The NYU Game Center Showcase 2024
˚✦★⋆. ࿐࿔ .˚ *✦ ˚.˚ .✶ -͟͟͞☆
⟢Thesis
⟢Capstone
⟢Studio II
⟢Major Studio
⟢Mosaic
Cecità Rental
⊹ ࣪.⋆~⊹₊⋆⁺₊⋆ ☾⋆⁺₊⋆✩࿐
For Capstone
Cecità Rental is an immersive FPP 3D horror adventure game set in a weird apartment, where players unravel mysteries by day and rely on audio to navigate the unsettling environment by night.
Cecità Rental - Trailer
Interview:
✧What was the inspiration of the game? What made your team decide to make this game specifically?
The game was inspired by a reddit post and the genre of rule horror. The specific post was about a fictional event called "the great blindness", and when the protagonist is no longer blind, they opened their eyes to see a phrase written everywhere --- "Don't tell them you can see" --- which is where our game's catch phrase came from.
This inspired us to think of the audio navigation mechanic that our game is developing now. With horror game's emphathsis usually placed on audio, our game's limited vision provides a unique constraint that guides players to be hyperfocused on the audio.
Combining this mechanic and the Wes Anderson artstyle, there are no other games like ours.
✧Were there difficult moments when developing the game? What led to those difficult moments? What did you learn from it?
Our game rely on sound to navigate in the darkness, it is our selling point. That is the atmospheric horror vibe we aim to provide for our players. But navigating in pure darkness is hard. It's very easy for players to get disoriented, frustrated and eventually give up on the game. We tried to fix that by adding a "limited vision" mechanic where you can peak at your surroundings with limited chances. This indeed solve the first problem, but now players tend to rely on "Opening their Eyes" more than listening for the audio, which is the heart of the game.
It is indeed an dilemma. During playtests, we saw that players had very different experiences. Some got the hang of it quickly, while others struggled a lot and get lost. Balancing the difficulty became our main focus. It is truly difficult because we do not want to make players feel too frustrated in the space, nor do we want them to escape too easily. But there aren't any games like ours on the market, so there's no reference to rely on, we have to explore by ourselves.
We have added secondary helper systems, we have deleted some of them; we have made the vision more accessible for players, other times we have made it more punishing. It's all trial and error. There's no one-size-fits-all solution, but we will be aiming at that. Trying things out, seeing what works, and keeping at it. Despite the challenges, we've come a long way and are in a much better place now.
✧Were there darlings that you had to kill? What were they? Why was the decision made to remove them from the project, and what were the reasons that you like the darling so much?
Cecita Rental started as a big game project, but with limited time for capstone, we had to scale back a lot. Originally, we aimed to finish tutorial levels, chapter one (day and night), and chapter two. By last semester, we'd made good progress on the tutorial and chapter one, with a complete game cycle of day and night.
Playing through both day and night stages is crucial for players to grasp the story and the world it unfolds in; they're complementary components of the game. We thought we could make it and it's a reasonable scope. However, we figured out that tuning the difficulty, adding secondary systems and optimization demanded far more time than anticipated., we have to cut the day and prioritize making the night good. So we sealed off the day one, worked on night one and night two only. It was a tough decision to make because we really want to provide players the full experience, but perfecting the existing part is much more important at this early production stage.
The good thing is that we didn't actually kill this darling forever, it is just postponed for future development.
✧Talk about your teammates! What was everyone’s role?
Cathy Zhang - 3D Artist, Game Designer, Audio Designer, Project Manager
Teresa Bing - Game Designer, Narrative Designer, Level Designer, Project Manager
Darcy Lu - UI Artist
Emily Zhang - 2D Artist, UI Artist
Ruiyang Zang - 2D Artist
Yunfei Gao - Programmer
Bryan Leng - Programmer
play this game on itch.io