Steam Community :: Glasshouse

Glasshouse

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos News Guides Reviews

Glasshouse

0 in Group Chat

Feudalpunk Turn-Based-CRPG set in a lockdown apartment block at the dawn of a world war. Investigate the mysterious triple murder next door, fight the Political Conspiracy, and make terrible choices before the flatmates do it for you!

Visit the Store Page

Most popular community and official content for the past week. (?)

[DEV-BLOG #8] Designing the perfect lockdown-story setting

Feb 23

Hello flatmates,

today we bring you an update on the progress of the main setting of Glasshouse, Dormitory 73B — and perhaps also a small reflection on the architectural philosophy behind it.

The compromise of privacy, inside and outside the lockdown.

There isn’t a single member of FLAT28 who hasn’t lived outside of a condominium complex. Our entire lives, up until now, have always revolved around waiting for a crowded elevator that would never arrive, and that’s exactly where we started: war in private spaces, coexistence in shared spaces.

GROUND FLOOR [GF]

After a long day of work, you enter the lobby, and the number of piled-up trash is only surpassed by the chaotic tangle of notes plastered on the walls. "This place is not a dump / Taps will stop running water from 08:00 to 18:00 / The elevator is broken, call the technician."

The Dormitory 73B is the perfect embodiment of this scenario, amplified beyond measure by the lockdown conditions that the residents of the Lundonstoch fiefdom have endured for over 57 days. At first glance, the ground floor of this condominium is cold and unwelcoming. The pale color of the concrete is almost blinding, and the dense network of pipes weaves its way into private properties, forming a noose around the necks of those who live there.

During the early 1900s, the Grand Council of Lundonstoch promoted a collectivization effort aimed at redeveloping old private factories into condominium complexes. Here, the industrial violently clashes with the residential — as if to remind us that we are all cogs in the great machine.

There are no windows; they are not functional.

SECOND FLOOR [2F]

Each landing hosts two apartments, typically two-room units. The walls prefer to extend in height rather than width. The warm morning light filtering through the glass panels has turned this floor into a small living room where neighbors gather for tea before heading to work.

The goal was to banish the gray specter of the factory with furniture, rugs, and quilts. Although the management of shared spaces fell to the head-tenants, it had become common practice. In the Lundonstoch fiefdom, every dormitory was a micro-society within society itself.

The rules were established by the head-tenant in charge through the "Condominium Constitution" and could only be challenged by the arm of the fiefdom, the vassals of the Damage Control Brigade (DCB), the authority.

TECHNOLOGY

For over 300 years, Lundonstoch relied on Peat Power Plants, an organic material formed from the partial decomposition of vegetation in waterlogged, acidic environments like marshes and moors.

When a study in the 1980s revealed that the average life expectancy had dropped to 65 years and that infertility had reached 70% of the population, the Grand Feudal Council decided to implement a new, more efficient and less harmful system: coal.

With the support of Devs from the fiefdom of Ørstedia, Gravity Furnaces were quickly designed and distributed to all dormitories, leading to the temporary closure of all underground energy networks (Old Lundonstoch Canals) due to obsolescence.

This energy decentralization operation effectively gave each dormitory a cumbersome heart, a maintenance room accessible only to the fiefdom’s technical operators. No tenant had access to it, not even the head-tenant.

The one adapted in Glasshouse, as you can see, is an inductive Narrative Design that starts from the micro to better understand the macro. Private property is nothing more than a small window into the vast society of The World of Glass.

We are a small team, we couldn’t afford to create an open world, so we rolled up our sleeves and drew from what we know best: thin air, crumbling corridors, and small rooms/spaces overflowing with stories. When COVID-19 forced us into our condominiums for months, it wasn’t a huge tragedy — we already had everything we needed, our small self-governed ecosystem.

Thank you all, see you next month!

Giacomo Montagnoli, Creative Director
FLAT28 Collective

Glasshouse

🟣 GLASSHOUSE - Ask me Anything

If the FAQ was not enough, here you can ask the devs anything. You can also be morally ambiguous.

Mr.Monta

Feb 1 @ 8:14am

General Discussions

Glasshouse is a guest on the Human Can Opener podcast

Feb 16

Hello flatmates,

A few weeks ago, I took part in an episode of Human Can Opener, the go-to podcast for Disco Elysium and "disco-likes", hosted by the YouTuber The 41st Precinct. It was an extremely stimulating conversation -- around three and a half hours of art, inspirations, politics, and game design.

If you're interested in a more private and relaxed look at the conception of Glasshouse, you can check out episode 2x05 below.

Available on Spotify > Click here[open.spotify.com]
Available on Apple Podcast > Click here[podcasts.apple.com]

As always, thank you for your precious attention. See you at the end of the month with the next devblog.

Giacomo Montagnoli, Creative Director
FLAT28 Collective

Glasshouse

[DEV-BLOG #7] Screenplay and Arcweave implementation

Jan 19

Hello flatmates,

today the sky in Milan is clear, suspended in a greyish haze that timidly envelops our colorful souls. David Lynch has passed away, and I'm sitting in front of my creaky desk, in a 57-square-meter apartment, trying to conceptualize the words of the first Glasshouse update of 2025. It’s a good day to write.

Today we talk about the progress made on the Glasshouse script, narrative methodologies, and artistic innocence.

PROLOGUE & ACT 1

87 pages, 24,831 black words printed on a pale 27-inch screen. Last December, both the Prologue and Act 1 of Glasshouse were officially completed and revised. Glasshouse’s script is extremely complex, a chimera whose shape is even elusive to us.

In 2021, the World of Glass was only the concept of a blog consisting of front pages of newspapers from all the feudal republics of the world. The idea was to tell the disintegration of the foundations of civil society under the shadow of a war-torn storm.

If Hobbes spoke of the state as a Leviathan necessary to prevent chaos through the centralization of powers, with Glasshouse, I wanted to propose a short circuit, a reflection on the possible return to decentralization, but this time with a civilization and a people strengthened by the lessons learned during the era of globalization. What would happen to our society if liberalism were excluded for over 200 years from the equation of a capitalist economic system?

If it weren’t for Authoritarian or Oligarchic Capitalism, what could a new alternative be, perhaps decentralized and ultra-democratic?

When the World of Glass became Glasshouse in 2022, the wars of our planet forced us to think about the geopolitical and social setup of tomorrow. Today the situation is more fragile than yesterday, the questions have multiplied like mushrooms, and Glasshouse, on the other hand, needs to feed on contemporaneity to offer a reflection in line with the times.

The plausibility of a new world requires time, love, and constant doubt. Finally, after complete rewrites and violent proofreading, we made it. When I started to suffer for the characters I killed, that’s when I realized it was all real, and that I had to and could finally move forward.

IMPLEMENTATION OF ARCWEAVE

In 2023, following the departure of our former Lead Programmer and the arrival of the current one, Samuele, we made the decision to completely rewrite the dialogue management system.

After carefully exploring Twine and Articy Draft, in the end, we decided to form a partnership with Arcweave.

With the introduction of Arcweave, we took the time to completely restart from scratch. If dialogues were previously managed entirely through code, now implementation happens through a node-based practical system.

Through Play Mode, we can also preview the newly added dialogues as if they were a sort of graphic novel. It may seem like a small feature, but it greatly helps us understand the effectiveness of narrative beats.

Arcweave’s introduction was certainly a productive move that slowed us down, but we are sure it’s also a crucial investment that will save us time in the future, both for proofreading and for the fast implementation of dialogues and localizations through APIs.

BEATCHART AND WIREFRAME

The method used to outline the events of Glasshouse is called Save The Cat and was developed by Blake Snyder. For those unfamiliar, this method, unlike the classic board with post-its forming the three acts, offers a rigid 15 "beat" narrative structure that deconstructs the act structure itself and helps build a well-balanced one.

The 15 beats are as follows:
1) Opening Image
2) Theme Stated
3) Setup
4) Catalyst
5) Debate
6) Break Into Act Two
7) B Story
8) Fun and Games
9) Midpoint
10) Bad Guys Close In
11) All Is Lost
12) Dark Night of the Soul
13) Break Into Act Three
14) Finale
15) Final Image

Once we had the 15 beats of Glasshouse, the derived High Concept allowed me to organize a Wireframe that expanded these beats into a dense web of events/quests.

As mentioned in several places, I am not a video game writer, I am a filmmaker, and adapting this writing system to a video game context has been a great challenge. It’s a bet that took a lot of time, and only now is it starting to show the benefits of the effort.

When Glasshouse is in your hands, we hope you will appreciate our experiments.

The sky of Milan is still suspended between light and darkness, and the windows of the concrete monoliths are beginning to emit heat. That’s all for today, I hope you found this Behind The Writing interesting.

Thanks to all of you, but especially thanks to you, Lynch. All in all, it’s been a good day.
See you soon!

Giacomo Montagnoli, Creative Director
FLAT28 Collective

Glasshouse

Bug nella demo?

Ciao, per qualche motivo non riesco ad andare avanti nella demo, ho cliccato su ogni singolo oggetto mille volte ma ho solo 10 ingranaggi e ne servono 20 per aprire la paratia, son cieco io o è buggato? Ho usato l'ascia dove me la faceva usare, fatto il multi tool ma nada....

Ganon3force

Nov 25, 2024 @ 10:20am

General Discussions

game stretched out to my 21:9 display, please add proper 21:9 support?

so that happened...

Napoleonic S

Feb 29, 2024 @ 1:09pm

General Discussions

Concept Demo gameplay with feedback

Here is the gameplay of the concept demo with some feedback for the devs: -Needs graphical options (ex: fullscreen,vsync,textures,lighting,shadows,etc), -Have a button to highlight the interactable objects,the puzzle with hexagons explain with image/video to be easier for player to understand how it works, -Add more 3 more slots on the inventory like that players can pick more things immediately, -If possible add more slots on the stash, -If possible to add quest log on top right/left corner like that pla...

rafaaa

Feb 26, 2024 @ 8:36am

General Discussions

The Demo is really cool!

I can't wait for the release! This project has a lot of potential, keep going like this guys!

Lloyd

Jan 19 @ 5:57am

General Discussions

See More Content

No more content. So sad.

You can help: share a screenshot, make a video, or start a new discussion!

Returning to where you were last on this page...

Cancel