> Transcribing log: DEV_01.20.23

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The second public alpha for Pareidolia: Going Home is here! It took a bit, there were alot of life and technical hiccups but it is here for those interested in the project! With the first public alpha taking me about 3 months to complete, this took me well over 6 months and I hope it shows. Keyword alpha as this build does not represent the full experience I wish to one day be able to share. For this project to be fully realized, I invite everyone to leave comments, feedback, criticism and anything you think might be pretty cool either through the project’s socials or the feedback form which doubles as a crash reporting system. 

All that being said, I’ve been gone for so long... here’s the rundown:

What’s New

• New sprites and animations across the project
• New ambience tracks and overall new/normalized sound effects
• New monster behavior for The Entity
• Inventory system that bundles battery checking, ability toggling, and tapes in one place
• 1 unlockable ability
• 1 new location to explore
• New interactables: Battery Stations and Data Terminals
• New puzzle pieces: Generators, Movable Grate, Motion Sensors
• Shortcut doors allowing for quick traversal between multiple zones
• Saving/Loading progress between sessions (the game saves automatically)
• Experimental, unoptimized, very roughly implemented accessibility options like a togglable dyslexic font and color blindness sliders

What’s Planned for the Road Ahead

• Methods of evading/interacting with The Entity other than running away
• 2 additional unlockable abilities
• 1 additional collectable that aligns with Operator 8 (just as cassette tapes align with RAID)
• Progression system for RAID and Operator 8
• Progression tied to collectables other than ability unlocks
• 3 additional puzzle pieces
• 1 additional enemy type
• 3 additional locations
• Dynamic map system that shows the player’s location and explorable areas
• Major landmarks to help with cave memorization
• Additional sprites, animations, music, and sound effects as well as tweaks/improvements to existing sprites, animations, music, and sound effects
• Refined accessibility options to ensure a catered experience to players with visual/audio impairments.
• More tapes, more lore, more fun, better ingredients, better pizza
• Humans (maybe who knows they’re afraid of RAID so maybe they won’t come idk can you blame them?)

Notes for this build

• The Entity is extremely (unintentionally) unfair at the moment as a result of overhauling their behavioral system. When The Entity spawns, it is best to run away instead of trying to juke it like you could in the first public alpha. The Entity can no longer see through walls but it has really good hearing so pushing blocks and interacting with switches will get its attention. Both the player AND The Entity move fast during a hunt so it is best to know your exits. When a new zone is loaded The Entity despawns.
• A map is a planned feature allowing you to keep track of where exactly you are in relation to all the zones in the game. This map generates and is in the code but is not accessible to the player as of right now. This is a definite feature that will be in the third public alpha.
• This build is compatible with xinput and dinput gamepads but in-game prompt for controllers are not implemented. Please review the button assignments in the options menu and rebind them to your liking.
• I notice during playtesting of the first alpha that people would grab every battery package they could find (the blue glowing thing with the red ribbon) In this build, I made them pretty scarce with the addition to Battery Stations-which replenish your entire battery. The purpose of the battery packages are to provide a bit of relief if you find yourself low or to cancel a hunt. Sometimes it might be adventitious to skip ones you find for the time being in the event you need one to cancel a hunt or if you find yourself in a zone without one in sight.

I hope you all have fun playing and let me know what you think and how I can improve it following the feedback form here. Thank you for your continued interest and have a great weekend!

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> Printing #SOCIALS.array

//Instagram: instagram.com/pareidoliagame

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> Exiting