First news for Slender is in my home ! We published the game the 7th september 2013 on our website and it was like an unknown ghost. Since the game was available on indiedb (3rd january 2014) we noticed a great improvement on visits, downloads, etc.
What surprised us is how much an "Horror" theme is popular (972 visits in one week), since our two last games (Everyday I'm Working and Public Official) had a lot of difficulties (respectively 188 and 157 visits in 2 months). They had a "Realism" theme in visual novel (who care ?) and a "Realism" platformer (today i'm wondering if it's really "realistic").
[spoiler alert]
So, we are proud of Slender is in my home. At the beginning the game was a little different. A lot of you has noticed : Slenderman is nude. That's the joke. Obviously, the goal of the game is to be frightening.
We tried a lot of horror-tricks like closing-door, random sounds, random events. We first tried a very scenaristic game (go here first, and go here, and here). But it wasn't really scarry. We kept the first step (go to the bathroom) and change the game in a more "classical" slendy-game (find some objects). The activable radio is a rest of the scenaristic prototype. The cat is the same thing, but we change its gameplay.
There's a lot of code we didn't use, like shadow silhouette running toward the player or crazy-opening-door in the kitchen. It could be scary the first time, but to much predictable the 5th time.
The game was made in Unity for development and Blender for 3D graphics. We noticed that a lot of people get lost at the beginning. "Where is the bathroom ?" That should not represent the core experience of the game (well, we think). So we made a small new version with a map displayed in the help screen. The actual last version is 1.4 (january 10th 2014). So, if you have a different version (see it in "information.txt"), try the last downloadable version on indiedb or our website (www.alineaire.com).
What could we change to do a better game ? Maybe, at the beginning, having a true game design would help us. We get lost when we changed the game mechanics a lot of times. There's something good, that's why it's frightening for some people, but there's a lot of BOO-tricks we missed. The magnet idea was a good one, but I'm not sure about it's efficiency. If you have any idea to improve the game, don't hesitate to share it.
Today, we're trying to develop another game. But it won't be a horror game. We have a lot of ideas for other horror games, but we want to try other stuffs before. So stay connect, and if you like horror, maybe you'll play another one of our game !
Thank you for playing :)
7 youtubers made a video, find them out here :
- AussieKnight : Youtube.com
- Bad Kitty : Youtube.com
- Raeko : Youtube.com (loved his slender picture with a magnet-head)
- Keye Games : Youtube.com
- TheFearHunter : Youtube.com
- ItsRedJack : Youtube.com
- MrGeek45 : Youtube.com
We're developing our new game. Follow our news on our facebook page :
Facebook.com
Also, we have a website with 25 games/experiments available :
www.alineaire.com
