Before I Croak
A Short Noir VR Escape Room about Shredding Evidence
Before I Croak is a VR detective noir, escape room puzzle game, where the player takes on the role of a (alleged) criminal who has just broken into a detective's office. Now try to find as much evidence as possible to shred and destroy before your time is up!
Details
Made In
Unity
Publishing On
Itch.io
Team Members
Scarlett Miller
(
Artist, Designer
)
Contributions
My Contributions:
- Locomotion
- UI Backend
- Interactable Objects
- Physics
- Source Control
Duration
2 weeks of pre-production
11 weeks of development
Pre-Production
Pre-production began with everyone designing their own game based on one of several prompts. The one I chose was "Phantom Train" where something beyond the player can move, shift, or adjust. I used their explicit example to design a small vr puzzle game in which you are trapped in an icy mountain cave-in and you find an artifact that can control time. We decided to go for Olivia's design where you play as a detective trying to solve your own murder in your office.
Development
After the initial design phase ended, we began full development. I began working on the specific slice I was assigned, which was to create a photo frame that could shatter to reveal a hidden piece of evidence as well as a radio that can give the player hints. After that I also began working on drawers you can open and close, UI development and a safe. During this time Bec (Rebecca) had begun modeling and creating our entire environment. Once everything was in place in the environment, I was then able to put in all of the puzzles I had developed. However, at around week 8 of development, we realised we weren't going to be able to finish all of the features we wanted to add, so we had to begin descoping.
We decided to drop the ghost detective from the game, and instead have the player be a criminal trying to steal and shred evidence. After that, and the final touches of development, we spent our time finishing off any bugs and implementing any and all assets that were made to replace block-outs. Leading to our final game.
Reflection
Goals & Scope
We did successfully hit our goal of making a VR noir detective puzzle escape room game. Although we did overscope and have to cut back scope late into the project, we still successfully finished our game.
Mechanics & Fun
Overall, I don't think our core gameplay was very satisfying or fun. From play-testing, the player is not given enough information, and although we wanted the player to discover each evidence item, players felt lost and confused far too much.
Process & Timeline
Production and project management started to break down around half-way through development. Without a clear producer or common enough meetings, development felt very split, with merging github branches my only way to learn what others are doing.
Team & Player Feedback
Despite the game's failures, player feedback was overwhelmingly positive, adoring the environment and being in a VR world with such an overwhelming atmosphere. Although the gameplay was not something I think was satisfying, being able to immerse yourself in the detective office was more than enough for most of our playtesters.
Before I Croak helped me develop a lot of VR development related skills, as well as develop better troubleshooting capabilities. VR locomotion took a large amount of time to get feeling right, even if presented with either option of teleporting or walking, fine-tuning both was difficult, especially in a very cluttered environment. But I am happy with how the locomotion and puzzles turned out.
Failures
Our game's project management I believe is the biggest failure of this project. Not updating our product backlog or communicating what was being worked on when led to the each member not sharing a core vision for the game. This has led to me prioritising project management significantly more as both a skill and habit.
The other failure that I believe our game has is the AI Generated assets. During development our 2D artist had burned out and began generating AI art rather than creating their own. As we had no other 2D artist, these artworks made it into the game.