In Pet Lab you get to be in the shoes of a scientist creating all sorts of creatures. How long can you keep them alive?
Name your pet, clean after it, play with it.. And don’t forget too feed it!
Game idea:
Our team came up with the idea to make Tamagotchi like game, instead of adapting a classic game from a list. Since all of us were friends of horror we decided to use that as a twist. Just like in Tamagotchi, the idea from the very beginning was “Can you keep your pet alive?”.
Our initial idea included a full fledged story unfolding before the player, as things slowly turned more and more horrific. However our time limit constrained us and the idea got scrapped in favor of a more arcade style gameplay loop in the end.
We wanted the player to get attached to their pet and think we have been semi successful in our goal despite some planned features missing. The art really helped in bringing them to life.
Process:
For the first 1.5 months of development, we struggled with a lack of clear scope and look of the game. After some feedback, we started to organize our development better, and clearly define the game, and narrow the scope down. The game did change a bit from this re-imagined definition, but not much. We did necessary changes alongside development, and changed ideas that weren’t working.
Our organizing took a form of a meeting twice a week, where we defined what we want to do before the next meeting, and what we had managed to do since the previous meeting. Some meetings had other topics too like discussing the direction of the game.
We did most of our developing at home individually. This was possible because our meetings were done face to face, with clearly defined tasks to be done. All questions and unclear things were cleared during these meetings.
Download and try out the game here:
Link to the game use password “PetLabEarlyAccess” in order to access the page and download the game.
Team
PROGRAMMERS:
Saimi Vilkkilä
Sonja Keinänen
ART:
Jessica Havula
Ella Eschner
Vilma Törmälä
