Hi everyone! I want to share how my psychological horror game Shadow People came together, and keep this thread updated as I patch it based on player feedback.
THE IDEA
I wanted a horror game where nothing happens at first. You live alone in a two-story house and follow a normal routine: wake up, make coffee, watch the news, go to work, come home, lock the doors, turn off the lights, go to bed. The horror comes from breaking that routine little by little: a noise upstairs, a door you didn't open, a light you're sure you turned off. And the TV news keeps talking about a man in a hat seen outside people's windows at night.
WHAT I BUILT
- The whole house as a playable space: every door opens, every light switch works, and you can lock doors with a key
- A day/night routine system with objectives, so the player always knows what "normal" looks like before it goes wrong
- The Hatman: a dark silhouette that appears in corners, windows and at the edge of your vision, tuned so it blends into the shadows instead of looking like a sticker
- An opening scene set the morning after, with an answering machine message, to set the mood before Day 1
- A final ritual with an old spiritualist where you can't move, only look around
- Full English and Brazilian Portuguese support, plus a settings menu with a controls tab
WHAT I LEARNED
- Pacing is everything. My first version had three calm days before anything strange happened, and testers got bored, so I cut it down to one.
- Small sounds are scarier than big ones. A chair scraping or a door creaking upstairs did more than any jumpscare.
- Lighting at night is hard: auto-exposure was blowing out the lights and light was leaking through walls, so I spent a lot of time tuning shadows and darkness.
HOW IT WAS MADE
Solo project in Unity. I designed the story, events and pacing and tested everything myself. I used AI tools to help with part of the code, models, textures and sounds, and directed and adjusted all of it.
WHAT'S NEXT
The game is out now (about 30-40 minutes, free). I'll use this thread to post fixes and improvements based on what players report, so any feedback is really welcome: was it scary, was the pacing too slow, did anything break?
Game page: https://nancreator.itch.io/shadow-people
