Hey folks!

For absolutely no reason, I’ve decided to open-source the project. This means that starting from 1.1, the game will have separate Mono-based builds alongside the regular IL2CPP ones. If you are not planning on modding the game, stick to the IL2CPP builds once 1.1 releases. This is for performance reasons.

Anyways…

Postmortem

The Project

I originally made this project after a few ideas came into my mind. Leo had existed long before LBB did, and I wanted to put him into a game. In the beginning, my plan was to make something in Roblox, but it was clear that the engine was simply too limited to make anything of quality, so I began working on a basic prototype from scratch in Unity. I used Unity 2022.3 for early builds, but for technical reasons (new features and other reasons) I switched to Unity 6. The project was planned to only be a medium-size side-project, but it ended up inflating into a larger project once the final months of development came around. It was clear I wanted to make the game stand out, so I decided on basing the story around my own experiences with mental health.

What went great

I’m very satisfied with the result. The artstyle is great in my opinion, and the psychological horror elements are stunning. The runtime is decent, but way longer than anything else I’ve made before. Most of the visual effects in the game were made using shaders, made by me from scratch. These didn’t take too long to make.

What didn’t go so well

A lot, in my opinion. The code is absolutely horrible, and that has added technical debt to the project. Halfway through I fell into burnout. I was overworking myself with the project and took a step back for about 3 weeks. Also, while you wouldn’t notice this in casual playthroughs, the walls actually slightly overlap at their corners. This is because of a hack I had to do to make sure the sky didn’t leak between walls. Nearing the end of the project, I realized that the player had absolutely no way of knowing Leo’s past, his fears and his struggles, so I had to implement a whole new section, involving diary entries and audio recordings. The finale didn’t go as I wanted it to either. I wanted all of the characters to be there, but I decided to instead make it a moment before Leo’s death, in a moody yard. The diary entries originally used transitions as well, but they had to be cut as they would cause constant bugs. Overall, this project was a mess.

Why it didn’t go so well

Most definitely due to my lack of planning and constant procrastination as well as overworking, which led to burnout. I also had completely underestimated the scope of the project, as mentioned earlier. Technical debt would’ve massively increased the amount of development time as the current system does not support height for tiles, which led to me cutting corners on the endings. I also don’t actually know Unity that well, which required me to use these hacky workarounds for certain bugs.

What I would change

I would rewrite the whole thing, plan it from the start, and use Pomodoro timers extensively. Given how much of a dumpster fire it turned out to be, it’s a miracle it works at all. I would also prioritize Linux support next time, and stick to Unity 2022, as I have friends who are not on Windows 10 and above and they can’t play the game due to Unity 6 not supporting these older operating systems for no good reason.

Closing thoughts

I think the project changed me a lot. It helped me process various hardships in my life, helped me learn to self-reflect and so much more. I thank all of my friends for providing various assets I could’ve never made myself. You’re the best. I mean it. I suck at game development, to be honest. But I’m learning new things. And most importantly, it was fun.

And those are all of my thoughts on the project. Have fun, stay safe, and don’t forget to give Leo a hug!

- Nox