Morbid Mill, v.78, college project due Feburary

Hey everyone,

This is a project I've been working on with my team mates Ian and Thomas at the International Academy of Design and Technology.

A mysterious factory shuts down somewhere in the forbidden forest outside the village of Morbid. The parents did not tell their children why and the Elders pretended not to know, but Juni a young and curious girl, sneaks out of her parent's house in the dead of the night to discover for herself the secrets of this mysterious Morbid Mill.

She quietly escapes through her window, shivering slightly as the cold wind brushes her. She is started to see her brother, Tobah, standing on the roof with her. He questions her intentions, she explains her quest, and he does not argue. He hands her an umbrella, tells her to keep dry, but most importantly, come back alive.

As she transverses through the forest, she encounters a strange spirit that haunts her, taunting her with mind games and discouraging remarks, suddendly she trips and stumbles down an over grown shaft leading directly into the Morbid Mill, now possessed and haunted by the same demonic creatures that inhabit that forsaken forest.

Eventually she escapes the factory to see the forest in flames as the possessed robotics and demonic creatures raze it, she runs back to Morbid to see the same fate for her people. She packs into a small boat where the survivors spend 3 days traveling to the nearby city of Setian to seek refuge. Juni grieved with guilt and remose she plans to return to the factory to destory it and save humanity from the terror of the Mill. (super-summarized game plot)

Type: Challenge/Puzzle (Hard/Normal)

So, obviously, this isn't what most people may be used to, as from a lot of Knytt Stories games I've seen are rather serene and joyful... ehh... this is kind of, well, gloomy, however it starts off very dark it picks up right away to a heavy upbeat guitar rift sound as the player tackles all the challenges in this game.

The music, tileset authors, and all other related matieral in the game will be credited to their owners and creators.
Below I have posted screenshots...


Title Screen


Intro Text 1


Intro Text 2


The Town of Morbid


An example of our transition, a similar effect occurs on the screen Juni is in when she shifts to a change of enviroment


The first screen of the Forbidden Forest, here Juni just managed to escape some deadly spikes as she prepares to enter the next screen


One of Juni's first encounters with Syliva, the ghost of a young girl who died long ago now haunting the forest, she taunts Juni with mind games and discouraging remarks, this is also the screen where she stumbles down a long shaft over grown in the forest and finds herself deep within the Morbid Mill itself!


The coolant room of the factory


One of the screens in the main sector of the factory


Here, the umbrella is being used as a shield to block the incoming projectiles


Don't fall!


A screen from a strange forest she finds enclosed outside the factory, the path leads to an underground cave strangely locked with a key she can not find here


After finally escaping the factory she sees that the possessed robotics and demonic creatures have razed the forest! Her eyes water as the grim thought of Morbid suffering the same fate plague her mind, will she return in time?!

So there you have it, out of my testers it took the average gamer maybe an hour to complete the game so far (about half way done). The story is actually far more indepth with some twists and turns, but above is just a quick summary really... I'm just way too tired to write out the whole thing right now, but you get the idea

Since we are also being graded on documentation, I wrote a short Enemy Guide Manual to be attached to a full-on game manual I'm writing, the link to download it is here: http://www.sendspace.com/file/6epmtc - it is in .doc format

Music used is from the soundtrack of the games Quake, Quake II, Heretic/Hexen, and Doom II.

Sounds great! 
but are you going to be making your own graphics?
right now the screens look......defualt if you know what i mean 

Yeah, I know what you mean...

To be honest I'm not very good with sprites or graphic art, I'm not really a graphic artist, but we still have like 2 months to finish the game so once we get the whole design and gameplay down we will go back through it and ATLEAST somehow edit the tileset we already have, still crediting the original author of course.

I rather like the default art considering this is my first game using the Knytt Stories Engine it would be acceptable, but if I decide to create a newer, better one (or prehaps a re-make of this) then I will use fully custom graphics

Thanks for the reply though, I apperiate the insight

Looks cool. A similar effect could be achieved with shifts, though.

I don't like the shifting between past and present tense in the introduction.  I strongly advise changing it.

Hmm, no one has ever complained about that before, but maybe you are right
Many actually said they enjoyed the narration, it may not be proper writing but if enough people like it then I'll keep it

And for the transitions, I do use Shifts to activate the transition but I use Photoshop to basically run a picture of that area through a filter, people seem to like it and I already have most of them in place, in 2 month when we finish the whole thing I'll let you guys play test it before we present it in class so you all can tell me what's awesome and what sucks

I meant shift to a screen with the transition and then shift on touch to the next area. Rather than using a shift to activate a cutscene.

It works as it is I suppose, but I think I know what you mean