Sorry for the silence past month, we were busy working on a tech demo and it surely has paid off! Most of the assets you will see in the video are placeholders, including the inventory and Shade model. In this tech demo we showcase our Emotional Planes feature that allows player to use emotions to affect objects around him.
The emotions used in the video are the following:
Denial: Contradicts a state of an object, resulting in the opposite.
Bargaining: Affects the default state, changing direction or speed of an object.
Anger: Enhances default state of an object.
Depression: Reduces the default state, often resulting in slowing, freezing or falling apart.
The final version will feature additional emotions. Emotions will also affect much more than puzzles objects, we want them to fully change a scene, including vanity items that are of no use to the player, an eye-candy to make the world more living. Emotions can’t jump-start a car or unlock a locked door but they will affect organic and dynamic objects, altering their behavior and state. This feature will greatly enrichen the puzzle design as well as storytelling.
Later in the video you will see a Shade, silhouette of a man sitting on a bench. Shades are neither people nor ghosts, they are images of humans who existed in the world before the incident, their thoughts and feelings now burned into it’s atmosphere. You can’t have a conversation with them, you can’t interact with them, you can only see and hear their thoughts, often giving you clues on the puzzles and story. Some Shades will be stuck in a certain emotional plane, telling you a story by their location and pose.
There are still some small hickups in the navigation, most of art assets are placeholders, but we felt it was good enough to show our concept. Let us know what you think!
If you liked the video, please support us by voting for us on IndieDB Indie of the Year contest at http://www.indiedb.com/games/empathy
