First of all, thanks to all of you who already played our game! And your feedback was much appreciated :smile:

But now, I'd like to explain a little how we made our game map. Who knows, maybe it could interest you!

So first, once we had the overall gameplay settled (moving around the town to eat people while evading guards), there were two things to do: - First, create a town big enough to avoid guards (when there aren't 50 at once, of course...), while remaining small enough to not get lost too much. - Second, include some points of interest, while making sure they're not too close to each other. This was for both the buildings and the little civilians.

First Map iteration: The Rough Sketch

Bloody heck it's horrifying (and in french :flag_fr:)!

Yes, it all started from here: with a basic drawing on Illustrator (or to be honest, with a paper draft even more hideous but I'm probably the only one able to read it or even understand it...). Anyway, at first, the Manor was a Tower ('Tour'), and the Concert was still very vague (simply titled 'Hiding Spot' or 'Cachette'). But the Church ('Eglise') was already supposed to be in front of the Manor on the main street. The Graveyard ('Cimetière') was decided too, but its final (resting) place still had to be chosen.

And as you can see, this is a top-view, not an isometric view. It may not seems a lot, but that has a lot of implications I'm going to explain next. In any case, what I had in mind while designing the map was to make sure there were room for the player to avoid guards, at least at first. The player is fast, so this map size isn't too much of an issue to move around, even with limited time. The Church and the Manor are in the middle because that's where the player needs to go often (to slow the night and stop the priests), while the Concert and the Graveyard are on opposite sides of the map.

Second Map iteration: Isomectric Draft

Looks better, but there's still some problems...

At this point, work was well on its way. Our talented artists made some beautiful buildings and our devs implemented the basics for the map creation. But it became necessary to redo the map in an isometric view: after all, this was very important for the camera works and the gameplay. So, by using placeholders and the available buildings, this map was made based on the previous map... Still with Illustrator, though :smirk:

And that's where we realized a few shortcomings: the important buildings weren't facing the right directions, when they weren't totally hidden. It became necessary to change the map orientation, but also the placement of the Concert and the Graveyard (because we wanted the music to be at the top of the map, and the ritual at the bottom).

But rather than making yet another sketch, we elected to make the map directly in Unity, now that the main prefabs were implemented.

Third Map iteration: Playable town

Hey, now it's starting to look like something good!

If you played the game, you probably recognize the layout. It was almost final at this point, but from the previous map, it was more or less mirrored. But one thing was notably changed: the Graveyard was moved up a little. Why? Because its orientation would have made it unreachable with its walls. And it felt better right in the middle of an empty place rather than next to a house. Of course, you can still see some graphic bugs, but such is the life of a jam...

Anyway, we also found out that the Manor and the Church were hidden by the houses, so we chose to give them a little more space. And then came the time for the props!

Fourth Map iteration: The last tweaks

And there we go! :bat:

We added grass, trees, rocks, mailboxes (yes this was important), and the outer walls. With that, the night town looked better than ever! Eventually, we set up the final spawn points for civilians, guards and priests, as well as their paths (the necessary tweaks, ya know'). And after that, it was up and running for your enjoyment!

Of course, there's always room for improvement, but for a 72-hours game it's hard to add everything you want. At some point, we had an idea for a wandering Bard circling around the town, and spending some time with him would grant you bonus points. But priority to priorities!

I hope you appreciated this (not-so) little insight, and don't hesitate to share your development stories yourself!