In this post I'll be discussing the making of Control Room Alpha, and the decisions that I made throughout development. If you haven't already, then I strongly suggest you play through the game before reading.

CRA was pretty small in scope from the start - I gave myself about a week to finish it. This meant that the game I had visioned and laid out would be finished with no scrapped features, scope creep or anything like that. The main premise was introducing the player to 2 different environments - a cozy operating room and a bleak cave with big ass spiders. After that it was just breaking the barrier between the two, making the player feel vulnerable and hopefully scared. (except players who don't have a fear of spiders :P)

I tried making the operating room as cozy as possible, while still making it feel old & unmanaged - a warm light, radio, & other small decorations. The only reason that the friendly supervisor Konstantin exists is to give the player some sort of companionship, which can later be taken away. Here I can thank my friend Sidro for the voice lines. It was super fun to finally record lines for a game, and is something I'll consider for future games.

As for the cave, there's not much to it except I went the extra mile of showing and not telling. I had planned from the very start that the player would completely exit the operating room into the cave, so it was immensely important that the player was actually scared when doing so. Having Konstantin tell you there's some scary stuff outside wouldn't really cut it. I think that you can't really get far with horror of the unknown in a game, when you haven't shown the player as a developer that you are capable of actually creating a believable threat. A dark corner in a video game is something anyone can do, but having a thing actually lurk there takes a whole new level of skill.

When the player enters the cave and they don't see anything, they know that every dark corner might have a critter waiting to jump at them. The reason I didn't jumpscare the player near the pit is because the tension was pretty high anyway, and it would probably be the place you expect the jumpscare. That's why I left it at the operating room instead. The only thing I dislike about choosing spiders as the main antagonist is that a lot of people find them cute. I'm the type of person that wishes they wouldn't exist, so of course I had a dozen of them pour out of the pit. The cool thing about spiders is they can be literally anywhere, so when the player finally enters the cave, they are essentially surrounded from all sides.

Once the final task is completed, the player enters the operating room before a weird sphere emerges. I wish I could write an entire paragraph of lore surrounding the sphere, but really it's just a random object to have the player look toward the direction of the jumpscare. I do think it's important to mention that there is lore in the game. Players that frequent my games (huge thanks to all of you <3) might have noticed that it's the same foundation as in Carbon Steel & previous games. The date on the calendar might also be worth noting :).

And I think that's it for Control Room Alpha. Thanks for reading, and if you have any questions, feel free to leave them below or at mikeklubnika@gmail.com.

-Mike