Hello again! Time for another update on our game Reflection.

On Friday, March 4th, 2022, Reflection had its first release in the Alpha stages of the game. Still downloadable if you want to try it out! The Alpha was tested by a panel of guests who are settled in the video game industry and their advice was invaluable.

Controls

The controls of Reflection are very simple, it plays like your normal first-person game,

• WASD to move Millie around
• Scroll Up/Down to Zoom in and out
• F to interact/pick up items
• SHIFT to open your inventory
• SHIFT + Scroll Up/Down to cycle through items in the inventory
• E to use items in your inventory

Content

The Alpha contains more of a display of what's to come in Reflection thematically. You'll be able to control Millie and play through our first introduction puzzle to use a Fusebox to turn the lights on. Millie can also explore the present and past master bedroom of her parents and you the player can experience the visual experience we want you to have.

The player can also mess around with the incomplete puzzle of the Mother's closet where they move around boxes to solve a few tasks. Currently, the logic isn't implemented that coherently connects the main room puzzle to the closet puzzles so I apologize for such disconnect you might have.

Please let us know if you have any feedback, questions, comments or concerns about this Alpha. I know it's a bit buggy but we got to start somewhere :p

Potential Pivots

Throughout development, it was clear to see that Reflection will be a game of many things. This might mean we won't be able to finish everything we have planned. Although I absolutely love working on it there might be the case that we'd want to reduce our scope to ensure Reflection will still be amazing. One piece of advice from our amazing play-testers was that at the end of the day, you'd rather want to have a small but more complete game than a large and less cohesive experience.

Taking this advice into consideration, our team has decided on two key dates, March 7th and March 15th.

On March 7th, our developers will see if they can finalize the mirror mechanic so that we have something refined. This is our key mechanic and it's important we spend time and fix the bugs we were seeing in the Alpha.

And well, without spoiling, here is what we plan to have for the game.

Note that each puzzle is completely thought out and designed Unity, all we'd need now is to code the gameplay and incorporate the narrative.

By March 15th, we're aiming to have Mom Puzzle 2 and Dad Puzzle 1 completely implemented with gameplay, narrative, and puzzle systems. If these tasks are not 100% done by March 15th, there will be a scoping reduction. Specifically,

We'll be removing Mom Puzzle 1 and Dad Puzzle 2 from the game. After that, our new goal will be to refine the puzzles we already have and to include some connection to these closets in the main room somewhere.

This will guarantee that we keep the game completed and a fun experience for the player.

Let us know what you think about this plan of action or if I should do this differently in any way, I'd love your feedback.

Thank you for following the development of Reflection <3,

-Zuhab

P.S. Here's a list of bugs to fix and features to add from the Alpha

• Fix lighting, why have a lighting puzzle if the lights are already on
• Flip the code on the wall to be a reflection ✔
• Jumping and movement is buggy in the Past world ✔
• Reflecting through the mirror is buggy in colliders
• Optimize the game ✔ 1/2 steps done
• Create the correct gameplay flow of the character
• Add audio queues
• Remove jumping
• Fix UI so you don't zoom in with scrolling
• Better the UI so it tells you if you can teleport through the mirror
• Fusebox is too hard to see
• Somethings you can pass through haha
• Falling off the world or jumping to the roof
• Block off incomplete areas so the player doesn't get stuck
• Add a 'Quit Game' feature