Jan 18 - 24:

On Jan 18th, for our first game jam together as a team, we created an initial demo for the game where the player can interact with a stain to "clean" it away, causing the stain to reappear elsewhere. For this demo we created some 3D assets for the environment, and later created a title banner for the game.

On Jan 19th we met to further brainstorm ideas for the game. We discussed possible different genres for the game (puzzler, narrative, and survival horror), different mechanics, and possible endings/goals for the player.

On Jan 21st we met again to finalize details for our pitch presentation that would take place the following day. After much brainstorming we settled on a few changes:

- The game will now be a survival horror game.

- There will be a sanity mechanic, where looking at faces directly would cause the player to "lose" sanity. Losing sanity will increasingly add a vision vignette/blur effect onto the screen. The goal of the game will now be to avoid the stains while carrying out tasks around the house (ex: do dishes, etc). Losing too much sanity would cause the player to lose the game.

- Lost sanity cannot be regained.

- The player can use items to help with tasks and to avoid stains, such as by cleaning stains or destroy surfaces with stains on them.

- The game would be mid-low poly.

- The game will have minimal UI. A list of tasks for the players to do will be shown on a note or clipboard in-game.

On Jan 22nd we presented our game idea to industry professionals, our professors, and our peers. Our aesthetic and art style decisions were well received, but there were concerns regarding how we would build up the horror, as our current mechanic of having the stains pop up which force the player to look away or take damage seemed too obvious. We were advised to lean more into the pareidolia aspect (have players potentially seek out stains to try and determine if there is a face or not), have the environment change subtly to create a sense of danger,  make the face stains more ingrained into the environment, and have progression in destruction (from mundane tasks like cleaning to destroying objects). We were also warned not to empower the player too much with being able to remove stains, as that would also take away from the horror.

On Jan 23rd we met again to go over our creative brief and what needed to be changed based on the feedback we received. Our current changes are:

- Players can no longer remove or clean stains. Stains will instead move periodically to new locations, so the player can complete tasks in areas previously occupied by a stain.

- Face stains will build over time. They will appear as regular stains, and gradually become more face like, instead of appearing directly as a face.