Inspiration and Postmortem

What I Wanted to Accomplish

I was inspired largely by this segment of the game and interactive animation KIDS.

It's charming, and a little spooky, with the way the characters move around the screen. I also really like how the little characters all bunch and clump together, parting like water before converging behind the character again.  This is what inspired the movement of my Ghost Hunting toy - I wanted the ghosts to flee from the player as they got closer - but eventually return to their original spots, or 'haunts'. 

With this in mind, I decided to make a take on ghost detection using a 'dowsing rod' style apparatus. Since dowsing rods are intended to work with vibrations, it seemed to fit the synth, adding a little bit of world-building to this tiny toy.  This is why I decided to use a continuous tone, overlaid with some spooky audio, as the basis for this toy - something easy to manipulate various parameters with depending on the player characters' surroundings. 

Where I Succeeded

I did make a more complicated technical demo this time using the PixlPa Synth for Unity. The ghosts have various effects on the audio, as if the sensor the player character is holding is detecting them as they move around. The more ghosts that are present, the more intense the modulation becomes (aside from some much more powerful ghosts that dampen the audio altogether!). The player is also able to tune their dousing device, allowing them to make more specific tones between deciding how to push the ghosts around the screen, and making tweaks to the synth as they go. 

I also managed to make the 2D sprites work well without worrying about depth sorting - this is because they all exist in a 3D space, as a child of different capsule colliders. This lets the characters obscure each other naturally as they are pushed around the scene!

I do highly enjoy the hand drawn style, and it suited the little characters well - especially for the little bouncy cut out animation the player has as they walk. This is a direction I would continue to pursue in the future. 

Where I Can Improve

The player controller doesn't feel great at times. It can feel a bit floaty, and the impacts it has with the walls and other characters sometimes seems a bit too bouncy depending on the player's velocity. 

Additionally, I would like to be able to push the synth even further in the future by making more ghostly noises. One inspiration I had in mind that I would like to drift closer towards in the future is the audio of Ghost Duet by Louie Zhong. Having more personality and character to each of the ghosts, and basing the pitch on a 'chorus' of ghosts rather than place on the screen would suit this toy much better. 

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A video of the toy can be seen here!