CODE Application Completed

In October, we focused on our application for the CODE Kickstarter Grant. It is always hard to pull yourself away from active development, take a step back and look at your game objectively from a higher level. However, it is always a very productive thing to do to help align your goals and milestones. We further established our target audience, a go-to-market strategy, and what we could do to make Out of Sight feel like a highly polished game.

Now that we’ve done that with the application, we can make a start towards the polished body of work for our demo. We’re calling it Demo 2.0. This demo will be a high-quality 30-minute vertical slice of gameplay, which we will then use as a proof of concept to pitch to publishers.

Player Animations and Features

Maneuverability

Out of Sight is a Stealth Action game, and we're eager to lean into the action. We've introduced new animations and features to make players feel like nimble ninjas. These additions include animations like sliding and rolling, enabling players to slide under and over lasers. We're also exploring how pressing up against walls, which enhances the game feel, can be integrated as a gameplay feature, such as shimmying along ledges or evading enemies when players find themselves in a 'squeeze' (pun intended).

Verticality

Out of Sight is a top-down 2D game, and adding verticality to the levels can be tricky. However, we understand that verticality is fundamental in stealth-level design, offering the player more freedom in their approach. We're still working on the technical aspects of this, but we're committed to including height in our level design to keep the game engaging.

This image shows how adding verticality helps to make the room designs more complex and gives players additional options. For instance, players can knock or push objects from ledges to temporarily incapacitate enemies or escape from enemies who cannot climb ladders.

Ragdolling

We've recently integrated ragdoll physics into our player's death sequence to inject humour and diversify the death animations without handcrafting an extensive range of keyframed variations. We still plan to include incorporating keyframed death animations, such as the player turning into a pile of ash when burned by a laser or revealing the player's skeleton and 'frizzed' hair when electrocuted, among other possibilities. However, we don't intend to implement these animations immediately; they will be part of our polishing phase for the new demo, as our current focus is on enhancing the overall game feel.

Discord

Join us on Discord to get access to our early prototypes and have a say in the development process. Your voice matters!