This article will be constantly kept up to date with the most relevant information you need to become a mobile BETA tester. (Last updated February 2nd, 2018)
Hello, and thank you for taking part in our beta testing program. This is the period of the development cycle where we are sharing our video game with the general public. This public test is intended to get feedback about our product in the months leading up to its final release.
Our testers come from all walks of life. We have people testing our game of many different career paths, ages, and backgrounds. We understand that not everyone is a super nerd! Some of this stuff is difficult if you’ve never done it before. Please follow this step-by-step guide to downloading our game. Thank you for your patience!
Send Frank an email at contact@GameRevenant.com if you need any help! You can also tweet @GameRevenant, or contact us on Facebook at fb.com/GameRevenant.
First, what kind of phone do you have? Scroll down to the section below that describes your device: we support Apple and Android.
Apple (iPhone or iPad)
Apple’s policies require that everyone receives a direct email invitation to test the game. That means you must have already been on our email list in order to test the Apple version. If you were not already on our list, reach out to Frank at contact@GameRevenant.com and you’ll be added.
Otherwise, proceed to these steps:
An email will appear in your Inbox that says “Game Revenant has invited you to test “Where Shadows Slumber” – open it on your mobile device.
Press the large blue button that says “View in TestFlight.”
An invitation will appear that tells you to get TestFlight from the App Store and gives you a code to redeem. Follow those steps. Don’t worry, TestFlight is free.
Now that you have the TestFlight app on your device, and the code has been redeemed, open TestFlight. Press the green Install button.
The game will now take a few minutes to install.
Once installed, the button will now be blue and say Open. Press it.
Thank you for your patience. We hope you enjoyed playing the game! Now, the most important part: open this Google Survey in your Internet browser and answer all of the questions there. We won’t ask for anything incredibly personal, so just give us your candid feedback about the game.
Your feedback will change the outcome of the final game. Thanks for taking part in our beta test!
If you are reading this, you are one of the few survivors of the worst winter storm to hit the east coast since the formation of Earth as a planet. Welcome to the Winter Storm Grayson resistance. We were able to get the Internet uplink working, but only for a few minutes. Just enough time to tell you how MAGFest 2018 was!
Setting Up The Bomb
To be honest, I did not encounter anything more than snow flurries and severe cold over the weekend. I drove down on Wednesday afternoon, which was before the storm hit. Also, the beautiful Gaylord Hotel located along the scenic National Harbor was more inland than I realized. We weren’t even close to the the Maryland coastline! Sure, the river froze, but we didn’t get any snow at all.
When I got to the hotel, I was greeted by a bubbly Magfest banner welcoming “Adventurers and Dreamers.” (I’m not sure which one Jack and I count as…) The MIVS banner shown above was proudly displayed in Hall C where all the indies were, and gives you a good idea of what that section is like. I love that they have this. I can’t tell you how much it means to us that we got a free booth at a show like MAGFest!
By Wednesday evening, the Where Shadows Slumber booth was set up and ready to go. It was pretty painless, and everyone loved the sweet GreatMats foam flooring we had from last year. This post is sponsored by GreatMats. Have you gotten your GreatMats GreatMat today? I stole the idea to include table lamps from the Mushroom 11 team, who used it to great effect a few years back at a Sheep’s Meow event at the NYU Game Center. It wasn’t anything special, but the booth got the job done. Other people had crazy stuff like tents and massive posters. Maybe next year, when the game is for sale, we’ll go to town on the booth. I never really plan this out, I always wing it. But I bet if Jack and I sat down and asked ourselves “what experience do we want people to have with our game at our booth?” we could come up with something really cool.
The Madness Begins!
Wednesday was the calm before the storm. Not Winter Storm Grayson – Winter Storm “Tons of People Dancing In The Gaylord.” By Thursday, the party had officially begun. They put us in the official hotel this year, which meant I had plenty of time to capture the insanity. If there were any normal, well-adjusted people staying in the hotel these past four days, they must have been terribly confused.
The show ran from Thursday to Sunday, with a pretty stable crowd of people all four days. Sunday surprised me actually – I don’t remember the short time-frame of Sunday being quite so busy last year. I had people at the table until after 2 pm on Sunday, which is when everything shuts down.
The build Jack prepared included the game’s first World (The Forest), then World 3 (The Aqueduct) and finally World 5 (The Hills). We wanted to jump around to get some feedback on parts of the game we haven’t shown off as much. I’ve seen tons of people play World 1 (The Jail) and World 2 (The River) at this point. And since I haven’t gone back to polish those yet, it would have been more of the same feedback.
The response to this build was overwhelmingly positive. People loved the new audio, although it was hard to hear in the crowded MAGFest hall. They commented on how beautiful the art style was, and how the game was more challenging than last year’s Demo. The critiques they had were generally about the game chugging along on the Amazon HD 8 devices (one Level has a ton of lights) and other things that were hard to quantify, like the way that draggable objects “feel.” It’s hard to know exactly what players want when they say stuff like that, but that’s what the final months of a project are all about – tweaking the small stuff.
There Was Plenty of Indie Time
I’ve made a conscious effort during these shows to try to spend as much time with other developers as I do with customers. After seeing the same faces show after show, it’s a little embarrassing to not get to know them. I’m pretty shy… and there’s always a ton of stuff to do at these shows. But it’s important to make an effort to join the game industry and treat it like a community.
SWEET RAVE PARTIES!
The MIVS crew threw a party for all of the game developers and staff on Friday night. We got to see the crazy penthouse nightclub that the Gaylord Hotel has up on the 18th floor. I don’t go to a lot of nightclubs, so I was easily amused at the pretty rainbow lights and stellar view of National Harbor. It was coooool, man!
After meeting up with some NYC-based indie devs, we went to a crazy Power Glove concert. Note to self: keep earplugs on hand for this sort of thing. Power Glove plays heavy death metal renditions of classic video game themes. It was the most MAGFest thing I’ve seen at MAGFest.
Swing and a Miss!
Sadly, although they handed out MIVSy awards to the developers on Saturday evening, Where Shadows Slumber did not receive any accolades. In our defense, we only brought a few in-development Levels from the final game. Other teams brought their final “ready-to-purchase” games and put their best foot forward. Just like last year when we brought our Demo, you can’t expect to win an award for something you haven’t finished yet. It wouldn’t be fair!
But it still stings a little bit – that’s the downside of the development route I took us on. There’s a ton of time we spend at festivals showing off our flaws and weaknesses, because we want feedback. It’s going to make the final game better, but it can be exhausting listening to the same comments for four days straight. I just hope that once the game “goes gold,” it will receive the recognition it deserves. Do I hear #2018GameOfTheYear?
I’m home now. Sadly, I had to run the table alone this past weekend – Jack was planning on coming, but had to stay home unexpectedly for personal reasons. He’ll explain everything next week in a really important blog post. Sorry to be a tease, but this is something we’ve known about for a while but have not made public. It’s his story to tell, so I won’t go into it. Please stay tuned for next week’s blog for more details.
Thanks again to the wonderful MIVS staff for inviting us to return and providing such a great opportunity! We hope to return for many more years to come, whether it’s to sell Where Shadows Slumber or get some feedback on a future project. Rock on, everybody!
That’s all for MAGFest! Please leave a comment to let us know you’re not a Russian Twitter bot scanning this page for mercenary purposes. You can find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter @GameRevenant or Facebook, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.
Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.
On this date one year ago, Where Shadows Slumber didn’t even exist.
Hard to believe, right? There was a Demo on the store called Where Shadows Slumber Demo, but the official game project had not even been started yet! We’ve come so far in just one year. Everything you’ve seen online of the final game was started in 2017, from the level design, to the environment, to our new character models.
To ring in the new year, let’s take a look at the big milestones we hit in 2017 while working on Where Shadows Slumber.
January 2017 – Rocked MAGFest!
I had to mention this one first because the timing is hilarious. Tomorrow, we’re heading out to Maryland again for MAGFest 2018! That was exactly how we kicked off 2017, too. This year, just like last year, the organizers of MIVS (the MAGFest Indie Videogame Showcase) saw something special in our game. So we’re going to be there for all four days of MAGFest in their massive indie game section, showing people a few Levels from Where Shadows Slumber and getting their feedback. Getting into MIVS every year is not a guarantee, so we were glad to be invited back. This year, we even get to stay in the official hotel!
But to be honest, MAGFest is a tough show. It’s the very first thing of the year, which makes it a bit stressful. I’d love to catch my breath and plan out how I’m going to finish a big pile of art, artistic polish, effects, cutscenes, and aesthetic optimizations. Instead, we’re going to be showing the game off to people for 7 hours straight, four days in a row. I remember last year’s show – it was fun, but exhausting. Even so, that’s a good problem to have. We’ll let you know how this year’s MAGFest goes next week, after our return!
March 2017 – The Game Developers Conference
The Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March was an incredible show. I’ll be bummed if we can’t go again this year. I really enjoyed scoping it out in 2017, and I’d love to pay for Jack to come with me. (And hey, why not Caroline, Alba and Noah while we’re at it?) It may not be in the cards this year because we’ll still be in heads-down production mode by the time the show rolls around. But while I was there, I attended the Independent Games Festival and made a note to submit our Demo to the contest when it opened again. Sometime in the fall of 2017, we sent in our application. We haven’t heard back yet, so cross your fingers!
The big surprise of my trip to GDC was attending the Big Indie Pitch and scoring third place! It was a totally impromptu thing where I had basically no time to prepare my quick pitch of the game, and deliver it perfectly before five teams of judges. This is where having a polished Demo really came in handy. There’s just no time to fiddle with a development build when you’re under the gun like that. Want to read about that experience? Well, my blog post about GDC 2017 was so good, PocketGamer put it on their website!
That’s probably because it was also a big ad for their contest, but… sometimes you just have to play the game to get noticed, man [ >‿o]
March 2017 – PAX East Indie Showcase (PEIS)
March was busy for us! We didn’t just go to PAX East – Where Shadows Slumber was selected out of a large field of applicants to be a part of their Indie Showcase. This saved us a ton of money, which we really appreciated. It cost $50 to send in our Demo to be reviewed, but considering they gave us a free booth, it’s as if we saved $2,000!
But there’s more to it than that. They gave us a place of honor, along with four other really cool indie teams with awesome games. Being in such a crucial intersection of the main hall meant we got tons of traffic. (We even got a spot on a corner, which meant confused travelers often spotted us and walked over to our table out of sheer interest!)
When I’m feeling down, I worry about what might happen if Where Shadows Slumber isn’t the groundbreaking critical and financial success I know it can be. But then I think of “that time we were in the PAX East Indie Showcase” and I remember that they saw something special in us, long before we even began work on the final project.
Check out the video above and skip to the parts where they recorded Jack talking about our experience, Where Shadows Slumber, and indie development!
June 2017 – AwesomeCon
Because Where Shadows Slumber is so awesome and we went to MAGFest earlier in the year, the organizers of AwesomeCon’s MAGFest room invited us to a show called AwesomeCon. I was very nervous for this show for two big reasons: I was going alone, and I was bringing a build of brand new Levels that had never been tested before. To make things worse, Jack and I agreed that the Levels should not receive an artistic pass until we figured out what everyone thought of them. That was the correct strategic move, but I got sick of telling people “just ignore the art and let me know what you think of the design!”
Customers, gamers, and fans… they don’t see the game as a collection of parts, like we do. It’s one big experience to them. It’s impossible for people not to comment on things you want them to ignore, unless they are also game designers. The good news is that Where Shadows Slumber got a free ride to yet another massive show, and plenty of people gave us super honest feedback about those early Levels.
It may seem weird to ask for all that feedback after having a Demo on the store for so many months, but you can never be too careful. Only one Level from the Demo actually made it over into the final game, so it was necessary to humble ourselves and start from scratch to get everything right.
August 2017 – PLAY NYC
The Playcrafting organization has been nothing but good to us ever since we first darkened their doors for their free game event in the Spring of 2016. When Dan Butchko called to let me know they were working on a bigger show and wanted indies to purchase booth space, I was on board immediately. Normally, Playcrafting events are free. But PLAY NYC was an ambitious step forward for the New York City game industry, so it was worth the money to help make this show happen.
We loved it! We recommend that every tri-state indie reading this seriously considers going to PLAY NYC 2018. Get a booth if you have a game, or just buy a badge and walk the floor on Saturday.
New York City has everything, because it’s a massive metropolis. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, there are better places in the United States to make games. (Texas and California spring to mind) If we want to make Silicon “Alley” a reality, we need to support massive endeavors like PLAY NYC. If the New York City game industry scene actually becomes a “real thing” one day, we’ll have Playcrafting to thank. Plus, the show was packed with awesome people who were super interested in our game. It was probably our best investment of the year. Did I mention it was about 40 minutes from my Hoboken apartment? GO TO THIS SHOW!
September 2017 – Big TechRaptor Interview
New Jersey-based journalist Robert Adams had met us at a few Playcrafting events before I contacted him about an interview. The article, over on TechRaptor, remains one of the best snapshots of our thinking that exists on the Internet.
Because I was on the phone with Robert instead of typing my replies, I got a chance to rant and ramble a lot. This led to us delving into some deep topics, which I appreciated. Give it a read over on their website!
In it, we discuss the origins of Game Revenant, my tragic corporate backstory, the art direction of Where Shadows Slumber, our progress over the past two years, mobile vs Steam, virtual reality’s prospects, release dates, the game’s price, and why Jack is our hero.
September 2017 – Alba & Noah Join The Team
This is related to PLAY NYC since we met them there, but it’s worth mentioning independently: we hired two awesome audio designers! I had a lot of fun making whistling noises with my mouth as I made the sound effects for the wind in our free Demo… but that wasn’t going to cut it. We needed professionals who love the game, love music, and love adding in detailed sound effects. And we found them!
October 2017 – Crazy Traveling
This month marked the most traveling I’ve ever done in such a short period of time. For some reason, October is designated as “every conference all at once month.” Don’t ask me why…
It seems weird to mention this in our Year In Review because none of these shows were originally intended as “marketing shows.” That means I didn’t go to them expecting to advertise Where Shadows Slumber. Rather, I just wanted to be an anonymous indie developer. That’s why Jack didn’t need to come to these either – we’re trying to minimize the amount of time he takes off from work, so that he can cash those vacation days in for when it really counts. (Or just for actual vacations!)
Anyway, it turns out I suck at being incognito. I won 2nd place at a game pitching contest when I went to Seattle for the last Mobile Games Forum ever, and then got to demo Where Shadows Slumber at IndieCade’s GameTasting event for a few hours in Los Angeles. Whoops! Unite 2017 in Austin, Texas ended up being the best one for networking. I highly recommend that show if you are a Unity developer! Meeting the people who built this game engine is an incredible resource. You can read my recap posts if you’re interested in getting my brutally honest take about what those shows were like.
December 2017 – Ask Me Anything Event
We ended the year by taking your questions on the website AMAfeed. This website simulates the “AMA” threads that are really popular on Reddit. We got way more questions than I expected, and I answered them all – so if you’re dying to know the innermost workings of our hearts, check out our archived post.
This experience was great. It was like a trial run for a Reddit AMA, which I expect would get more traffic, but would be more demanding. We’ve decided to keep a bank of answers to commonly asked questions on hand, to make sure we can answer questions faster next time! We’ll look into setting one of those up on Reddit. If we do, we’ll post any information about it here to this blog.
As you can see, 2017 was a year marked by both hectic travel and silent, unrecognized work. It’s not flashy to talk about the long nights we spent in front of the computer plodding along, or the snippets of time we found in our lives to work on this game. People usually want to hear about the big stuff (when’s your next show?) but the hour-to-hour details are harder to chronicle. Rest assured that every big show we attended was book-ended by hours upon hours of work, as we strive to finish Where Shadows Slumber as soon as possible.
Whether you’ve been following this blog all throughout 2017 or you just joined us, we hope to have your support in 2018. Please continue to share our free Demo, our website, and this blog with people in your life who enjoy indie games. Our goal in 2018 is to finish what we started and offer the world a beautiful experience they’ve never seen before. Knowing that there’s an audience out there waiting to enjoy it is a powerful motivator! Get in touch with us by following us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, or just by trolling us in the comments [ ^_^]
Bubbling pools of lava. Rushing water echoing throughout a cavernous aqueduct. An eerie graveyard. A lonely mountaintop buffeted by unrelenting snow.
For the longest time, Jack and I imagined these sounds in our heads as we played the development build of Where Shadows Slumber. Neither of us have any formal audio training, so our game was a silent vacuum waiting to be filled with lively sound. We imagined footsteps clattering on tile, creepy birds in the distance, and the distant growl of mysterious beasts as we dreamed of a day when our game felt complete. Finally, that dream has come true!
To be sure, this game is still very much in development. But we’re finally ready to show off some of the sections of our game that have complete sound. It’s taken many months of recording and composing by Alba S. Torremocha and Noah Kellman, our powerhouse audio team, to get here. All the while, Jack has been diligently programming a complex system of triggers to ensure that their sound plays correctly during the game.
I underestimated the amount of work it would take to set all of this up! But I was right about one thing – our game feels so much more alive now that you can hear things like the crunch of grass under Obe’s feet. Every visual element in the game has taken on a weighty-ness that gives it a sense of place, whereas before everything just seemed to float. If you normally don’t play mobile games with your phone’s sound on, you’re going to want to reconsider when you download Where Shadows Slumber next year.
Without further ado, let’s watch some videos of the game in action accompanied by a brief interview with Alba and Noah.
TURN YOUR SOUND ON! ([ ^_^]);
At a planning meeting, we discuss scene audio transitions.
Interview With Alba and Noah
FRANK. What was the name of that event you guys went to?
ALBA & NOAH. The event was a GANG (Game Audio Network Guild) monthly panel and feedback meeting, one of the only venues where us audio nerds can safely enter the outside world and socialize.
F. How secret was it? Can you tell us anything?
A&N. We can tell you that Tom Salta (Composer for Killer Instinct, Prince of Persia, Halo), Jason Kanter (Audio Lead at Avalanche) and Gina Zdanowicz (Owner of SerialLab Studios, Sound Designer for Best Luck) were all there to give us feedback, and they all had great things to say about the game! They also offered us some really fantastic feedback with good ideas to help us continue to improve the soundscape.
F. What parts of the game did you show off?
A&N. We chose one Level from each of three Worlds (World 0, World 2, and World 6) and demonstrated how the audio interactivity works, as well as our aesthetic sound choices so far.
F. How much audio is done – what have you done so far?
A&N. It’s crazy to say, but we’re almost finished with our first pass of sound for every World except World 7! Whoa. Once that’s done, we’ll head over to the UI sound design and the cutscenes, while continuing to make improvements on the rest.
F. What part of the game are you working on now?
A&N. We’re finishing up music and sound for World 4 and we have some crazy ideas that might hold back the schedule a bit… (oh crap, I hope Frank and Jack aren’t reading this…)
F. What audio features are you most looking forward to creating?”
A&N. We’re really excited to freak out our neighbors with a bunch of strange, deep grunting sounds while we work on Obe’s voice and character sound design. And also, wait, did someone say… string quartet?
What Do You Think?
We’re very proud of the work that’s been done on the game so far. That doesn’t mean the game is finished, though! We’re also not above taking criticism or honest feedback. Now is the time to tell us what you really think – don’t wait until the game is on the store, and you’re agonizing over whether to give it four stars or five stars…
Leave a post in the Comments section below and let us know what you think!
Thanks for checking out the game’s audio in this blog post update. Please leave a comment to let us know you’re not a Russian Twitter bot scanning this page for mercenary purposes. You can find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, ask us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, and feel free to email us directly at contact@GameRevenant.com.
Frank DiCola is the founder of Game Revenant and the artist for Where Shadows Slumber.
Game Revenant 