About the Game
node.you is currently the working title for my first-person atmospheric horror game.
You wake up in an apartment. You walk through a massive building, head down into the cellar and there is a machine. You cannot fully make out what it does, but it is obvious that a lot of work has gone into it already.
You keep coming back to it.
I want the game to feel oppressive, abstract and intimate at the same time.
Not horror in the traditional sense. More akin of an experience that leaves you with a weird inner tension afterwards and also does not fully explain itself.
The game is about attention, overload, repetition and the illusion of control. I do not want to explain too much of it though. It should be something you feel first and only maybe understand later.
On the Name
The thought behind it was that you are basically just a node in a much larger system. Sounds a bit harsh maybe, but in the context of this world that is kind of the point.
You exist somewhere inside a massive complex, occupy one room. You're just a number, and just do whatever keeps you moving.
Tools and direction
I originally started the project in Unity on Windows because of prior experience with it during my training as "multimedia developer".
But over time I grew more and more frustrated with Unity. It felt bloated, overly corporate and in many ways more complicated than it needed to be.
So I moved the project over to Godot instead, and honestly I am much happier with that direction. It feels closer to my general stance and for the kind of game I want to make it actually gives me more room.
That change, together with my move to Linux, shifted development a bit, but it was the right decision.
My current tool stack around the game is fairly direct: Godot, Blender, Affinity, Audacity, and currently looking towards Material Maker and Armorpaint.
Current state
Right now the game is in the prototyping phase.
I am still learning the engine in practice and also learning more about my own process of prototyping a game like this properly.
That also means things can and will most likely change.
My role
Everything on the project is human-made by me.
Even now, in a time where AI is everywhere (I'm not a big fan), the actual work is still mine. I do use AI as a thinking aid or for genuinely repetitive tasks.
Neither code, texts, images, audio or other assets will be AI generated!