Devlog #7: How taking a step backwards means going forward

Dear reader,
Thank you for joining us once again for another Devlog of Code 7 and we apologise for being so quiet in the last couple of months. A lot has happened after founding Goodwolf Studio... we have now our own little office! We've been exhibiting the game at Quo Vadis in Berlin and plan to show a new prototype at Gamescom in Cologne, this summer.

Screenshot from the original Prologue

In the last month we have cracked our head over the visual style of the game. We liked the grungy, retro DOS-ish look of the prolog but had some critical questions:

• does this style allow more complex gameplay?
• do still images of this style look like an appealing game?
• is this style compatible with diverse animation and effects?

We came to the conclusion that it might be a better idea to move in a more futuristic direction and started researching interface designs from other games and movies. We worried about the screenshots of the game might look to "boring" to capture a persons attention and make them want to try the game. We thought a more modern and fancy look will be a better eye-catcher.
Take a look at our Pinterest board to see what inspired us.

We wanted to try something similar for Code 7 and make it feel more like a sci-fi movie. Here is a mockup of what we thought was a good direction:

First mockup of the sci-fi look

You can see a more modern font, the minimal but futuristic map, even an inventory system (which we kinda dumped again...). But the visual step was too small. If we wanted to make it more futuristic then we had to really make it more futuristic. Trying to let go of the original interface composition we tried something completely new: putting the input into the center.

Second mockup of the sci-fi look

How the new input looked in action

some variations of the input field

We experimented a lot, tried rearranging aspects of the interface to give them all their own relevance and importance. We tried colours, different animations, rotations and more. A major change was the icons at the bottom. Every element that you can interact with appears as an icon in the bottom, because we wanted to avoid the guessing game some players had to do in order to advance. We think typing in single letters until a command pops up in the auto-complete row is now a good game experience and doesn't feel very rewarding, even if you manage to solve the puzzle. That is why we decided to show intractable objects directly and make the puzzle about the context of those objects. When do I use this? How could I combine this with other objects? You see, that visual design also intertwines with game design? It all is connected.

We showed people the new designs and explained them, showed them mockup videos and game ideas and the result was almost always the same:

They all liked the old design better. 

Even with all the sparkling new, animated, Minority Report-ish visuals, they liked the old one better. They liked the retro feeling, they liked the DOS look, they liked the hacker-feeling it put in them.

Player feedback is very important to us and we thought a lot about what each and everyone of them said. Then, on the Quo Vadis Conference fellow indiedevs from Monokel (check out their "Shadow of Steam", it looks awesome!) gave us feedback which was the straw that broke the camels back... we had to take a step backwards to move forward!

This doesn't mean we dumped everything new into the trash, we kept some things. But we went back to the classic retro look and it just felt right. This was what Code 7 is suppose to feel like. It was like coming home from a trip. We kept the map, the icon-list of the usable commands and moved the dialog output to the upper part. Take a look at the current state below but please note that this is a work-in-progress glimpse, which is missing effects, sounds and most importantly voice-over (we are rewriting the Prolog right now).

example of the current map system

We are still experimenting with a few things and nothing is completely set in stone. We plan to have the new version running by this summer. Make sure to sign up for our newsletter below to get informed about beta-testings and other events.

What do you think about the "new" old design? What do you like? What do you dislike? Feel free to be honest and give us your feedback. We appreciate it!

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Devlog #6: Episodic Adventure or Full Game?

These past days we've been thinking a lot about our plans to make this game into an episodic adventure. Previously we talked about releasing a new episode of a five episode season every few months. However the fact that this will be our first game release as a studio makes us struggle with calculating the expectations for a project like this. There are also certain risks involved with releasing a game, then continuing development and hoping for more money once you're done with that. While we certainly want to explore this project format, working on our precise financial plan has made us believe that it's too risky for a first project.

Episode Selection Screen in Life is Strange

This means the new plan is to release a single full game. However we also thought about why we wanted to make an episodic adventure in the first place. We like episodic adventures, because they give you chunks of gameplay that you can play in the evening even though you have to go to school or work the next morning. Much like tv series, they fit into the schedule of people with working hours much better than 100-hours-long RPGs. I can't remember the last time I finished one of those. However I can remember the last six episodic adventures that I finished, because I didn't have to fit my schedule to their pacing - theirs fit perfectly into mine.

While we now plan to release a single full game, we want to keep the episodic identity by dividing the gameplay into about 90-minutes-long chunks. This way working people can play the episodes in the pace they want in the evening after work and nobody has to wait three months for the resolution of a cliffhanger. It is notable that content-providers like Netflix or Amazon have been releasing all episodes of their new seasons at once lately, because it fits the needs of customers. We think so too and want to try this.

Daredevil Advertisement by Netflix showing All Episodes being released at the same time

What do you think of this new plan? Do you like episodic adventures? Do you like getting all episodes at once? Please leave your comments below.

PS: Next weekend we'll be opening our twitch development stream. You can watch us develop a game for Asylum Game Jam in 48 hours: http://www.twitch.tv/goodwolfstudio

Devlog #5: Hacking System

Last week we talked about how we want to use the map to assure a vivid experience. Another important part of the game is the Hacking System, so this will be the topic of this week's Devlog.

In the Prologue you could hack all sorts of things like computers, doors or robots. The hacking itself was presented as a hangman-esque mini game in which you had to decipher letters within a code cloud to assemble a password. The mini game allowed some diversity in gameplay but we are not done with it. Something was still missing.

After some discussions we were able to pinpoint the aspects that have been bothering us:

1. The change of screen breaks the game-flow
2. Hacking didn't feel authentic enough
3. Limited ways of vary/upgrade the mini-game
   

Our new hacking game should feel more authentic, have relation to the main gameplay and -of course- look good! Here's what our first results look like.

Hacking Gameplay Mockup, inspired by Deus Ex: Human Revolution and EVE Online

The hacking game already looks more dynamic and this way we could play with more believable passwords or encryptions. The nodes are supposed to be data points that the player has to check for chunks of the password. If a red node is triggered you leave a trace in the system, after a couple of left traces you are being kicked out of the system. This game is already more flexible than the old one. You can combine it with upgrades or consumables that unveil certain nodes or raise the number of mistakes the player can make before being kicked out, for example.

This already felt much better to us but it was still too disconnected from the main game. Kevin suggested to integrate it in the map and actually base it on real hacking methods, like the Man in the Middle Attack. The network should have an important role, so should the location of the computers and maybe even NPCs. This is how it could look like:

This is how a map-integrated hacking game could look like

We're still in the middle of brainstorming and haven't fully decided if we stick with this idea, but it's already a solid direction and we will play around with it a bit longer. 

What do you think about this first impression? Which games have the best hacking system in your opinion?

Devlog #4: Pathfinding

Last week we announced that Code 7 will have a map feature, that will help you with orientation in the world. Today we'd like to show you that we also build a pathfinding algorithm into this map. Mainly this will give us the ability to create areas a lot faster, because we won't have to animate the main character walking around in it. Also the player will feel less like the characters are bound to an animation scheme and more like walking through a living environment. Every movement is unique, because it is calculated in real time, not predefined by an animator.

But we are also thinking about experimenting with using this as a game mechanic. For example we want to implement stealth passages and are also discussing some roguelike mechanics.

What other cool features would you like the map to have?

Devlog #3: Imagination vs. Visualization

In one of our latest devlogs, we have announced that the episodes of Code 7 that are currently in development will feature non-linear navigation.  You will be able to freely roam the areas and revisit previous locations. That leaves us with new challenges, that we didn't face in the prologue. The prologue only consisted of five rooms, that you had to visit in a fixed order. There was no need to know where exactly the player is.

Now, we'd like the player to freely navigate through the rooms, while the number of locations also increased drastically. This way we're bringing Code 7 more into line with classical text adventures. However, navigation always seemed to be achieved by having the players memorize it by themselves.
Most of the time text adventures were only playable with a sheet of paper and a pen next to the computer. That may have worked well in the past, but player behavior changed a lot over the last twenty years. So we think that the gameplay of text adventures has to change too.

At the same time we don't want to take away the players imagination of how the world around them looks like. So we came up with a map view, that focuses on orientation and information, without being too visually-defining. The surroundings are still only going to be described by the dialogue.

Here's one of our early screen captures:

Would you ever have wished for a map in classical text adventures?

Are you looking forward to roaming around the world of Code 7? Please leave your comments below.

Devlog #2: Text Input and Auto Complete

As you may know we've started the development Episode 1 recently. Currently we are heavily writing dialogues, thinking of game mechanics and testing out new design ideas for the UI.
We decided to start completely from scratch to have a blank canvas where we can come up with new ways to make the game more accessible.

Today, we'd like to share a little look into our current auto-complete system. We are planning to have three different modes that will function as the difficulty levels of the game. Please remember that we may change anything during development if we find it not working well or get bad feedback. In any case we are eager to hear your opinions on the current state of the game. Just leave a comment below.

So this is the task. You are supposed to type "System.Restart" into the console. In each of the new difficulty levels you'd do that in a different way:

Easy-Complete

In this mode (which is the default setting) you can quickly access commands that are available with the number keys. It's an extension to the system we had in the Prologue. You can also use the Return Key to quickly access the current grey auto-complete option and use the TAB key to switch through the currently available options. This way you can easily access any command and are able to play the game the way you want to.

Regular-Complete

In this mode you can see that not all possible commands are displayed underneath the text entry, but the grey auto-complete option is still there. That means that it is more difficult to find all the available commands, but you can still find commands that you didn't think of and quickly complete them with the TAB-Key.

No-Complete

In this most-difficult mode there is no auto-complete feature whatsoever and we thought of it as only suitable for the most hardcore text adventure gamers that are very familiar with text inputs and want to really hack the game without any clues. We are unsure if we will keep this mode, but as of right now it is in the early alpha builds.


What do you think of our planned auto-complete modes and which one will you choose when you finally get your hands on Episode 1 of Code 7?

Devlog #1: Work on Episode 1 has started

It has been six months since we released the prologue of Code 7 for free on the web. A lot has happened in that time: we got through Steam Greenlight, have been nominated for the A Maze Berlin Award and have been working on several university projects at the Cologne Game Lab (see: A Million Faces of War, The Old Man and the Sea with robots in space). Also we've been taking a lot of time to write the outline of the full five-episode Code 7 storyline to make sure every single episode will have a strong tale to tell of its own, while contributing to an epic overall story arc.

While it is a lot of fun to just experiment with new ideas and work on prototypes, the time has come that we feel confident to start the development of Episode I. That means we started writing, creating concept art and programming.

Obviously we will not give out any details on the story of the full game, but we can tell you our current plans on how to get this giant project finished with just two people with other jobs.

As you may know we are currently enrolled in the Cologne Game Lab at TH Cologne. The prologue of Code 7 arose out of one of the smaller projects in the first semester. Now we are starting the third semester and from now on all our attention is to be directed towards our master thesis.
We were given the opportunity to write our master thesis about Code 7 so we can focus almost all our university workload on this project.

Last but not least, we'd like to give you a short glimpse at some concept art for Episode I, which gives some clues as to where this episode is going to take place:

We hope you are as excited for this project as we are and will from now on provide you with regular updates on the process right here.

The genderless hero

The beauty of text is what the text doesn't state explicitly, but what is written between the lines. While the expression originally came from people literally writing between lines in invisible ink to send hidden messages,  it became an implication for reading a text while understanding more than what is explicitly stated, but is implied in certain words or what is left out.

We believe that this is also what made classical text adventures like Zork great. The possibilities that you form in your head are endless even if the possible outcomes are limited. Not only that - Leaving out graphical representations is another interesting aspect of those games. It leaves so much to the imagination of the player as this original magazine advertisement for Infocom likes you to believe. You sure are likely to be eaten by a grue, but what does it look like?

With "Code 7" we want to harvest this brain power in as many ways as possible. We want you to be able to use a wide range of commands. We want there to be several possible ways to achieve certain things. And most of all - we want you to use your imagination to form the world that is being described in your head, while the audiovisual atmosphere is helping to immerse you into the game.

One thing that we decided concordantly to leave out was any indication to the player character's gender. So we gave it the name "Alex", which can be both masculine and feminine.

Man? Woman? Genderless? - You decide!

Two weeks ago for the first time we showed the game on an exhibition - the A Maze Independent Games Festival in Berlin - and were able to talk to people who played the game face to face. It's very interesting and also a little bit sad that still almost everybody (about 90 percent of players) expected to play a male protagonist. Most men stated that they projected themselves into the role of the player and therefore believed the character to be male, too. Some were even disappointed by their own answer.

Women however didn't seem to project themselves into the character and instead mostly just shrugged it off with the words "I just guessed it's a man".

People tried to explain in many different ways why they thought like that. Here are just some of the most frequently given answers:

• A person I know is called "Alex" and there are more men that are called "Alex"
• The possible answers where too logical and cold so it seemed more like a man saying them
• I felt a love romance between Alex and Sam and so i thought Alex was the man

While we certainly can understand some of these arguments, one thing that we really have to keep in mind is that these are all things that are happening in the players heads. Can only a man give cold and logical answers? Can a love romance only happen between a man and a woman? We think that in the end it all comes down to one other answer - people are just used to certain things, like love romances between a man and a woman instead of one between two women or men who play the logical role.

Even though we'd like that to be different, that's the whole point of leaving out that information. You can decide on your own how you want to imagine things and if we can make only a few people think "out of the box", it was certainly worth our time.