Black Lotus Motel
Patch v1.25
Patch v1.24
- Green shader fix
- Password spillout fix
- Camera interrupt fix
Patch v1.23
- Level 3 unlock notification fix
Patch v1.22
- Platform map synchronization
- Note updates
Patch v1.21
- Item pickup fix
Patch v1.2
- FOV balance
- Minor localization fixes
Patch 1.1
- Numpad support for input puzzles :)
- Audio level fixes on the first launch
- Graffiti challenge names added to Motel walls
- Co-op and photosensitive warning on start-up
BEAT THE GAME. PUT YOUR NAME ON THE MOTEL.
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Hello, playtester!
Thanks for joining me in this fun ride that has been developing the Black Lotus Motel. I have met incredible people from around the world coming to the Discord and sharing their experiences.
This is the final stage of the game's active development and wanted to share it again with you by putting up a challenge: EVERY DUO BEATING THE GAME AND SHARING THEIR WIN SCREENS BEFORE APRIL 30TH, 2022 ON DISCORD WILL BE TAGGED ON THE MOTEL WALLS.
Grab your friend and escape from the Motel together to become legends.
SHARE THEM WIN SCREENS HERE --> Discord
ALL SHARED TAGS WILL BE GRAFFITIED INTO THE MOTEL WALLS UPON RELEASE.
Black Lotus Motel Playtest
SPANISH
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Hola, jugadores!
Gracias por compartir el desarrollo de Black Lotus Motel conmigo. Tuve el agrado de conectarme con gente muy copada de distintos países para ayudarme a mejorar el juego y ha sido una muy linda experiencia.
El juego está pronto a publicarse y quiero compartir nuevamente con ustedes esta etapa de pre-lanzamiento para desafiarlos a un reto: TODOS LOS DUOS QUE GANEN EL JUEGO Y COMPARTAN SU CAPTURA DE VICTORIA EN EL DISCORD ANTES DEL 30 DE ABRIL DE 2022 SERÁN INCLUÍDOS EN LOS GRAFFITTIS DEL EXTERIOR DEL MOTEL.
Dile ahora a tu amigo y escapen del Motel juntos para convertirse en leyendas.
COMPARTAN SU CAPTURA AQUÍ --> DISCORD
TODOS LOS TAGS DE LOS JUGADORES QUE LO HAYAN GANADO SERÁN GRAFITEADOS EN LA BUILD DE RELEASE.
Para jugar, ve al link que figura debajo y haz click en el botón "Request Access", tendrás acceso al juego poco tiempo después.
Black Lotus Motel Playtest
Enter the credits
IVO
Gunner
bron99
Rami Ismail
aventura
Lukks
GnZ
Kiss_Of_Kill
Maurus
Rodri
Birro
ma60
Borza
ray nexus
manuSapag
AFAK
T3ri0k
Gr33nAppl3
Jase
RoyalG
JakeAM
Knox
Jopo
Nicomagi
Harriman
Pola
Vodka
ben
john
Leon
soma
Momo
hannez
TheSheriff
BetaTesteando
Linar
Castmortas
Evy
StrikerAH
Gazza
This is a time-limited event. It will end once the game is ready for its official release.
If you beat the game, show me your win screen on the Discord and you'll both be added. See you there!
Note: If you already shared your Win Screen and don't find yourself on the list, reach out to me on Discord!
Behind the scenes
You're welcome to the Motel's backstage! The house where I grew up most part of my childhood (my parent's house). How so? Well yes, the Motel is a 3D representation of that house where I've played so many games with friends and family all these years. So yeah! You and a friend are literally coming over to my place and trying to escape. And I won't make it easy! muahahaha... ahem... Good times!
WHY BLACK LOTUS? Well, if you haven't played Magic The Gathering, this might be a new name for you, but if you did you know this might be the most iconic card in the game so the Motel now carries one of my fondest memories of childhood until today (which I still love to play). Back in the day, Arena didn't exist so it was all about gathering with friends and twisting cards.
I wanted to tell you this story that's not too long but if you liked the game it might be worth the read! I'll try to highlight some bits of the development process for an in-depth story of the game that I think you'll like knowing. And if you think I missed anything you'd like to know about, drop it in the comments or bring it to the game DISCORD!
So, how did all this happen anyway?
Let's start with MACABRA, the "Distilleries" brand found throughout the Motel hinting for a brand that doesn't fully explain itself but is all over the place.
Originally, before the game became what it did, the Macabra clan was intended to be an evil sect of skull-masked people turned into the evilest version of themselves by Walter Macabra, a scientist, a social outcast, that turned back on humanity for good, to pursue his darkest dreams. Which are? Well, he's $&#@! up so that's another story... but he definitely has something to do with this whole experiment.
So, before the Motel was filled up with cooperative puzzles, you embodied Elvis (the green guy with the leopard's thong). He had an accident near the Black Lotus Motel and woke up without Betty, his girl, which was missing! The quest presented the player in front of the Motel with your car turned over. You can play through a bit of that game context in this mini-game, which at that point was needed to become part of the clan to dig deeper into the Mystery that abduced your girl.
Dance Hero
When I decided to clear this environment from NPC's and a third-person single-player approach, I was first seduced by the idea of bringing some friends together in a multiplayer game session.
In a pandemic context, the most suitable resource was networking, so a new development journey began...
Also, you might be wondering? And how might that humanoid giraffe fit into all this madness? Well, I always had plans for that character as a friendly element to the current setting. At that moment, he was a patrol quest, in which you needed to follow him to a door he would unlock for you. I managed to keep him in the game by giving players a chance to be saviors apart from heroes. That and oh... you might wanna collect a token inside his cage!
So, the concept....
Among Us was booming at that stage of the pandemic and I was pretty inspired and motivated by that kind of design that brought so many people together in such an engaging experience. So I thought it could be a cool starting point to plan out a game flow. We Were Here was also a great inspiration for the setting. So at first, I got really fond of the idea of giving a team of players a list of tasks to do in some given context.
With that said, there were some months where I considered the game to be for 6 players each starting in a room and presenting a rule that made the actual game. At first, one would be a captor and the rest would be captives. The captor would prevent captives from making progress and the captives would need to unlock the different challenges presented within the Motel without being caught. If all got caught, the game was over for them, but if there was at least one free captive, the rest could be released and continue playing until all requested tasks were completed to "escape".
At the time, none of the challenges within the Motel were designed since the previous approach was mainly storytelling. It suddenly was just a sandbox with a first-person controller and me jumping all over the place blurbing new ideas. So one clever decision for the game design was to narrow player capacity to 2 players and focus on puzzle design. BECAUSE It turned out that online multiplayer is DOUBLE design work. One part logic, one part networking. And that could have gotten even larger with more than 2 players since every playtest not only focuses on the puzzle working right but also making sure both players see the same thing at all times. Network design is invisible for players, but it is design by itself, since you need to both balance synchronization loads to avoid disconnections.
SOME ART & GRAPHIC DESIGN CONTEXT
Eli, my girlfriend is a graphic designer so the Macabra logo was put together by her and there it is, now Walter can cover his suspicious experiments behind a beverage. Should we be drinkin' dis?
Bater133, one of my best friends is an artist. That's how the Lotus flower seen in the Motel sign came to life and the 3 jigsaw puzzles needed to unlock the Underground. Also, the art is seen in the side entrance of the Motel and all the street art is seen inside the pool.
All of the puzzle and asset design is 100% custom-made by me except for the vegetation which is an asset package I liked and customized the textures to blend into the game's aesthetic.
A BIT ABOUT SOUND DESIGN
This one has been a rewarding challenge. I firstly started with different Audio Mixers that I produced in Ableton Live and faded in triggered by the different puzzles to give shape to a progressive soundtrack and then used a separate music audio track that looped in the underground. I liked that for some time but I felt it a bit plane from an experience standpoint.
Later on, I would go back to the Ableton project and re-work the soundtrack to have 20 different clips from a same soundtrack that now reacts to different game states to drive tension up or downwards depending on which puzzle the plaeyers are in.
Liked it? If you wanna check out some more of My music.
A bit more about sound... Did you notice the ambients? Like birds and crickets chirping. Well, that's been recorded on-site as well, so you can feel close to what's really like to be there. I mean, although you're racing against time, I still wanted the place to feel good to experience and walkthrough.
Thanks for reading some fun facts about the Motel. Hope it gave a deeper perspective of all the effort put into the game. I AM A SOLO DEVELOPER, so hope you can forgive a bug here and there.
If you're reading this while the Beta is still open, don't miss the chance to appear in the game's credits. Go check the other community announcements! ;) Good luck!