[STEAM][PC]Project Nightmares - Case 36 (Horror)

Hi everyone,
I introduce myself, my name is Claudio and I'm a developer. With Ignacio who is an artist, we decided to make an horror game. Yes, terror, but old school terror. The game has many easter eggs to movies like Evil Dead, The Exorcist, The Shining, Demons and more...



Story
A group of scientists dedicated to studying the paranormal has developed a machine that can induce patient with psychic abilities into a dream state, linking them to a malignant or cursed object.
Project Nightmares is in charge of investigating such objects, discovering the history behind them, and putting a stop to the evil they embody.



The game was approved with the old Steam Greenlight system, and today is in Steam Early Access. We estimate that the game will be complete by the beginning of the year 2020.



Everything in this game, except some sound were made by us. We are musicians too.
We are using some asset from the store, but only what is just and necessary. Our budget is really low (close to zero ), and we are from Argentina, so Kickstarter wasn't an option.

If you like the game, or if you have any advice just post it ! =)

Links..
Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/812070/Project_Nightmares_Case_36_Henrietta_Kedward/
An old version of Project Nightmares played by a youtuber:

 

This is the new trailer with the new content.
I spend hours and hours designing the hierarchy of classes. When the development grows, you have to adapt the classes without falling into code scattering.
Sometimes design patterns are a good choise, and sometimes are unnecessary.
In the graphic section, the artist is really good. To improve it even more, we worked hard on the post, shadows and lights. The game on a 1660 graphics card runs at 145 fps.
It is procedural, therefore I could not use occlusion culling. To improve performance, I ended up creating a pit system without colliders that are activating and deactivating the zones.
The only garbage in this game is generated by Cinemachine and Fog Volume 3. We can't use the new Cinemachine stuffs because we are using Unity 2017 and I can't migrate from Unity 2017 to Unity 2019 because probably we have to adapt too many things, and we haven't time.
We had to be extremely careful with performance since we wanna use VR.
If you have any question, please ask..

 

Let me just say, this looks amazing, and scary as hell!

Fantastic work, I'm am big on horror games, I will definitely be keeping an eye on as it continues to develop!

Great job!

 

Thank you!!, we are going to modify the level design to improve the playability =)

 

freaking awesome what are you using for culling?

 

Top row job there. My only critique would be the female antagonist. I'm going to be blunt here. It is just so. . . bad. It ruins the game.

If you look at Lisa from playable teaser as an example, she's pretty much normal looking. It is the contorted body and movements that make her frightening.

 

For culling, I created our own box system without colliders. It is simple, but effective. When the player enters the box, activate or deactivate the zone. I had to consider the lights because they are all dynamic.
I could have used a raycast system, but to make it look good and to avoid flickering we would need too many rays and is not an option because this requiere an intense use of the cpu.

Yes, we have to change Henrietta, and it is something that we have clarified many times in Steam. We have to work on the animations of all biped models. Our idea was to get some money, and in 2020, go to a motion capture studio.
Since we are only two (1 dev 1 artist), we had to prioritize in the general aspects of the game. The details will be resolved in the end. We must also change the AI of Henrietta and Anna, our idea is to improve them.

 

Gamology put an eye on the game =)
https://www.facebook.com/thebestofgaming1/posts/2620552057994161

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=659584484570587

 

This is looking awesome @churi24!

Can't wait to see more progress from you and Claudio!

 

Thanks!, I'm Claudio. Ignacio is my friend and partner =)
We are working on Hypnos and Anna's AI.

 

We appeared in one of the most watched TV news show in Argentina. (The video has english subtitles)

 

We are working on the final mission of the game. I think we are going to start the beta testing in March. I'm tired but I will not take vacations because the covid is hitting hard in Argentina.



As we couldn't pay for mocaps, since piracy dropped down our earnings, I decided to use FinalIK to use the humanoid as a puppet.



I hope you like it!

 

The game looks great, and the fact that it was made with 2017 version makes me wonder if I should just go back to that version, less is more sometimes.

 

A few days ago I talked to some Unity people, and apparently it's better to take it to the latest versions of Unity as it has better compatibility with consoles.
It took me a day to move the whole project from Unity 2017 to Unity 2020. With Unity2017 there are a lot of good quality assets that don't work. I think those are the main reasons why I would choose Unity2020.
If your team is small, maybe going a year behind with the engine is an option. If the latest version is Unity2021, maybe in production it is good to build with Unity2020. Anyway it depends on each one and the advantage that you get from each new or improved functionality.
Project Nightmares is in Unity2020 right now to port it to consoles, but on Steam is the Unity2017 version.

This is the trailer of the full game. (4K)