Escherport Concept

Concept level made for round 1 of the Game Dev Knock Out jam in 2023. 

This is truly just a level, with some hints as to what kind of gameplay there may be. As the name of the game implies, there's something impossible going on....

Controls:

• WASD move, mouse to look
• Spacebar to jump
• Hold shift to sprint.
• Press Esc to get control of your mouse back

About the game

TL;DR none of the story made it in, and some things pop in and out, making it less seamless than intended.

I really want to mess with that common sense thing called object permanence and spatial awareness. While I vastly ran out of time to execute on most of that, this clocktown at least implements the idea of controlling the time of day based on going clockwise (making it later in time) or counter clockwise (making it earlier in time).

Since this jam was all about the level and not the gameplay, I spent too much time (proportionally) thinking about the level design. I had an intricate story about saving a defamed prince from a prison to overthrow a sour king on his coronation day, and getting different endings at the end of the "day" loop based on what you had or had not done. The sections of the game (harbor, market, and plaza) were also originally planned to very in size and shape and composition, but in a subtle way that hopefully made you think "wait, was this like this before? It seemed smaller last I was here...". In the end however, work bogged me down and I did not get really any time for little more than a sliver of what was intended for each region of the town. That, and I didn't quite get the logic perfect for seamlessly blending sections of the world together on runtime, hence some sectors and transition pieces pop in and out when they shouldn't. Consider that just a behind the scenes view.

I do hope to round out the experience and finish up the game, but alas enjoy this concept in the meantime.

Devlogs

Post jame devlog

Planning devlog

Credits

All models were made by Patrick (TheDuckCow), no textures or third party assets of any kind were used. Made using Godot 4 (my first time using it, what an adventure).

A note for mac users:

Running into "Application is damaged, move to trash"? See this video which showcases how to fix and run locally. Follow the steps exactly. More information here. Or TL;DR, run the command:

sudo xattr -rds com.apple.quarantine /drag/unzipped/Escherport.app