Inspiration## Inspiration
We wanted to make a game where the NPCs actually have their own lives and aren't just standing around waiting for the player to interact with them. The idea was a town where everyone has their own relationships, memories, routines, and different versions of what they believe is happening. Something you say to one person could eventually affect someone else or change what happens in the town without you even realizing it.
With the theme being Visibility, we liked the idea that just because you can see something doesn't mean you understand what's actually going on. And sometimes what you can't see is more important.
We also wanted the town to feel normal at first, but slowly become more unsettling the longer you're there.
What we wanted to build
Our original goal was a multiplayer mystery/escape game set in a town that feels alive. Players would interact with NPCs, uncover secrets, influence relationships, and find different ways to escape. The NPCs would make their own decisions and react to things happening around them, so the same choices wouldn't necessarily lead to the same outcome every time.
We wanted players to feel like the town was continuing to exist and change even when they weren't directly involved.
What we actually achieved
We ended up with a very early single-player version of the game. We have a town, NPCs with some autonomous behaviors and interactions, environmental changes, and different escape possibilities. Some of the individual systems work, but the actual gameplay is pretty broken and doesn't really come close to what we originally wanted players to experience.
How we built it
We built the game in Roblox Studio using Luau and AI-assisted development. We already had experience with Lua/Luau, so we weren't starting completely from scratch.
What we weren't prepared for was how complicated Roblox Studio itself would be. Working with assets, getting things positioned correctly, connecting interactions, and trying to make everything work together took significantly more time than we expected.
We originally planned on multiplayer, but realized quickly that we needed to cut that and focus on getting something working for a single player. Even after narrowing the scope, we were still trying to build way more than we realistically had time for.
Challenges and what we learned
We worked from the beginning of the hackathon until almost closing, with only about an hour of sleep. Pretty much nonstop development and somehow we still barely touched the surface of what we planned.
