Gradually - Post Mortem

Gradually is a short horror game made in a short time (1.5 days), but I thought this post mortem could be helpful for people especially who are inspired to make games with PSX aesthetics. This port mortem will spoil the game, so be warned.

Idea

Huge spoilers: In Gradually, your purpose is to find your car in the parking garage, while a "friend" follows you. The twist is, your car is not in the parking garage and the man gradually changes to a monster who wants to kill you. The horror element of the game is to realize that the man wasn't actually a friend.

I had this idea after an inspiring nightmare. I was in an elevator with a person who was gradually changing to a monster in a part of the nightmare. I decided to make the game of this idea after I woke up. There wouldn't be a game in an elevator (unless you are talking to him), so I turned this idea to a parking garage, where player looked like they have an object and can walk around.

Graphic Style

I chose a faux-PS1 style for visuals.

• I wanted game size to be small, because the game was so short anyway. I could use textures with low resolution.
• I think it's easier to make PS1 styled 3D, compared to modern high-fidelity 3D.
• I am fond of that style but never had a game at this style. I wanted to try it.
• This style has its own niche audience.

I bought this asset for environment:

I thought its lighting didn't look like a PS1 game and might have require too much GPU power for realtime lighting, so I removed the light sources and used only one directional light with no shadows. I also envisioned the game taking place in a blue parking garage, so I changed the wall texture colors, too. The texure resolutions were too high for a PS1 looking WebGL game, so I reduced them to a much lower resolution in Unity.

I used Pixelation asset to give a low-res screen look for the game, a resolution of 480p. MakeHuman was used to create the man, Mixamo for his animations.

Some of the critiques about the visuals are about being too "high-fidelity" for a PS1 game. Actually I'm aware of that, but that's curse of being dependent on Asset Store assets, rather than having a 3D artist  in your team who can create models with the exact requirements.

Gradual Change

The man's textures, grain effect in post-processing and the volume of white noise gradually change as time passes. In case anyone wants to see the man's texture script:

It changes the colors of the skin texture with a mix of normal and evil textures, depending on how evil the man is (1f is the evillest). It also changes the tint colors of skin and eyes.

This script worked poorly for 2048x2048 textures, but worked good enough for 64x64. Another advantage of using a low-fidelity graphics style. Maybe this could be done better with a shader or something, but I am not experienced with them.

Reception

People mostly found the game too short (naturally), but with a good idea. I hadn't made it clear that the car you sought wasn't actually in the game in the first version, this confused some people, so I added a text at the game end that explains the situation with an update. The play amount reached my expectations, I think this was a good way to spend $47 (for bought assets).

I'm glad that I made this game, it made me feel better.