SNOTTY’S SEWER
In this indie horror, you meet Mr Snotty! Originally a beloved children's TV character, Mr Snotty turned violent after being chased out of the local TV station along with all of his friends into an abandoned sewer. Unfortunately for you, you are now trapped there too! Search for the 10 hidden buttons throughout the sewer that unlock the door to escape the nightmare!
On this title, I implemented the interaction, item mechanics, player movement and inventory system within the game, along with other systems within the game.
VIEW ON STEAM
MY WORK
Inventory System
When designing the inventory system, the GDD stated that it must be not too salient within the scene. This could have been achieved through a fully diegetic system perhaps with a visible backpack within the game. Due to the scope of the project, I decided upon a more simplistic clean visual style as seen using flattened images of the game objects within simple, drawn boxes which denote inventory slots. To ensure the inventory was not too salient within the players view a UI fade script was created to fade the UI both in and out dependant on interacting with the inventory, for example picking up/dropping items or switching equipped items.
ITERATIONS
During development, there were several iterations of the inventory system. Initially due to a short 4 week deadline needed for a demo, the inventory system was created and functioned to a basic level, players could pick up, drop and switch items. As time progressed, so did the inventory, the UI fade was added, increased inventory size when picking up a backpack in-game and inventory size dependant on the player character was implemented, allowing more flexibility. A major step in the inventory system’s development was the tracking of item data, allowing things such as power level, whether an item is on or off and if an item has been used. This was a big milestone for the project and allowed us to create new game mechanics based upon the item data, such as flashlight power dying and collecting batteries to top-up the power levels, snapping glowsticks and dropping them on the ground and audio items which attract the antagonist’s attention when turned on.
STYLE GUIDE
Snotty’s Sewer has a particular theme to follow, most notably the bright green colouring. Upon creating the inventory system it was easy to re-colour the UI to fit into any theme. This was achieved by following the green colour scheme of the game.