I did not complete Session 4 Previously because there were too many bugs in that session. I wanted to find a better way to code the mechanics used in Session 4 and this week I went back to edit the code. I sent Diego another email asking for his advice on this issue, meanwhile I fixed some existing bugs in the Session and finally added sounds to the room. I also did some flying animated background objects for Session 5 and I'm adding more.
Here are some captures of new session 4 & 5
Left corner is whole view of the map just to show what the full picture looks like, it will not appear in the user's view.
I also started working on my Process book. (it's harder than I thought, Should've started last week!)
Here are some pages from my process book.(I'm using Indesign)
Also, this is what Diego said in his earlier email about my project:
"This is half stream of consciousness and half thought out, but here are my reactions:
The first scene feels like some kind of rejection, the second scene feels like some kind of building of anxiety until the player is dragged back to another traumatic event. The radio scene I don’t really get, other than maybe it’s about tuning out the stressful state of the world. And the final scene feels like a flashback to a childhood/adolescent scene that also implies some darkness — the parents being in darkness and unreadable makes me feel like either I or they is committing some dark deed, and it evokes some kind of abuse or trauma. Maybe it’s about a suicide attempt - a body, a knife, a gash in a bottle. Could also be about gender and body dysmorphia - the toaster as some other that doesn't fit in with the initial group, the genderless posable figurine, the phallic knife and the yonic gash. (I'm not sure what the other thing is -- a tiny wine cooler with matches inside?)
It definitely takes multiple play-throughs to get all this -- there's not enough time in the room to see all of the pieces, especially because you kind of want to look in detail. But the early parts of the game don't really offer much new information on repeated playthroughs. I think the addition of the reframed lens from the end is helpful, but they take a long time to get through, and there's not a lot of nuance to rexplore. So you might consider a way to skip or speed through those earlier parts, or start from the bedroom scene. This need for earlier exploration actually exposes bugs -- I went backwards in the three paintings toaster room, past the paintings of what i am assuming is the self, and things got buggy. Why not just allow the player to go backwards right away? You sped through it last time, a violent flashback brought on by trauma, but you can look it in the face and try to learn from it.
I like the art overall! In the first scene, though, it feels very stock pixel art, not particularly deliberately chosen. What is it about those people that should stand out? Right now they just kind of say "person" and "videogame npc" -- is it about their gendered bodies? Then maybe you can use slightly higher res, more codable figures -- something like dress up doll games: http://www.pixelbee.com/cartoondolls-anime Or is it about some kind of ability to be normal? Then maybe you can use something more realistically proportioned, neutral, boring.
or if that's not the point, maybe there's another way. But it's hard to get much meaning out of that scene other than "I am a toaster and they are not, and once I leave they won't let me back in, probably because i'm a toaster"