear-meter. If you are lucky, some zombies will even return to their graves without you guiding it actively. However not all should be this fine and dandy. Suddenly ..Ghosts! yes, now there be ghosts. Ghosts peek out from their hiding which are grates around the cementary. If the player passes a grate, it is possible that a ghost will appear. These ghosts roam the cementary and snuff our lanterns before returning to their hiding again. Very annoying, especially because you just lit them. Argh!

You now earn credits. Each time a zombie escapes, you have to pay reparations to the local community for the mess that escaped zombie made. If you are unable to pay, you lose the game. However, with the night passing and you successfully guiding zombies back to their graves, you earn credits that carry over to the next night. The next night will yield a larger cementary with possibly more challenges.

In between the levels, you can spend the credits in the Grave Tender SuperNatural Store and equip powerups, sklls and consumables to be used in the next levels. Some skills are buy once, some are consumables. Each powerup / skill provides a unique way to interact with the game at night. For now, this skill system is built, and setup but needs content and testing before being practical. This is the next step for the game, so stay tuned for more details.