Theme : Deeper And Deeper

This theme is interesting because it allows many interpretations. The easy and uninteresting way to take it is to focus on a single "deeper" and make a game where each level goes deeper underground, or deeper into a cave or something. I made sure to really pay attention to the full theme, it's not deeper but deeper and deeper. This repetition makes it worrying, oppressive to me. I decided to focus on these feelings and create a game that would focus on a scary mood.

I chose to go with the common fear of drowning, because it also fits the theme of going deeper and deeper into the abyss. Instead of the character going willingly underwater, I felt like it would be stronger to be pulled helplessly. The easy idea would be to be pulled by tentacles, but hands are much creepier in this situation.

Introduction

Being pulled underwater is terrifying, but to get the full effect I had to set it up properly. I spent a fair amount of time on making a nice intro scene, with two characters swmiming at the surface. By having the two characters at the very top of the screen, it both saves me a lot of time (because I don't have to create the environment) and tells the player that something is going to happen from below.

Graphics

My main reference for this game was Limbo. Usually the character is colored/light over a dark background. In Limbo, they showed that by inverting this, it creates a more oppressive mood, which was exactly what I was going after. Even tho most of the game would be fully black, I textured everything so I could play with lights in engine to find the best settings. There are two layers, one for the foreground with very little light is any, and one for the background with more light. This added more depth and clarity on what's a wall with collisions and what's is in the background.

Results

The game placed 18th in mood out of 1145, 36th in graphics and 34th in theme (overall 177th). I'm very satisfied with these results as these was what I was focusing on.