Blogs - Azalea_Interactive

Weekly Dev Log 3 - Choosing Horror game Puzzles

Puzzles are a staple within Horror games, but also provide a massive challenge for the developers to get right. When designing puzzles in general, you have to ensure it is somewhat challenging, yet also completely solvable, and this requires a lot of tweaking, playtesting and player feedback.

With horror games, this becomes even harder. Your puzzle must meet this criteria, but also not take away from the horror atmosphere. A puzzle too challenging removes you from the tense state horror games aim to keep, and a puzzle too easy just feels like a waste of time. In this weeks dev log, we will showcase some of the accepted (and scrapped) puzzle concepts, aiming to bring depth and challenge to an otherwise purely story based genre...

One puzzle found in the game "Madison", gives (in our opinion) a perfect example of this balance. In this puzzle, the player is presented with 6 switches, and from left to right, must flick each switch either up, or down. The player can only move onto the next switch if they put the previous one in the correct position. If the player flicks a switch in the wrong direction, the puzzle resets. This means the puzzle is both entirely luck based, yet also skill based at the same time. Most players wont guess the combination correct first time, however upon failing, instantly know how to solve the puzzle up until where they failed. It does a great job at building tension, keeping you within the setting, being easy to understand, but not a breeze to solve.

Some further puzzles we are a fan of, and are implementing in some shape or form:

Each of these puzzles are easy to understand, but not just a pushover to complete, a recipe vital for puzzle design!

Another equally important component of puzzle design is the way the puzzle interfaces with the player. How does the player know what to interact with, how do they know they have a puzzle in front of them? The lever and computer placed below are both puzzle assets within our horror game, but you wouldn't know this without being told?

This is a much deeper question which cannot be covered within one blog, but ultimately comes down to how you teach the player during the early stages, and also comes stems from how UI is presented and how lighting is used too- both subconscious ways to reinforce player learning.

Its safe to say that puzzle design is much more complex than what gamers experience whilst playing! If your puzzle feels unnecessarily frustrating, the game designer has messed up.

The best way to keep on top of everything Azalea, is certainly through our discord. That and all other Azalea links can all be found in one place -Azalea Interactive Linktree

Thanks for taking the time to read, and we look forward to seeing you within our fantastic community!

- Azalea

Weekly Dev Log 2 - Our Main Device

One of the most important game design principles surrounds ensuring you have a fantastic core mechanic. This mechanic must not only fit perfectly within the genre and mood you are trying to portray, but must also be unique, and more importantly, have depth to it too.

Today we're going to dive into our core mechanic, explaining its functionality, uniqueness and depth of play.

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The core mechanic is a handheld decryption device which is multi-purpose in nature.

1. The top right is a viewing area which displays multimedia forms including lore, objectives, but more importantly, media directly from the being trying to hunt you...
2. The device also acts as your tool to interact with frequency based world items. This is in the form of a frequency dial in the top right.
3. From a UI perspective, we are following a fully diegetic approach. This means the games interfaces exist in-world (similar to the Fallout Pipboy). Because of this, the device:

• Must contain a stamina bar
• Must contain info on your flashlight charge
• Must also contain an icon to show whether the player is "hidden" or not (more on this soon too!)

Knowing this, the concept was created, tweaked many times, and eventually modelled to result in the design shown below.

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Some other bits we've done this week :

• Developed the architecture for an objective system
• Continued with more environmental assets
• Re-designed one of the main puzzle mechanics based on player feedback
• Started on select animations
• Further developed the brain behind
• And much much more

The best way to keep on top of everything Azalea, is certainly through our discord. That and all other Azalea links can all be found in one place -Azalea Interactive Linktree

Thanks for taking the time to read, and we look forward to seeing you within our fantastic community!

- Azalea

Weekly Dev Log 1 - New beginnings

Azalea Interactive are a multinational Indie Game company, with a passion to create games based massively around community ideas. We are currently developing a first person psychological horror, breaking through the Horizons in 2024.

Despite being named Weekly Dev log, we have some catching up to do. Our currently unnamed horror title has been in development since Feb 2024 meaning we have almost 3 months of work to recap. We have just exited the Pre-Production stage of game development , having started Production for a couple weeks now - so lets cover this quickly!

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So - tell me about the game...

If you enjoy bringing pain to yourself by playing horror games, you're in luck. Based onboard an abandoned, crashed, decaying cargo vessel, you will find yourself balancing exploration and simple puzzle solving all whilst avoiding a stalking, terrifying , trying to slowly but surely .

Sounds interesting right?

To give a real good idea of the setting, you can see a small glimpse of our much more extensive mood boards down below:

Oh great, another horror game. This isn't special- or is it?

Well this is where things get interesting.

Throughout the playthrough, you will be fed information about yourself (positional, photographic, written & video-based information), all collected from the POV of the thing trying to kill you. The best example we can give is that you will see photos of yourself, taken from 100ft behind you, seconds ago - and until the photo comes through, you will never know it was taken.

Your worst enemy, is your only hope at survival. What leads to certain death is also your key to life. You must run , you must hide, you cannot fight, but more importantly you must use the very thing trying to kill you, as your key to escape. More will be revealed in due course.

Let me know where you're at then …

We've completed a lot - too much for a list, so we'll have to share some highlights instead:

• GDD & Art Bibles written
• Working movement system
• First level blockout complete
• is shaping along nicely...
• Menus, settings , PC and controller support are all prototyped and in-engine
• Main Character Model, Textures and rigging has been completed
• A whole plethora of Environmental Art assets & props are ready
• Multiple game systems and puzzles have been prototyped and are in-engine
• Audio Assets for interactable and core features are complete
• The first of many internal playtests has concluded

This list is only a fraction of the true work conducted, and we have no doubt with the progress made over the last few months, that the next few are going to bring about very exciting times

Future Devlogs will give further updates, however the best way to keep on top of everything Azalea, is certainly through our discord. That and all other Azalea links can all be found in one place - Azalea Interactive Linktree

Thanks for taking the time to read, and we look forward to seeing you within our fantastic community!

- Azalea

Chapter 1 - 1 Breaking the horror cycle

We're all familiar with the typical Indie game cycle.

Create fantastic idea -> Start constructing game -> Burnout before preproduction is even started

Its a classic loop, often unavoidable all because of your own lack of planning, time available or even just because its a skill issue (quite literally). What makes it even worse is this all still occurs despite the painfully obvious hindsight from your previous project.

Having to balance a huge plethora of pre-production tasks, construct your GDD baseline and scope your individual levels, all whilst breaking down your game into manageable bites along with schedule, budget, contingencies and so much more … is hard (especially when you do it properly).

Having spent 3 Gruelling months as a team of 10 getting through this, and despite finally having the plan and scope for our first game baselined, we still cant help but feel something has been missed, but that's okay.

Despite developing a First Person Horror Game set within the deep confines of a crashed , abandoned (yes spooky ) cargo vessel, the pre-production stage of game development is certainly the worst horror we've had to face. However, just like you need to run down that dark staircase to complete Outlast, or Amnesia, or any horror game which comes to mind, you also need pre-production for that extra likelihood your game is successful.

This is why we've left our main character here throughout- reminding (mainly ourselves) , but hopefully also you, of the reward for pushing through this horror. Maybe it'll inspire you to pickup your Gamedev journey again, and push through that pre-production stage which we all know you dread doing! Yes its scary, but we assure you, you'd will be lost without it.

If you want more inspiration, motivation, advice and small knowledge here and there, id recommend you join the rest of our community <3 Azalea Interactive Linktree

-Azalea