Vertical Slice Progress & Design Issues/Changes - Ava

The vertical slice is slowly being built up but we are happy with what we are seeing. We’ve discussed about various things that we could do or change with the game and came to an agreement that the more simplified white background would look better for the aesthetic of our game. 

This change has also been helpful in guiding the player towards items of interest by having certain items coloured in to make them stand out from the background. We tried to keep the colours of the items consistent with each other to bring more life into the main characters household, telling a story using the environment like with the pictures on the walls depicting raincoats childhood and having the kettle out while the mother drinks next to it. 

My vision for the game has really evolved since we first started developing it, I had a drearier and melancholier feeling towards the story at first, but I felt that the more the art style grew and the more we shared ideas, I like that the feeling of the game has now grown more upbeat in certain dialogue but still keeping the main characters feeling of dread having to travel up to college and the possibility of interacting with others. 

Some design issues that I’ve had was mostly the placement of the dialogue boxes and how we wanted to have the characters interact with each other. I’m still considering on whether we should differentiate between different characters speaking by either displaying their name before the dialogue or having the text colour be unique to that character, but we will continue to work on it and get the vertical slice fully ready for the next playtest.