Lake Salem is a short horror experience where the player takes the role of an Ichthyology intern who is sent to study the fish in a lake. Shortly after arriving at the lake, they find that something is strange about the fish that inhabit it. Their goal then becomes to complete their compendium and discover the secrets hiding within the lake. This project was developed from January 2022 through May of 2022. I was the Tech lead and Programmer for the project, as well as managed the team's Perforce depot. Below is a breachdown of some of my work on this project.
The fishing mechanic is a large part of the gameplay loop of Lake Salem. For this mechanic I created a bar that appears on the screen that has a section that is the "Fish Zone". In order to catch the fish, the player must keep their indicator in the Fish Zone. As the player stays in the Fish Zone, the progress bar seen above the fishing bar will fill. The progress bar will slowly lose progress while the player is outside the Fish Zone. Once the progress bar is filled, the player will catch the fish and the caught fish will be displayed on screen. If the player fails to fill the progress bar in the time limit, the fish will escape. The speed of the Fish zone is determined by the fish that has grabbed the line.
The compendium acts as the player's progress tracker in the game. As they catch new fish, entries for those fish will appear in their compendium. These entries tell the player the name of the fish, a short descripton about the fish, a sketch of the fish, and how many of that fish they've caught. The player can also click on the names of the fish in the table of contents to jump to that fish's page.
The player is warned not to stay on the lake for too long at one time at the beginning of the game. This is because if they do, the Lady of the Lake will become aware of their presence. Once this happens, her song will begin to play and her tentacles will begin to spawn around the player. If the player fails to reach a dock and get off the water in time, the Lady of the Lake will appear and attack them, killing the player.