Five Cells: what is built, and what cannot hurt you yet

Five Cells is announced. The announce is thirty seconds long and says almost nothing on purpose — a name, a genre, and that development has started. Watch it here.

This post is the part that does not fit in thirty seconds: what is actually built.

The supervisor's cage at night, with the five hall-door lamps above the monitor bank

Five Cells is a first-person horror game. You are nineteen, two months behind on rent, and the landlord has given you until Friday. An ad in the back of the paper: night picker, Five Cells Warehouse, cash every night, more if you work the back, must follow the rules on the doors. Ask for Ray.

Forty years ago the building was a research annex, and the five halls at the back were five holding cells. A storage company bought it at auction and put pallet racking in everything, including the cells.

What is built

The story is locked. The cast is locked. The middle of the game is built and tested, and the beginning is built.

The flat — built, dressed and tested. 396 nodes, 47 checks.
The warehouse — built, dressed and tested. The front building, the gate hall, the five halls, all five floor plans.
The loop — built. Take a row off the board, pick it, pack it, ship it, bank what you earned before you carry it home. Night clock, van, cards, break room, food.
The front end — built. Title, pause, options, a gamma slider with a calibration strip, and a save between nights.
The opening — built through to the tenth beat: wake, knocks, notice, voicemail, ad, call, torch, door, lobby, and Ray's eleven lines.
The back orders — half built. Ten cell rows a night at $100, card-gated, cartons on the cells' own racking.

A hall door, with its rule card framed on the block beside it

Nothing in the game can hurt you yet

That is the honest state of it, and that one gap is holding up everything else.

The rule for being caught is settled and tested on paper. Nothing can trigger it. You can walk into any of the five halls tonight, read the rule on the door, break it, and the game will not do a single thing about it.

That is what the next stretch of work is, and it is what this devlog is going to be about.

What is not true yet

The part most devlogs leave out. All of this is missing, today:

The five subjects — not built. They exist as descriptions in a document. No behaviour, no art.
The Wanderer — not built. Still undecided whether it is a janitor or a machine.
Being caught — the rule is written and tested, but nothing in the game can trigger it.
Friday morning — not built. The week currently ends on a line of menu text.
Voices — 0 of 28 lines recorded. Every spoken line in the game is a silent timer with a subtitle under it, including all eleven of Ray's.

What is next

The gate hall, and the five doors with their rule cards. Greybox where it is still greybox.

New progress every week, here and on YouTube.

— Hector, Wickhouse Games