I Spent the Day Playing With Bugs

Today was one of those development days where, technically, I was working on the game…

…but I also spent most of the day playing with bugs.

I’ve been experimenting with getting actual little bugs crawling around the environments in Harborage Street. The goal is to make the world feel a little more alive or, depending on how you feel about bugs, a little more disgusting.

I’ve been working with emitters and Niagara systems to experiment with spawning and moving bugs throughout the environment. Right now I’m mostly focused on figuring out how I want them to behave, how they should move around the environment, and how to make them feel like they're actually part of the world rather than just another effect happening on top of it.

And because I’m running an indie studio called Roach Clip Games, I figured there was really only one appropriate way to test this.

I used the studio logo as the bug.

Yep. The little roach from the Roach Clip Games logo has officially become a test subject.

For now, it’s basically a stand-in while I work out the system. Eventually, the plan is to have actual bug models crawling around the environments, but using the logo has made for a pretty funny development placeholder.

It’s also a good reminder of one of the fun parts of making a game yourself: sometimes the development process involves solving complicated technical problems, and sometimes it involves watching a bunch of tiny roach logos crawl across the floor and thinking:

"Yeah… that looks about right."

There’s still plenty to figure out, but these little details are the kind of thing I want to keep adding to Harborage Street as development continues. Horror isn't always about what jumps out at you.

Sometimes it’s about noticing something small moving in the corner of the room.

And deciding whether you really want to get closer.

More development updates coming soon.