If something’s bothering people’s mind, it’s just a matter of time till there’s a game about it. Fake news have been trending for a while, and resulted, among other things, in HEADLINER: a short adventure game about media bias and how it affects the society, families and careers. The Seattle-based developer Unbound Creations has worked with teams up to 6 people on their previous titles, but HEADLINER has mostly been just Jakub Kasztalski.
However, as prototyping went on and Jakub observed what was happening around the world, the design shifted towards the narrative and media bias. “Here’s an article I wrote that goes into more details of how I mined Facebook and Google data to stay relevant to today’s issues”, he shares.
Jakub observed what was happening around the world, the design shifted towards the narrative and media bias.
Try Before You Decide
“I started with free/public domain 3rd party assets and simple scenes built in Blender to nail down the look/feel/setting”, the developer recalls. “I went through 2-3 iterations before arriving at the final look. Overall, that wasted a lot of time, but not being an artist myself, it helped me figure out what “felt right” and what I wanted to really communicate. I’m very “try before you decide” when it comes to visuals”.
“I settled on Vector Art as I realized it’s the one style I could actually do myself. I researched a lot of references, the biggest being the awesome Lyft commercial.”
“I researched a lot of references, the biggest being the awesome Lyft commercial.”
The street scene remained a 3rd party pixel artwork, but Jakub had upscaled it and did a lot of post-processing. He also used the baseline sprites to create new variations, such as police or rioters.
The art Jakub decided on as something he could do.
Music was also public domain/creative commons, but again the developer spent a lot of time researching: “I’d just play different tracks in the background while coding and testing, until I found ones that felt right”.
Someone Might Get Offended
When asked how not to offend anyone with a game on a touchy subject, Jakub confesses: “Honestly, I just follow my gut feeling. I’ll admit I used to be really socially awkward when I was younger (as many geeks are), but through great friends and few years of freelancing I learned where the social boundaries lie. I just apply the same skills to my work instinctively I suppose”.
“I also listen to the feedback I get. For example, many testers asked me why your spouse was always of opposite gender - why you couldn’t have same-sex marriages in the game? And I realized there really isn’t a good reason not to, so I added that”.
“Why can’t you have same-sex marriages in the game? And I realized there really isn’t a good reason not to, so I added that”.
“There are some ideas I am trying to communicate in the game so it is inevitable that someone might get offended. And honestly if they do - well, that’s just what I stand for I guess. You can’t please everyone”.
Learn From Others'(and His Own) Mistakes
Learning from others’ experiences is what Jakub fully uses in his dev practice. Being inspired by titles like Papers, Please and Westport Independent, he read through Steam and press reviews. “I really tried to find what worked and what didn’t, building on the formula instead of simply copying”, he explains. “For example, in Papers, at the end of the day you might get a white text on black screen telling you your wife died. Well, that’s not very engaging. That’s why I wanted the whole street and home section - show, don’t tell. Make the player care about the world he’s building (or destroying).
“Show, don’t tell. Make the player care about the world he’s building (or destroying)”.
“There are many pitfalls I’ve learned and still need to learn. Brevity is very important I realized, as most gamers don’t want to be reading a book while playing (purely text-games and interactive fiction aside). Secondly, players want to really feel the impact of their actions, even if it may feel like over-explaining at times (I tend to be overly subtle). Lastly, fleshing out the world may seem wasteful, but it can do a lot for immersion - all my games have been praised for creating a believable sense of space (even if you only see a fraction of all the research and backstory I wrote)”. Jakub hints there’s a ton more lessons he could come up with, “but that’s probably a whole different topic in an of itself”
Looking back, Jakub says he’s pretty happy with how things went. “All the significant improvements I would have liked to add at this point would have taken several months and considerable investment. However, for various reasons, I did not want to go down that route, instead preferring to spread the additional effort and lessons learned over future episodes and new games”. If he still had to pick one area to improve, it would be artwork: “it was a big learning experience for me and I think it shows”.
Meanwhile, a fresh wave of fake news is coming up. “I’ve got a few ideas brewing in my head right now, but two of the major changes would be a bit randomized newspaper system for more engaging replays, and more personal interactions with various characters you meet”, Jakub shares. You can also join the world domination through news planning through the game’s official Discord, and keep track of updates on Twitter.
Raiders of the Lost Island is a local co-op party game for up to 4 people. Well, technically it is a semi-cooperative one, as you will soon find out. Alexandru Simion, the developer behind this title, has been in the industry for almost 20 years. Even though his dayjob as a lead gameplay programmer is to make AAA games shine, he never lost his passion for making indie games and expressing his creativity through such projects in his free time. Raiders of the Lost Island has won the “Best game of the show” and “Best design” awards at the Dev.Play convention in Bucharest, Romania, and will be showcased at Casual Connect in London in 2018.
IT ALL STARTED THAT NIGHT
“I teamed up with three friends of mine and we stepped in the tech pub where Bucharest Global Game Jam 2017 was taking place.”
It was a cold winter evening when I teamed up with three friends of mine and we stepped in the tech pub where Bucharest Global Game Jam 2017 was taking place. We were prepared and ready to survive the long weekend. The jam’s theme was “waves” and, as it always happens to me at such events, I was set to come up with a game that would not only be fun to make, but could give us many hours of fun playing it long after, with friends and family.
I didn’t have many board games when I was young and I can say I developed a passion for them quite recently. But one thing that board games have been doing so well for a long time is bringing people together, creating special chemistry between them. It doesn’t really matter if they’re happily working together towards a common goal, or if one betrays, or if they’re all at each other’s throats, but I’ve been really fascinated by this social interaction and I think video games have many lessons to learn from here.
So, drawing inspiration from board games like Forbidden Island and Small World, I managed to sell these ideas to my friends and convince them this was what we must do to worth the effort of the next 48 sleepless hours. We bounced a few ideas, and the game shaped pretty quickly this time.
Let me tell you what it is all about.
“One thing that board games have been doing so well for a long time is bringing people together.”
You and three other buddy adventurers of yours just found the Lost Island and you’re not there on a vacation. No, you’re gonna get filthy rich, because the island is full of silver and gold coins, and the most precious diamonds. You just have to grab them. But there’s a catch! You know the island is going to sink in about 4 minutes. The waves are already going up and down fast, and soon the water will rise, flooding the whole place. You will all lose, unless… you all work together to build a raft and escape in time. If you manage to survive, the richest raider stands in front, while the others just help them win.
The waves are already going up and down fast, and soon the water will rise, flooding the whole place.
So, everyone wants to collect as much gold and diamonds as possible to win the game, but if they don’t work together and build the raft, they might all lose! The gameplay mechanics are simple enough, but the fun moves to the couch, where the real players are. No one wants to carry sacks and work hard on the boat while others are stuffing their pockets with treasures and can win the whole game. So, if you feel you’re in front of others, you still have to convince them to stop chasing you and put their efforts to some better uses, like building the boat.
If they don’t work together and build the raft, they might all lose!
That was the original idea. But at the end of the Game Jam, after 48 hours of hard work and no playtests, we didn’t really know what we had and if it actually works. We were pretty tired and had been fixing bugs until the last minute. I don’t know if the game made much sense when presented to the other developers who were probably as tired as we were. But we were proud of our baby and still believed we made the right choice.
However, when I got home and gathered the family to play daddy’s endeavor of the last 2 days and 2 nights - in that moment I knew the game really works! It was a blast! Kids reacted exactly as I hoped, gathering gold coins like crazy, trying to push each other in the waters and steal their treasures. I had to calm them down and tell them we can actually survive if we cooperate to build the boat at least once.
THE ROAD AHEAD
As it usually happens to me with game jams, if I feel I came home with something special, I want to finish it. I must finish it! I knew from my experience that this won’t end soon. I was coming from another project, a game for kids on iOS, named Bathtime Toys, which took me almost 2 years to finish in my free time and I was hoping to finalize this one faster.
After a short break I started to work on the game to refactor the code architecture and make development and marketing plans. I was a total noob on the marketing side and still am, but I knew I had to start early this time and learn it.
Unfortunately the original team didn’t stay, as after the game jam people got back to their busy lives. They simply didn’t have time to put into the game any further. It’s hard to come home after 9 hours of making games and push yourself further up until late in the night, making more games. But I am that kind of guy, and I know this game deserves to see the light of day. I hope to catch them back from time to time though, to help me with some feature or making new levels.
According to my plan, I had to get a demo ready as soon as possible, to build a nice website and to make an awesome trailer. With these in hand, I was to register for Steam Greenlight and grow the game’s visibility through this campaign. After that, when the game had a good base of players, I planned to launch an Early Access campaign and finally release it in about 1 year. And so I started working.
GET THAT DIAMOND!
Perhaps the most important addition to the game was the diamond! This was planned from the beginning but we didn’t have time to add it in the Global Game Jam version. To understand what this is about, imagine that one little silver coin scores 1 point, one shiny gold coin scores 3 points, and then you have this magnificent bright white diamond worth 10 points! It was blast! Everyone was chasing to grab it. And when someone had it, everyone else was chasing after them, to steal it. Not many boats were finished during those days.
In fact the diamond was so powerful, that it made players invent new grief mechanics that I never had thought of. If my kids couldn’t get the diamond, they would start jumping off the island’s edges, drowning into the ocean while carrying the sacks needed for the boat, so they would be lost forever and no one was able to escape anymore.
“Kids reacted exactly as I hoped, gathering gold coins like crazy, trying to push each other in the waters and steal their treasures.”
“I’m throwing sacks, if you don’t give me that diamond!” was the warning you hear just before realizing that chances of surviving are dropping down fast.
Some sessions were so intense that they ended up in tears. Once I even had to order real glass diamonds from an online shop as a final solution to calm things down. All this excitement confirmed that I’m on the right track with the game, so I kept going.
MISSING the greenlight TRAIN
Making the trailer was a heavy milestone. I didn’t have proper skills, and it took me almost a whole month to finish it. But it was really fun and it motivates me every time I watch it.
I invited some friends for a playtest, we had some beers, wore some funny hats and I filmed them while they were playing. It was a successful playtest, everyone had a lot of fun and I got some good feedback.
“I invited some friends for a playtest.”
As I said, making the trailer and implementing the most important suggestions took quite some time and while I was pushing hard to get these things done, Steam decided to drop the Greenlight feature. That happened earlier than I expected and I felt pretty upset at the time. It was like missing a train you were running after.
After a while I got over it and felt really happy for my efforts with the trailer. That playtest created some of the game’s biggest fans. In fact we did it again when the demo was ready and I know they can’t wait to return and raid some more in the future.
SHOWING OFF
The marketing side is really tough for me. Building the website, Facebook page, videos on YouTube, preparing images, posting online, answering emails, writing articles - it all takes me more than half of the development time. But I know I can’t get the whole project right without it and I’m still learning what works and what doesn’t.
One of the first lessons I’ve got in online marketing was when someone wanted to “help” me with a Facebook post that would gain thousands of likes. I thought I can spare $30 to see what happens. And I saw it going down the drain. From all those likes, not a single person visited the website, since they were all coming from kids at “like farms”. Well, it was cheap enough for a lesson and I got a story to tell.
The first real challenge was to get to the Dev.Play Eastern Europe Conference which had a partnership with Indie Prize, the sponsor of their Indie Expo contest. The conference is like a smaller GDC organized in Bucharest by RGDA. Being accepted to show my game there, among so many other really good indie titles, was a big thing for me. I put a lot of effort in finishing the demo in time and preparing the advertising prints and everything for the booth.
All the efforts paid off when my wife and I presented the game and saw so many people enjoying it for 2 full days. It was the reassurance I needed, because until then, most of the playtests were conducted within the family, with kids and some friends.
Showcasing the game at Dev.Play was a big deal for the developer.
The extra bonus came when the jury decided to award the game as “The Best Design” and “The Best Game of the Show”. My trailer was played on a huge cinema screen and my friends were the actors. The big prize was a place for my game in Indie Prize London 2018, and I have much to do until then.
The jury decided to award the game as “The Best Design” and “The Best Game of the Show”.
After the success at Dev.Play, the game visibility was boosted quite a lot. I released the Alpha Demo on Itch.io so everyone can try it, and we’ve even been invited to tell about it in a famous Romanian television show.
BACK TO WORK
Passing the Alpha Demo stage puts me back to work and I can’t wait to unleash my creativity and shape the game further. In the next couple of months there will be a few more events, like a talk at Game Anglia conference and some local festivals. But the main focus is now on adding new features, new gameplay mechanics and new levels.
There have been almost 9 months since the game was conceived and, even though human babies see the light of day by this time, baby games tend to be more like elephants and stay in development for quite a bit longer.
“Play the Raiders of the Lost Island and be part of its story, tell me about your experience with the game, stream your play sessions and help it become a success!”, the developers invite.
They call themselves The Quantum Astrophysicists Guild, and they’re four guys based out of Seattle. “I started the company years ago, during the development of my previous game, The Bridge, says the company’s founder Ty Taylor. “I met the artist of The Bridge, Mario Castaneda, in university, and we’ve been working together since (he made the art for Tumblestone as well). For Tumblestone, I brought on two engineers, Alex and Justin, who I met while working at Microsoft”. Working on the current projects, the team doesn’t abandon their previous creations: The Bridge is getting released for Nintendo Switch, while Tumblestone is becoming a competitive game.
Imperia Online Ltd. is one of the biggest game production companies in Southeastern Europe with 20 released games. The studio has over 40 million users worldwide and a team of 185 professionals. The company originally focused primarily on browser-based games with main title being Imperia Online – a MMORTS, but later started developing mobile games as well. Their R&D department has recently decided they should tackle a new project in an area they’ve never explored before - VR games.
A hero named Black, an ice-cold mercenary and hired gun, wakes up to discover he has lost memory. Under the guidance of his anonymous captor, ‘Red’, Black embarks on a form of treatment, facilitated by a unique technology - a headset that allows the user to relive their memories and experience them again in the present. This is how the creators describe the Get Even game, that will be out on June 23rd. As the sound in the game is tied to gameplay, and makes a great part of it, in charge of the soundtrack was Olivier Deriviere, known for music for Assassin’s Creed IV: Freedom Cry, and Remember Me. The Farm51 team of Get Even’s devs went even further to create an immersive experience, and used the Auro-3D plugin of the Audiokinetic WWise engine. This audio format delivers a full three-dimensional sound spread capable of reproducing natural acoustic space. Their director of Creative Entertainment Division of game Iwan De Kuijper explained more on the technology, while the producer for Get Even Lionel Lovisa shared more details on the game’s production, and Olivier Deriviere told more about his vision of Get Even soundtrack.
Painted Black Games is a young Ukrainian mini-studio. There are five of them, and they’re making their first game - a philosophic sci-fi thriller-adventure, The Long Reach. The team has changed many times since 2015 when it all started. It didn’t mess up the process - on the contrary, everyone who has contributed to the game, brought their unique view and made it better.
As the developers were writing the story, the lights at their office went out. “We’re in pitch darkness and - I’m not sure, but I think something is scratching at our door”, says Roman Tomilin, the producer and programmer, as he shares the game development story.
Boddiul is the developer of Colonizer, which was made at Game Factory Jam 2016. The game was the top rated title at Game Factory Jam 2016 and Vova was not surprised by this showing.
“Frankly, I was expecting my game to be top rated game among other participants from Moldova,” asserted Vova. The reason is that I am most experienced in Game Jams, like Ludum Dare, but this happened last time, because we managed to involve more and more local developers to participate in large-scale game jams. Experience of my competitors increases, in future it will be tougher to compete even locally.”
The showing at Game Factory Jam 2016 guaranteed Colonizer a slot at Indie Prize Berlin at Casual Connect Europe. “Indie Prize may help me find investors interested in my future projects, but will unlikely help me enhance my current project in this stage of development,” noted Vova. “I will release Colonizer by myself.”
Bringing back to life game series that have been appreciated but slightly forgotten is what the Kalypso Media company does as a publisher. They’ve previously worked with Tropico, and recently teamed up with the Hungary-based Kite Games to create Sudden Strike 4, the newest installment in the fan favorite World War II real-time strategy series. Here Christian Schlütter, the game’s producer, sheds some light on the what it’s like to honor an established brand while making an initially 2D game in 3D, and going to the console platform.
“Naturally, we are aiming to revive the series with Sudden Strike 4, but it is a full-fledged and completely new entry in the series – not a remake”, Christian explains. “We are looking to Sudden Strike 1 and 2 for inspiration, and will be evolving the gameplay from that core experience.”
Five games from Philippines and twelve games from Malaysia were invited to the international Indie Prize showcase during Casual Connect Asia 2017 in Singapore.
Game Title:The Letter Developer: Yangyang Mobile Platform: Desktop Win, Desktop Mac Website: http://www.yangyangmobile.com/ Country: Philippines
The Letter is a non-chronological, horror visual novel game with seven playable characters. It also features full English voice acting, several branching paths with more than 10 endings, highly animated character sprites and backgrounds, and quick-time events.
The contestant to represent Game Industry Conference from Poland at Indie Prize Berlin 2017 is Immortal Planet, an isometric action RPG for PC and consoles, created by Tomasz Wacławek, a developer already known for publishing RONIN in 2015. He was chosen by Game Industry Conference, whose chairman Jakub Marszałkowski also shares an overview of Polish gamedev industry.
Game Title: The Letter
