Author Archives: blargzor

MAGFest 2019

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Sup peeps! You may have noticed that I haven’t written a blog post for a while, but this week is different! This past weekend was MAGFest 2019, and, as Frank mentioned last week, he was unable to come. Since I ended up flying solo for this show, it only makes sense for me to touch base to talk about it!

MAGFest, and MIVS in particular, is always awesome, but this year was a little different. Frank and I usually drive down together, man the booth together, and basically work together on anything that needs to be done. With someone else there, it doesn’t seem that daunting, but it’s a pretty big task to take on alone – I feel bad for all of the conventions I’m unable to attend that Frank manages alone!

 

So It Begins…

After getting up at 4 am to catch my bus down to Maryland, I set up shop in the MIVS showroom. People started filtering in, and the convention had well and truly begun!

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Come play Where Shadows Slumber!

The first thing I noticed was that it felt like fewer people were coming over to the Where Shadows Slumber booth. At first I attributed this to the fact that it was the first day of the show, but it ended up being a theme throughout the weekend. I quickly figured out what it was – because I had taken the bus down, I didn’t have room to bring everything we normally bring to shows, including our banner. Without it, the biggest piece of marketing on the table is no larger than a normal piece of paper. Because of our unique art style, actually seeing a screenshot of the game is what makes people approach the booth – since there wasn’t anything large showcasing the art, a lot fewer people decided to engage. A lot of fellow indies at these shows lament about how hard it is to showcase a mobile game, but this was the first time that I really felt it.

That was made a little more sour by the fact that the game next to us, One Step From Eden, was really awesome, and their booth showcased it very well. People were crowding in front of it, which was both a blessing and a curse – sometimes people waiting for a turn to play would trickle over and play Where Shadows Slumber, but other times the crowd would spill over and block the view of our booth. Of course, I would never begrudge them for it – they’re fellow indies, and they managed to make a great game that people love, so I’m glad they got so much attention!

That small speed bump aside, the show was pretty awesome. Our player to bug ratio was the highest it’s ever been, almost everyone who sat down and gave the game a chance ended up loving it, and we actually had a few people buy the game on the spot, which was a new (and really awesome) experience. Overall, it’s this fact that made this weekend, and pretty much all of the shows we go to, worth it – people love the game.

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Image credit: xkcd.com

In fact, for the first time, someone came up to the booth, started playing the game, and ended up actually beating it. To be fair, she played about half of it on Friday and picked up where she left off on Saturday, but it’s still quite an achievement. Any slight annoyance I might have felt about someone playing the entire game without buying it was salved when she brought not one, or two, but three more people over to the booth to come play her favorite game of the weekend. In fact, on Sunday, before I left, she stopped by again and asked if she could have some extra buttons and cards, so she could give them to more people. I either didn’t catch her name, or I forgot it, but thanks for your help, kind stranger!

 

Lonesome Jack

When Frank found out he couldn’t come this past weekend, I knew immediately that I would still be attending; MAGFest is too big a show to give up. The reality of it – running a 4-day show by myself – didn’t hit me until I sat down to do it on Thursday morning. It really wasn’t too bad – I’ve given the Where Shadows Slumbers pitch a thousand times at this point – but there are a lot of logistics involved in these shows (making sure devices are charged, answering people’s questions, enticing passers-by to come and play, etc.) that get a lot easier when there are multiple people at the booth. One of the biggest differences was that I couldn’t really leave to get food or hit the bathroom, because there would be no one to watch the booth!

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Day 3: Look at this guy, all ready to help out

After a somewhat lonely Thursday and Friday, I decided to call in reinforcements. A friend of mine from the area was free on Saturday, and we had an extra ticket to the show for Frank, so he offered to come in and help out. Even though he didn’t have any experience running a booth, and had only played the first few levels of the game it was a huge help! After watching me talk to the first few people who showed up, he knew enough of the sales pitch to handle a newcomer if I was already in conversation with another player. In fact, just having someone there to talk to during the downtime made the day run a lot more smoothly.

I also want to throw a shoutout to Brian Intile and the team from Touhou Microgame, whose booth was immediately behind ours. We actually know them in real life, so it was fortunate that they were set up so close to us – in the stretches when neither of us had too many people to talk to, we could chat, or play each others’ games, or watch each others’ booths. Their game is also awesome (moreso if you’re invested in the Touhou Project), so if you get a chance, give it a shot!

 

Bugs and Improvements

One of the biggest differences between a show before the release of a game and one after is how we can handle things like bugs. When we’re still squarely in development, a lot of things tend to be in flux. At a lot of the shows we’ve been to previously, a bug would come up, and our reactions would fall into a couple of camps:

  • That bug’s fixed in a more recent version.
  • That bug will be fixed when we make some change that we’re planning on making.
  • That bug has something to do with X, which we’re gonna update soon, so it’ll probably end up being fixed.
  • We know about that bug, and we’re gonna fix it as soon as we get a chance!
  • I’ve never seen that bug before – if we can reproduce it, we’ll try to fix it if there’s time!

A lot of these cases have a decent amount of guesswork, and the majority of them don’t actually involve going home and fixing the bug directly.

Once the game is actually released, however, it’s a different story. There’s really only one camp that the bug can fall into:

  • We didn’t know about that bug, but we’ll fix it as soon as we get back!

Since there aren’t any big changes forthcoming, and there’s not a huge amount of work that we’re doing day-to-day, it’s a lot easier for us to figure out what’s causing the bug, we know our fix isn’t going to be invalidated by a future change, and we have more time to actually fix it! With that mindset, I kept a list of all of the bugs that I saw over the weekend (along with any places where the level and/or visual design could be improved), and I’m gonna start heading back into the code and fixing them! Fortunately, none of them were game-breaking or heavily impactful, so we don’t have to rush out a new build.

 

In Summary

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Players love Where Shadows Slumber!

All in all, MAGFest was a great show, even if I was the only one of us who was able to enjoy it. It’s well-run, and it has a good crowd – I was glad that we were accepted to the Indie Videogame Showcase, and I would totally recommend that any other indies give it a shot for 2020!

 

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Where Shadows Slumber is now available for purchase on the App Store, Google Play, and the Amazon App Store!

Find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Jack Kelly is the head developer and designer for Where Shadows Slumber.

BUGS!

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What up team?!

If you’re reading this blog, then you’re definitely among the people who know about the iOS release of Where Shadows Slumber last week. If you somehow managed to miss that news, then guess what – we released Where Shadows Slumber for iOS last week! If you have an iOS device and you haven’t gotten a chance to download it yet, you should – and if you have downloaded it, make sure you give it a 5-star review!

The whole team has been working really hard on this game for a long time, so it’s a great feeling to finally release it into the wild. On one hand, it’s very freeing – theoretically, the game is done, so I don’t have to spend all of my time working on it. On the other hand, we’re all very anxious to see if the rest of the world likes the game as much as we do. However, there’s one thing that’s on our mind right now above all else.

Bugs.

We’ve put a lot of work into making sure that Where Shadows Slumber is as stable and bug-free as possible, but with such a small team, some things are bound to fall through the cracks. Unfortunately, experiencing a bug, especially a bad one, leaves a terrible first impression. People are justifiably upset when something they’ve paid for doesn’t work – and that’s a perfect recipe for bad reviews and poor sales numbers. We’re spending this week working on addressing many of the bugs that have come to our attention, and, in the interest of transparency, I want to share some of them with all of you!

 

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Unexpected Crashes

The bug: The biggest issue people have been running into so far is that the game will crash unexpectedly. This usually occurs just as a level is starting, or shortly thereafter. For most users, it will happen consistently, although some users might see sporadic crashes.

Cause: We somehow missed some poorly-compressed textures before releasing. This caused the game to consume way more memory than it should have. For older devices, or for people with something else running on the device, the operating system will kill the process to retrieve the memory, thus closing the game.

Fix: Obviously, the fix to this is to update the compression settings on the offending textures! We’re currently going through all of our assets to make sure they have the correct compression settings (along with making a few other tweaks to our memory usage).

Workaround: Until the next patch is published, the best way to play the game is on a device with enough RAM to handle the memory problems. This means either making sure that nothing else is running on your phone, or using a relatively recent device, which has enough RAM that it’s not an issue.

 

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You can tell just by glancing that this level is freezing.

Unexpected Freezing

The bug: During some levels (particularly in the Hills and Summit Worlds), the game will simply freeze. The OS won’t kill the process, so it’ll still be on the screen, but nothing will be moving. Sound will still play, but the only option you have is to kill the game.

Cause: At some point, we thought it might be due to the snow particles (since it only seems to happen on snowy levels), but it seems that’s not the case. Rather, it’s due to Obe’s footprints.

Whenever Obe (or any character) takes a step, he leaves behind a little footprint. These stay around for a bit (usually up to 15 seconds), and then they disappear. This gives us the juiciness of footsteps appearing, without peppering them all over the level.
This bug is caused by some of the footprint objects (specifically the snow-related ones) having bad settings. Rather than disappearing after 15 seconds, they disappear after 150. So, when you walk around the level a lot, wayyyy too many of the footsteps are being created. The overhead of managing so many game objects is causing Unity to freeze up.

Fix: This one’s an easy one – we just updated the number from 150 back to 15. After some testing, we’re unable to reproduce this bug, so it seems like this one is in pretty good shape.

Workaround: You’ll have to beat these Levels in as few steps as possible, to reduce the number of footprints. If you can beat the Level in under two minutes, you may be able to escape the deep freeze.

 

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Go ahead, try to click it. See? It doesn’t work!

Level “Titlecards” Not Working

The bug: A few people have mentioned this bug – apparently, the level titlecards (which let you know which level you’re about to play) will appear, but they won’t disappear when you click on them! This prevents the user from continuing into the level.

Cause: Unfortunately, our team hasn’t yet been able to reproduce this bug. We’re going to continue to try to do so on our somewhat limited range of hardware until we can figure out what’s causing it. Since the titlecards themselves are pretty simple, the cause of the bug is most likely something fairly innocuous.

Fix: Once we’re able to reproduce the bug and know the cause, it should be fairly simple to fix, as the titlecards aren’t incredibly complex.

Workaround: Until we push out a fix to this issue, the only way around it is to close the game and restart it, since you can’t access the menu from the titlecard.

 

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Those who’ve watched the story know that a lot of people ask Obe this question…

Disappearing Blocks

The bug: If you’re savvy enough to fight your way past the other bugs mentioned here, you might get a chance to experience this one. As the final level of the game, World 7’s fifth level is a tricky one which introduces a mechanic not seen anywhere else in the game. It involves “teleporting” blocks from one section of the level to another. Unfortunately (and apparently randomly), the blocks will disappear from one section, but never appear in the other! Obviously, this is pretty bad, since you need all of the blocks in order to complete the level, and some of them just get ejected into the æther!

Cause: When the blocks are teleported, their parent gameObjects change in Unity. I’m expecting there’s some error in the code which is causing the gameObject to inherit the wrong parent, so it doesn’t appear where it’s supposed to be. This bug has also given us some trouble in terms of reproducing. Since it’s likely an error in the code, it’s only useful to reproduce on a device where we can do some amount of development, but we have never successfully reproduced it in the Unity editor. We’re going to keep trying to do so, but do so on a variety of devices until we find the root cause.

Fix: This one is pretty straightforward, if not easy in the traditional sense. Once we determine why the blocks are disappearing, we simply have to determine how to update the logic of the mechanic to ensure that it no longer happens. Obviously, it’s more complex than that, but I don’t want to get into the nitty-gritty of it here (especially since I don’t know what the exact fix would be).

Workaround: Aside from the bug that literally prevents you from playing the game, this is the workaround that I’m least happy with – the only way to fix this issue is to reset the entire level through the menu. Since it’s such a long level, that means losing a good bit of work. We’re working on all of these bugs, but this one in particular I want to fix. Since it’s the last level of the game, and you lose so much progress when you restart it, the user ends up with a bitter taste in their mouth, which is exactly how we don’t want players to finish Where Shadows Slumber.

 

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Other Issues?

Of course, these aren’t all of the bugs. That’s one of the first things you realize when you let someone else use a piece of software you’ve created – there’s always a fresh horror just around the corner. This list is just the biggest offenders we’ve discovered so far. I can personally guarantee that there are others, and I’m tasking each and every one of you with finding them!

If you do happen to stumble across a bug that I haven’t discussed here, there are a few things you can do for us:

  • Tell us about it! We’re active on Facebook and Twitter, and you can always shoot us an email at contact@GameRevenant.com or join our Discord Channel. If you do, make sure you include details about your device. We want to make Where Shadows Slumber as awesome as possible, but we can’t fix bugs we don’t know about!
  • See if it happens repeatedly, and if there’s some pattern to when and how it’s happening. This helps us immensely when we’re trying to reproduce the bugs. After all, it’s a lot harder for us to fix a bug that we can’t reproduce. Screenshots are great too!
  • Don’t leave a disparaging review. All too often, we see people giving us a poor rating and review because of a bug. In a lot of these cases, it definitely makes sense – you paid for a product, and it’s broken. One out of five! The problem with this is that reviews and ratings are our best way to get other people to start playing the game. If our ratings start to tank, nobody is going to download the game! It’s definitely better to tell us about a bug and help us fix it than to simply hurt us by leaving a bad review (and then not updating it when we fix the bug, thus leaving us with a permanent scar on our rating).
  • Share app analytics with the developers. I think that this is a setting somewhere in iOS that will share data and statistics about app crashes. A detailed email from you is usually better (because not all bugs count as “crashes”), but checking this allows Apple to send the crash logs straight to us.

 

Thanks for taking the time to read about some of the bugs we’ve experienced. Putting something that we’ve worked so hard on out into the wild is always a big question mark. We’re happy with the amount of publicity we’ve managed to stir up, but we’re also a little annoyed by these bugs, as I’m sure many of our players are. We want to make sure that you all know that we know about these issues, and we’re doing everything we can to fix them as fast as possible.

If you are experiencing these bugs, never fear! We’re fixing the major ones, so you can keep your eyes peeled for a new version of Where Shadows Slumber later this week! Once it comes out and you update the app on your phone, some of these bugs (and maybe some others) should be taken care of.

Next week we’ll share more details about how our iOS launch is going!

 

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You can always find out more about our game (and tell us about bugs) at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, join the Game Revenant Discord, and feel free to email us directly with any questions or feedback at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Jack Kelly is the head developer and designer for Where Shadows Slumber.

The Good

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In order to figure out what I was gonna write about this week, I took a quick scroll through the past few posts we’ve written, and I noticed something about the general tone of our blogs of late. Thanks to the pressure to get Where Shadows Slumber done, and the fact that we’ve entirely run out of new ideas for blog posts, everything we’ve written recently seems to have fallen into one of two camps:

  • A half-hearted explanation of a part of the game no one really wants to hear about, because we can’t afford to waste time writing blogs when we have work to do.
  • A frantic excuse for why the game hasn’t been released yet, which generally boils down to “working on this game is sucking out my soul”.

Even those descriptions fall into one of those categories! (Hint: it’s the second one). That fact aside, I’ve decided to take it in a different, more positive direction this week! Instead of talking about how much game development sucks, let’s talk about all the good that’s come from working on Where Shadows Slumber.

 

 

Lessons Learned

The first and most obvious positive result of working on Where Shadows Slumber would have to be the things that I’ve learned. Creating an entire game from the ground up in a game engine that I didn’t have much experience with has been incredibly challenging, but it has also left me with a lot of new knowledge and valuable experience.

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I’m still not the best coder on the team. That honor goes to Obe.

  • Unity itself. Unity is a very powerful, and professional, game engine. It may not have all of the depth of something like Unreal, or all of the customization of writing your own engine from the ground up, but there’s really no arguing that it’s not a “real” game engine. In fact, there is now a certification for programming in Unity.

 

  • C#. As a programmer, you get pretty used to picking up new languages, and, for the most part, it gets easier with every one you learn. The fact that I was able to learn C# isn’t the takeaway here – the fact that I was motivated to learn C# is. Without Where Shadows Slumber, I simply wouldn’t have had any reason to extend my programming repertoire.

 

  • Shaders. One of the most difficult technical challenges this project has posed has been the shaders. For the most part, the programming required for the actual game logic was similar to code I’ve written before. Shaders, however, delve into a very different type of programming. I now know far more about how Unity renders a frame than I ever thought I would, and I’m pretty happy to have that knowledge. Even if I don’t have to do any rendering work again, I’m glad to know what’s happening under the hood.

 

  • Project management. To continue a running theme throughout our blog posts, I’ll mention that this was the one that took me by surprise. When this project started, I was well aware of (most of) the technical challenges that lay ahead. What I didn’t anticipate was handling the vast array of tasks involved with actually managing a project. Where Shadows Slumber has helped me advance from a quintessential disorganized coder all the way to a slightly-less-disorganized coder!

 

There are a million other, small things that I learned throughout the production of the game, but these are the big ones. Throughout its development, Where Shadows Slumber has had a lot to teach me!

 

 

Personal Life

Another important (and perhaps more poignant) side-effect of working on Where Shadows Slumber is the personal relationships that it has helped cultivate.

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BFFs Forever!

Frank and I were friends in college, but just barely. We were in the same sketch comedy group, but outside of that, we didn’t really hang out. I guarantee that if it weren’t for Where Shadows Slumber, we wouldn’t be in contact at this point, and it probably would have been several years since we’d seen each other. Now, however, we’re definitely friends, and close friends at that. Frank and I are in nearly constant contact, which, annoying as it can be, keeps us pretty close. I don’t want to bore you by getting too gushy, so let’s just say that we do a good job of tolerating each other.

In addition to bolstering an existing friendship, this project has also created new friendships – with Alba and Noah, our sound engineers! They’re totally awesome, and I look forward to spending more time with them, hopefully even after we’re done with Where Shadows Slumber!

We may not be as close, but the other people that we’ve gotten to know are all of you! As an indie game, we have to do a lot of work to make sure people hear about the game. Throughout the past few years, we’ve been to over a dozen conventions, showcasing and pitching the game, making a name for ourselves, and, most importantly, meeting a bunch of really cool people! Seriously, all of the people we’ve met throughout this process, whether they be other game developers, fans, or just normal con-goers, are great. No matter if I’m annoyed with the game or frustrated with the drudge of development, going to a convention and seeing new people playing the game, or old fans coming back to check in, is always incredible. There are a lot of aspects of Where Shadows Slumber that I love, but that’s definitely the best part.

 

 

The Game Itself

I guess the actual most obvious result from Where Shadows Slumber would be the piles and piles of money we’re going to make from it. That, however, is not the point – as much as I would love for Where Shadows Slumber to make some money, that’s really ancillary to the whole ethos of the project.

Frank and I are avid gamers, and always have been. We set out not to make a lot of money or make the most popular game ever. We wanted to create something beautiful, something we could be proud of – and in that sense, I think we’ve done a pretty good job. When I look back on this project, I’m not going to look at my net profit – I’m going to look at Where Shadows Slumber itself, and I think I’ll always be happy with it.

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I think we’ve got a chance at this one!

Of course, Where Shadows Slumber will serve as more than just an ephemeral trophy to put on my emotional mantle. The game itself is the end goal here, and there are some tangible benefits to that:

  • Money. Even though this isn’t the goal of the project, Frank and I are both hoping to make a little something for our efforts.

 

  • “Resume bait”. At some point in the future, I expect that I’ll be looking for a job. When that time comes, I’ll be handing out my resume, hoping to catch the eye of some company. But I may be just one of hundreds of applicants, all with similar experience and qualifications. How can I stand out? By having something awesome on my resume, something that other people won’t have, something that shows that I can set a goal and reach it, that I can meet technical challenges, and that I can manage a development process.

 

  • Experience. Working on Where Shadows Slumber has given me an incredible cache of experience to draw on. Pretty much any technical problem I run into, I can find a parallel with some part of the development of Where Shadows Slumber. The end result is a game that’s more than a game; every part of that game represents a different challenge and a different piece of knowledge that I can now look back on.

 

  • A trophy. I know I said that Where Shadows Slumber was more than just a trophy, but it is also that. From conception to completion, Frank and I have worked tirelessly to bring this idea to life. This is something we’ve built ourselves, from the ground up, and it always will be. It’s something we can be proud of, and something we can always look back on.

 

 

A Fond Farewell

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Thanks for listening to me ramble on for a little bit. Anyone who has ever worked on a software development project (or pretty much any long project) knows just how stressful life can start to become when you reach the dreaded “crunch time”. We all end up hating our games as they come out, and I don’t want that to be the way that Where Shadows Slumber is released. So I’m glad I got a chance to take the time and share with you all the good things Where Shadows Slumber has done for me!

 

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You can always find out more about our game and how awesome it is at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, join the Game Revenant Discord, and feel free to email us directly with any questions or feedback at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Jack Kelly is the head developer and designer for Where Shadows Slumber.

Crunch and Burn(out)

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If you’ve been following the development of Where Shadows Slumber, then you know that we’ve been working on it for a while. It was early 2015 when the core concept first came to me. Three years ago this month was when I put together the first proof-of-concept to show to Frank. The demo version of the game has been out for over a year and a half.

Game development takes a long time, especially with a tiny team, little to no funding, a full-time job, and, the biggest time-waster of all, life itself. As Frank discussed in a previous blog post, we are holding ourselves to a pretty high standard for Where Shadows Slumber, which makes development even slower.

Fortunately, after all this time, we’re finally closing in on the end. As happy as that might make you, the fans of the game, there are two people who are definitely happier about it than you are: us. As frustrated as you might be about how long it’s taking, we’re even more frustrated. Frankly, as much as we love Where Shadows Slumber, neither of us can wait until the moment it’s over.

“But Jack”, you ask incredulously, “if you love it, why do you want it to be over? You’ve managed to work on it for three years – what’s another few months?”

There are two phenomena that often creep up at around the same time in the development cycle of a game (or any project, really). Here they both are, followed by something I’ve said in the past week that represents each of them:

  • Crunch – “There’s only a little bit of work left, but there’s even less time left!”
  • Burnout – “I’ve spent so long on this game, I’m just sick of it!”

 

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Crunch

I’ve discussed before the “ninety-ninety” rule, so I’ll just summarize it quickly here, since it’s relevant: not only does software development take a long time, it takes significantly longer than you think it will. This is an issue when you first start your project (“it’ll probably only take 18 months or so”), but there’s no scheduled release date or external pressure at that point. Nobody really cares yet! However, it becomes a bigger issue when dealing with shorter time periods. For some reason, people have a hard time realizing that their estimates are wrong and adjusting (at least, we do). Because of that, we’re still making poor estimates for how long something will take!

This is the reason that developers inevitably end up in the dreaded state known as crunch time. We thought there were about 6 weeks of work left, but it turns out there were 12 weeks of work left. Too bad we already gave a bunch of outside parties a solid release date! Since they’re now depending on us to meet those deadlines, we have to do 12 weeks worth of work in 6 weeks!

This is the phenomenon that leads to crazy overtime, too many all-nighters, and an incredible amount of stress. If you follow game design, you’ve probably heard about it, because it somehow ends up happening to pretty much every game. If you’re involved in game design, then you’ve probably gone through it, and you know how awful it can be.

It’s a little better for us than for bigger, more established studios – we don’t have employees to pay, stockholders to appease, or a public release date to hit. That said, we don’t want Where Shadows Slumber to turn into an indie game for which development takes forever that people are perennially waiting for. It’s now or never!

 

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Burnout

Cascading into crunch time at full speed is pretty bad, but it’s not the worst thing in the world – we’re been working on Where Shadows Slumber for a long time, and we are both willing to put in a little extra time as we reach the end. However, one of the biggest problems is that crunch time is also usually accompanied by burnout.

When you’re just starting out on a project, everything is pretty exciting. You enjoy working on interesting problems like pathfinding and game mechanics, and you don’t even mind fixing any bugs that come up. On the other hand, once you’ve been working on a game for a long time, you’re pretty much sick of it. All of the interesting stuff is already implemented, so the only things left to work on are tiny quality improvements (“does this look better when the position is 0.4 or 0.41? How about 0.42?”), annoying, subtle, or hard-to-reproduce bugs (“this was working last week, but a change to a different piece of code is somehow causing it to break, but only ~10% of the time”), and tasks that you intentionally avoided because they aren’t interesting or fun (“how many setPass calls will this scene render when running on a 6-year old Android phone? Is that too many?”).

None of these tasks are really very enjoyable – so not only has your excitement about the work decreased, but so has the objective fun-ness of the work that’s left to do. This leaves you in a state of never actually wanting to work on the project. Combine that decreased drive with the increased amount of work you have to do, and it starts to become pretty obvious why the end of development for a game tends to get pretty hairy, and why we’re looking forward to being done with it.

 

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The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Don’t worry, though – it’s not all bad! We’re both still really excited about Where Shadows Slumber, because of the amount of work we’ve put into it. We’re both dedicated to the cause, and we’re not gonna let a little extra work put a stop to it (even if it ends up slowing us down).

The purpose of this blog post is two-fold. On one, more selfish hand, I want to offer up to our adoring fans an explanation for why we haven’t finished the game yet. We know a lot of you love the game, and are really looking forward to it, and many of you have shown us that by popping up and saying hi at various conventions. The past 8 months or so have been a real whirlwind, both personally and professionally, and our timeline has been shifting around quite a bit as a result. So I wanted to offer a bit of an explanation, as well as reassure you that we’re still working on Where Shadows Slumber, and we’re not gonna let it fall by the wayside!

The other reason for this post is to serve as a sort of warning, albeit a likely redundant one. For anyone working on their own game (or any project, really), it’s very important to take time management seriously. Ending up in the crunch time/burnout trap is an awful place to be. Despite this, most developers (indie and AAA alike) end up here, because it’s hard for people to grasp how time-consuming the last 10% of a project can be. So, if you take away anything from this post, I hope you do your best to allow enough time at the end of development to get your game out without ending up there. You’ll end up there anyway, but maybe by knowing about it ahead of time, you won’t be there for long.

 

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You can always find out more about our game and how freaking long it’s taking us to finish it at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, join the Game Revenant Discord, and feel free to email us directly with any questions or feedback at contact@GameRevenant.com.

Jack Kelly is the head developer and designer for Where Shadows Slumber.