The Dark Path

In the two-day game 'The Dark Path' I explored my mind to discover what I like and what makes me sad. The terrain the player discovers, is an expression of my feelings and thoughts. The player starts at a junction which immediately pushes him/her to choose a path. It might lead to a dead end, or to new insights in the world, or to more questions about the world and me.

The logo and three screenshots from the game, of which two are from places that you could normally not reach, but due to some bug you can get there.

I created this game out of an urge to build a new game again and an old idea that I should try to use a game to express my feelings. Along the way I learned more about jMonkeyEngine, the game engine I use, and that I am not very pleased by the spaghetti code I wrote. Take a look, and you'll see a list of hacks, missing comments, dead code and weird paths that make the game work. However, I do like the result. I was amazed by the time it took me to create the terrain and the basic physics (just a few hours), and that creating content takes aaaaages. I planned on making plants, enemies, physical objects to interact with, and much more, but time would not allow it.

As with most of my games, I created all assets myself, which is very time consuming, but also a nice creative process. I tried to make music, but failed, and used some excerpts as the sounds you hear when discovering a new 'thought'. Then I recorded sounds the sounds at night in my neighbourhood like the wind, some distant roar and the occasional chiming of church bells. But removing the hissing noise and some shouting (drunk people...) was a pain, so I decided to find something else. The howling background sounds I eventually used, are the result of randomly bashing the keys of a synthesizer mixed with a failed attempt to make footstep sounds (slowed down and its pitch lowered). For the footsteps I ended up slapping a wet rock from my roof.

Let's make another :D (but maybe I should start by making up a good concept rather than just throwing stuff into a blender and hoping it will turn into gold)