We’re starting our closed testing run for Syndrome soon.
As such, we’ve been dividing our efforts in adding new content and polishing the game experience (mostly in the initial sections).
Although there are still placeholder items and some dialogs are still missing, we feel that the game is in a good state to be played and tested.
(if you’re one of the testers – expect an email from us in the next days 
)
We cannot stress how important it is to gather feedback from players during the development process. We have our own vision of what the game should be of course, but ultimately we’re making this game for the players, and it’s them who can help us shape this project into a great experience.
Aside from preparing the test build, we’ve been adding sounds to the game.
For those of you that don’t know, Syndrome takes place inside a spaceship, the Valkenburg. Since this is a horror game, sound has to be awesome or else the level of immersion that we want just won’t be there.
The guys at Bigmoon Entertainment are helping us out with the sound, and doing a great job at it.
It’s really interesting to implement sounds in this type of game.
For example, if the player is walking through a dark corridor and sees some lights blinking in the distance, he’ll wonder what’s up there. But if the right tune comes up at the right time, the player will be completely focused in what’s going to happen.
Although we are playing some tunes in specific places, we are avoiding “regular music”. We don’t feel that it works here. What we are using is soundscapes with small discreet tunes.
At the moment we have 3 sound layers: one with ambient sound, which is basically the sound of void in a ship, another with ambient stingers that play at random timed intervals, and layer 3, well… this one we can’t specify
Besides these layers we also have triggers connected to the environment or to the player’s actions. These triggers can blend a specific tune with layer 2, so that it all feels very smooth.
Well, text-only posts are boring, so check out some new screenshots below:
the lighting looks intense! gives that ambiguous atmosphere
Thanks :)
Lighting is one of the most important aspects in this game