And here's the demo for The Island of Dr Merlot!

Island of Dr Merlot.zip

Just unzip it and double-click the exe.

Key controls for this demo are the standard Unity controls (W, A, S, D, plus the mouse for turning). Pressing 'i' toggles the inventory screen on and off.

Here's the completed design document for Merlot:

INM375_JeffreyGeorgeson.pdf

It explains itself!

The Prezi presentation that goes along with my pitch is available for download:

island-of-dr-merlot-gmh19xx9fhd4.zip (26 MB)

I'm getting ready for my practice presentation next Thursday, and I'd like to have it within a hair of being the final presentation; to that end, I am spending a weekend with wine and software.

To the left is my game logo sheet, just what I've played around with in PhotoShop. Any comments would be lovely; I'm not sure which I like best of these final four.

I've also decided to do my presentation using Prezi, an alternative to PowerPoint that uses one giant canvass and "camera" movement to move around the presentation. I think this is perfect for moving around a background "island" to look at the various elements of my presentation. I've sorted out how to capture video of my very, very crude Unity prototype using Fraps and VirtualDub and can play this in my presentation, which is brilliant. And I've created the basic text outline for my patter.

So now I need to create the various images and get far enough in Unity to create a visual of the game--just a few seconds, really, a taster of it. And practice, practice, practice!

NOTE: Of course, if you wish to make a comment, you'll have to email me directly. I've turned off comments for the blog because all I receive is spam. And I'm not having spam with my wine.

The game's name is obviously a play on the title of HG Wells' The Island of Dr. Moreau, in which a mad doctor is trying to create humans from animals. Fear not; the wine puzzler merely plays on the words of the title, not borrowing from the story. (Well, I suppose someone could get so drunk on wine that they crawled around on all fours, but that in itself wouldn't be cause to be sent to the House of Pain ...)

In Dr Merlot, the player is directed to search the island for various precious and rare bottles of wine that have gone missing from the Dr's cellars, in the process uncovering the thief (or thieves) and maybe finding other treasures and secrets. Each puzzle uncovers clues and bottles, and can be played in 5-10 minutes (whether the player succeeds or not).

Dr Merlot is a first-person puzzler, creating a different kind of atmosphere from other puzzle games and opening up an opportunity to create new kinds of puzzles, or at least give the puzzles a bit of a twist.

I'm currently working on creating a moodboard and a Gantt chart for this project.