The Trailer is out!

I’m excited to show you the Trailer I just made for the game! However, you will have to wait a little longer for the release of the game itself, planned for January 2013.

Please take a look, hope you like it 🙂

 

 

The music you can hear in the trailer were composed by the very talented Andrea Giachini!

Twitter: https://twitter.com/AndreaComposer

Website: http://andreagiachinicomposer.jimdo.com/

NostraDamon

Core gameplay element: the Visibility

How do the player interact with the world? How do the world interact with the player? Why does the player need to be silent? When/Why/How will the player be attacked/threatened?

All of those questions revolve around a core parameter in the game: the Visibility factor. The more high it is, the more the probability of an attack increases.

 

Your pursuer cannot really see you, mainly because it’s blind, but it’s very attracted to the noise. That’s why your visibility factor is determined by the noise you make.

 

For example, running or touching bushes makes you more visible. Additionally, a lot of events can occur everywhere in the map, randomly or not. It can be scared crows or animals fleeing away, the noise of a radio, a random lightbulb explosion, or the decision of breaking a door with a crowbar if you can’t find the keys.

In a futur post, I’ll give some explanation on how to interact with the stalker, and efficiently distracting him to survive the attacks.

NostraDamon

Finally, The Threat won’t be a free release (but still cheap!)

I thought a lot about it, and I decided not to release the game for free, but for a little amount.
The more I work on the game, the more it becomes complex, and the more I spend time on it. I added a lot of features, improved the gameplay, the AI, and I’m trying to add some replay value (randomization is an important element in the game). For now, I still have a lot of work to do on the game performance.

Besides, I plan to acquire a Pro version on Unity 3D for my future games, and adding “The Threat” some nice post-effects(bloom, ambient occlusion, blur, chromatic aberration, …) and dynamic shadows.

 

Considering the game is now a commercial release, I will give you the best quality and game experience I can, hoping it will not disappoint you 🙂

 

NostraDamon

New screenshots + graphical improvement

Here are 5 new screenshots, showing some graphical improvement of the environment (visit the website for a higher quality: The Threat – WebSite).

The map is less empty. I added a lot of bushes, rocks, wood logs, crows and more, to give the world some additional “life”. I also reworked some textures, like the trees, or the terrain (now multi-textured).

 

 

NostraDamon

Improved terrain

After hours of hard work, I finally succeeded to paint different textures all over the terrain! I currently use 3 different textures.

In addition, I did some improvement on the trees’ texture.

 

 

NostraDamon

First video of gameplay!

Here is the first gameplay video of the game.

It shows the flashlight, the use of flares, and the inventory display.

 

Keep in mind that it is an early alpha footage, and it will be improved in the final version!

NostraDamon

Synthetic overview of the AI’s mechanics

This is a diagram showing the general behavior of the AI: spawn, idle, search, chase, idle, spawn…

The target can be altered using items (for example a flare to distract your pursuer).

As explained on the picture, the Visibility is a very important attribute. The more it increases, the more the AI is aggressive.

 

NostraDamon

Testing the flares: fun time!

Just throwing flares everywhere and seeing what happens…

Actually, flares will be very rare and useful. You normally won’t be able to throw so many many flares at once.

I still encounter the glitch where rigibodies pass through the ground when thrown with force, though 😦

 

NostraDamon

First screenshots

Here are the 6 screenshots you can find on the The Threat – Game page, +1 Slender bonus:

 

 

When will the game be released?

According to me, the advancement of the game is about 60-65% (including all the modeling/texturing/mapping).

That’s why the release date won’t be that far. Possibly this year.

To the question “Will you release a demo version before the final one?”, my answer is “That isn’t planned”. However, if I decide, for some reasons, to add some big features to the game, or if the development is greatly slowed, I’ll think about releasing a technical demo version.

But don’t worry, I will post new screenshots/videos and gameplay elements as frequently as possible to make you wait 🙂

NostraDamon