Lost in Between
Lost in Between is a game I was working on at Tiny Frame with Grant Davidson. Lost in Between is a 3D isometric point and click adventure that follows Maeve a single mother, who explores her town trying to figure out what has gone wrong.
For now this game has been shelved until Grant and I can dedicate ourselves full time to the production of it, as the scale is quite large. But if you'd like to know more and even play the demos we put together, keep on reading.
Above is a shot taken, in engine, of the final look we are going for. Grant has been heading the art direction and lighting, which has taken quite awhile to nail down but we agreed it was worth the time to get it right. Now we're sticking to this we can move on and get the environment finished.
Here a few early environment shots of the house -
We brought on board Nejdet Yilmaz as our concept artist and he had started to nail down what Maeve will look like.
While we don't currently have a demo of our actual game itself up as the first level has not been completed we do have 2 prototypes that we worked on previously to work out what we wanted our game to play like. The latest we call -
Office Escape
We decided to set this prototype in an office with the simple task of escaping. We wanted to test out how we might go about producing the tutorial/first level to our actual game. So we took this time to work on techniques to introduce the player to each mechanic we had.
At first it appears to be a very simple task but once you learn you can't just walk out the door, the puzzle elements come into play. I'd definitely recommend giving this one a go, it is playable from start to finish and while not linked to our actual game at all (and also not feeling as completed as we'd like) it shows off the mechanics we will be using.
You can find the demo below:
Windows Build
Mac Build
Now the first prototype we made was very far off and we took a lot of inspiration from Maniac Mansion, but not what was good about it. We focused more on the frustrating, pixel hunting side of it. And we certainly achieved in that department. The puzzle wasn't easy to follow, each piece was barely connectable, and the environment gave very little feedback. To sum it up, I could barely get anyone to play it for more than 5 minutes.
The interesting thing that I discovered however, was that most of the people who did give it a fair go seemed more interesting in cleaning the place than solving the puzzles. Since all of the graphics where basic placeholders I made a look function that presented a text description of every (or most at least) objects in the house. So just for some variety I made a description that said the bench was dirty and I had a pile of dirty clothes on the floor.
One of my friends tried very hard to find a way to clean the bench and actually wash the clothes. Eventually I started adding bits and pieces like that to it, just to entertain my friends and see what else they'd try to do. In one playthrough someone was so frustrated at not being able to find the key to exit their own house that they filled up a bucket of water and attempted to throw (use) it at the TV.
So if you feel like giving it a go, have a look here:
Windows Build
Mac Build