Black Birds

A pounding headache. An unfamiliar hotel room in the late of night. And an ominous, pulsating, buzz coming from the halls. You start to get the feeling this hotel isn't normal, either that or you just keep getting lost.  Go through this point and click adventure to either find the source of the noise, or get the hell out of dodge. 

created for Cursed Jam: The void. 

why a point and click game?

The underlying tone of the jam was cursed images and the void. So still frames were a must for me. I had trouble, and still having trouble, with the game almost feeling like a slide show. As I was going through development the biggest thing I focused on was making the halls feel like you are traversing (and getting lost in) a liminal space. Future updates will hopefully solve some of my personal issues with the game.

so what about these visuals?

I started with setting my resolution and canvas to 540x540 pixels. I wanted something easy and hard to visually register. When editing the images I kept them locked somewhere in a 8 color to 12 color index. Doing so helps create strange dithering between colors and shades. The color palette was chosen because it FEELS like that 3AM waking up with hardly any lights on, dazed, and weird experience a lot of us feel when in a hotel. At least I do that, and I hate it.

how were the sounds made.

ooohh boy.  A lot. So to start there are about 6 different room  tones. Some with fans, some with Florence lights. all with about 5 channels of different sounds I was playing with. Way too much work for just room tones. The strange sound you hear through the halls has reverb, paulstretch, a lowpass filter to make it sound distant, and a weird fade in and fade out curve that adds an uncanny-ness when you listen for it. SPOILER: they are sampled from the ending sound. which I made from playing some random notes in a DAW and messing to hell with the speeds, positions, breaks, you name it. ANOTHER SPOILER: The voice at the end is single handedly the weirdest thing I've worked with. To start, I used this;

why? long story short I was looking for the text to speech voice Boing, which is only on Mac. So I figured I could find it hosted online somewhere. well.. this is where it was at. But it doesn't work! It produces some horrifying noises. Go check it out. So after hitting gold for a terrifying robot voice, I slowed it down, made the samples closer together then bitcrushed it.
OKAY SPOILERS DONE

So what now?

I work on it some more. no really. I love this concept and want to add so much more. The halls need better purpose. Maybe some freak encounters to spice up the aimless wondering. Okay okay, ANOTHER SPOILER (from here to the end will be spoilers for future updates) in the end the machine god was suppose to challenge you to an esoteric board game like chess while talking to you about existence, the meaning of reality, and the ability to consciously make choices . It still would have ended the same, but having that dynamic scene of trying to beat a god at a game it created would really drive in some of the more inner mechanisms of the theme. that being, its all futile. The game pieces would randomly generate and the games win goal would also randomly generate. there would be a chance to win, very hard, maybe next to impossible, but every time you fail the machine god would give you an option to try again or listen to it.

There would also be some other endings planned. like killing a god.

I also had an idea of a pool room. There was going to be some symbolism of getting distracted and losing your way or something. Big brain stuff, y'know. You wouldn't hear the strange noise anymore and would hear faintly a women singing. I'm pretty sure getting in the water would have drowned you.

So yeah. more content on the way, thank you for playing my game, go check out my other stuff.

Hey! your devlog is the same as your page's description!

yes. I wrote it as the post mortem and feel like it needs to be on the landing page.
do... you want more info?
Alright! lets talk symbolism.

Symbolism and esoteric beliefs.

Black Birds: The name black birds is a couple things, the true name of the Machine God, and a great symbol. Black birds have been mostly a symbol for death and decay throughout most of English history. But did you know that some culture see black birds as magical beings that connects us to spiritual realms? Black bird songs have been used by shamans to meditate and focus on traveling to spirit realms. They are a symbol of choices and guidance in uncertainty. 

The apple: if you left through an exit you were confronted with a door at the end of an underground tunnel. This is the void. It is the existence beyond the reality that was created for you. in it is a lone golden apple. This is the symbol of chaos. Chaos isn't good nor evil, but a neutral force. But given the chance it can consume you. 

Machine God: what better way to symbolize the creation of choice and options than a looming server rack humming away strange beeps and boops? Machine God is based on Depp Blue, an IBM chess machine that stirred the world. I wanted an almost SCP creature to represent the creator. it just so happens that a reality creating super computer fits both a symbol of choices and a pretty creepy monster.

So I hope this was a good read. I'll make sure to update this soon.