Devlog 1: State of the Game

Hey all, since I'm entering Improve My Game Jam 42, I wanted to start my first devlog with where exactly I'm starting from going into the jam.  I've never kept a devlog before, so bear with me and leave a comment if you have any ideas for improving my updates or questions.

First of all, what exactly is Anomaly Archive? 
In short, it's a PS1 aesthetic horror game in which you find cassette tapes that document different encounters strangers have had with spooky anomalies. The story of each anomaly is broken into different tapes, so to get the full picture of what happened (although most stories end without a definitive conclusion) you have to organize the tapes you find into their specific storylines. As you listen to these tapes, they will begin to manifest haunts in the building. These might range from creepy sounds or lights going out, all the way to actual entities that attempt to harm you. My main inspirations for this is The Magnus Archives podcast and the Anatomy game by Kitty Horrorshow. A lot of the story inspiration however is taken from urban myths, the nosleep subreddit, cursed video game stories and creepypastas.

Cool Beans, so where are we starting from?
Well, first of all, I'm using Godot, which I've been using for the past couple years, ever since I started getting into game development.  But that aside, I've got the most important mechanics of the game in place, which are:

• Movement- Walk around and whatever. Pretty important
• Item interaction system: Some items you can pick up and carry around, like tapes or boxes,and some you sit down to use, such as the label maker or tape player
• Haunt controller: when you listen to a tape, it'll add a haunt related to that tape to the list. It's a kinda complex system I'm pretty proud of, so more on that in a future update
• Labeling system: You can make your own labels and apply them to boxes and tapes for organization
• Boxing system: You can put tapes into boxes for organizing
• Tape player system: You can listen to the tapes you find, pausing & skipping backward or forward. There IS a subtitle system in place which works, but it's a huge time investment to sync up the subtitles to the audio, so those won't be implemented until later

I also plan to add a tape repair system, where you have to fix or clean tapes before you can hear their full content, but I haven't started on that yet and I'm not entirely sure how I want it to work yet.

Aside from the basic mechanics, I've spent the past couple days building the layout of the house the entire game takes place in. Originally it was going to be a remote bunker for that isolation and lonely feel, but I pivoted to a home. I personally find them creepier to wander through, more interesting for a horror setting and (most importantly) easier for me to design. I really love how Visage, Anatomy and Silent Hill 4 and Fatal Frame 3 turned the house/apartment into it's own sort of character and I'm aiming for something similar. 

Presently I basically have the layout done, though I'm sure this will change through testing. Next step is getting everything textured and throwing some placeholder furniture in there. After that, I'm calling it good for a while and working on things I find more enjoyable, like adding tapes or sounds, because level design is my least favorite aspect of game design for me and I can't wait to be done with it. -_-

Below is the current layout of the house, as well as some early videos demonstrating the item interactions and tape player. I hope you find this project interesting and something worth following! If you want to join the first major playtest (which I'm hoping to have ready sometime in December) you can sign up right here! 👉 https://anomalyarchive.carrd.co

• Early Item Interactions vid
• Early Tape Player vid