Welcome!

Welcome to the beginning of the Apartment 20 game development blog! Our team, Rookery Studios, will be posting here every (time period) with explanations of our development process.

Apartment 20 is a narrative-focused 3D platformer where players will take on the role of Ace Fletcher, a curious child detective, to learn about and help the deceased residents of Apartment 20 to complete their final wishes. Players will do this by exploring detailed environments and speaking with the residents directly.

Why are we making this game?

Apartment 20 grew into what it is currently because our team has found connections through sharing individual interests, ideas, and skills. We are making Apartment 20 not just as a development team, but also as individuals looking to produce our own portfolio-ready work.

Many integral parts of Apartment 20 came about because one or two team members had specific skill development/portfolio/gameplay interests, such as: a branching narrative, at least one modelled character, the obvious Sherlock inspiration, and specific mechanics.

As a result of growing to 15 team members and fleshing out our ideas, the core gameplay and overall scope of Apartment 20 changed quite a lot at the start of development. Initially, the game was pitched with a total of 20 small rooms, hence the name. This soon was condensed down to six well-developed rooms, allowing for more depth and care to be given to each character and space.

Throughout development, the characters that call these rooms home have grown in complexity and they all have pieces of the team within them, their rooms, and their dialogue. Our team has put together something that we can be proud of and enjoy, both the product and the development process.

That being said, development must continue! We have one semester remaining before ‘release’ and we will be updating our social media and this site as we progress. We will have more blog posts coming every _ about more specific topics, as well as gallery updates as we continue to work.

Matthew B, Apartment 20 Product Owner