This week we spent a lot of time working on detail props and textures to place around the house. Detail props are very time-consuming: we have to model them, texture them, and then apply all their properties in the game world so that they work correctly. Yet, most of them, will only ever be glanced at. It’s a price worth paying, though, because the result is a world that feels rich and alive.

The real difficulty comes in finding the right balance. We could get extremely dense, realistic detail, —but the game could take years to release. I think we’re heading down a path that really suits our budget and time without really costing us a lot in terms of quality or depth, though.

Although Forgotten is nearly feature-complete, I have added one more mechanic to the game. Because the world you exist in is so informal and abstract, and it’s already established the you see what the world wants you to see, why not let this world have a more power than just rearranging furniture? The new mechanic, I call Mental Diaries. The idea is that a character has a thought that is captured and embedded in some readable form into the world, presented as the world desires for you to read.

I think it’s really cool. It adds a bit of an uncanny feeling to the atmosphere, helps to make you feel powerless (because wherever you are is so mysterious and powerful) and it’s a great way to add backstory and depth to the narrative. Any Mental Diaries that you come across will mostly be optional, and marked very differently from things that are real and physical, so players who don’t like reading don’t have to read more than the bare minimum to play.

On the topic of reading: one of the ways I like to lessen the burden of reading is to incorporate text right into the environment. So, you’re less reading, and more observing. It also helps to separate text into small sections that are easy to digest.

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