Tag Archives: mobile

Check Out Jack In This PAX East Video!

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Hey everyone, this week we’ve got something a little different for you!

Currently, I’m in Seattle getting ready for the Mobile Games Forum happening this week. Jack is back in Hoboken preparing for Playcrafting’s Halloween event, which is on Saturday. We don’t have a long blog for you this time, but we do have something that we’ve been sitting on for a few weeks now. On October 6th, I got this message from Christopher Wulf:

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Chris was also in the Indie Showcase, for his game “Ellipsis”

 

They Were Filming Us The Whole Time!

We totally forgot about this, but during the PAX East Indie Showcase back in March, they interviewed Jack and asked him all about Where Shadows Slumber. The video finally went online and it came out awesome!

I do have two complaints:

  1. How come I’m not in this?! \[ v_v]/
  2. How come they left out two of the five games from the Indie Showcase?

Obviously, the second gripe is more serious than the first. There were 5 games at the Indie Showcase, but for some reason only developers from Ellipsis, Bulb Boy, and Where Shadows Slumber made it into the video. That seems a bit unfair, so to rectify that, you should go download Agent A and Tavern Guardians – the missing games! Both games are super fun and I’m bummed that they weren’t featured in this video.

Anyway, enough griping! Watch this, enjoy Jack’s impossibly deep voice, and we’ll be back next week with my thoughts on how the Mobile Games Forum went:

 

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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.

An Indie Developer’s First Trip to Unite

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I’ve been an avid Unity user for nearly 5 years at this point. Without this creative tool, I would not be making games. It’s as simple as that. I owe a lot to this engine; it’s making my dreams come true. It’s even changed the landscape of the commercial game engine market. (Remember when the Unreal Engine 4 had a monthly subscription?)

Despite my love for Unity, somehow I never had the chance to attend Unite, their flagship conference. At Unite, they gather developers, influencers, sponsors, speakers, and Unity employees under one roof for two days of workshops. I finally decided to go when I saw they were holding one in Austin, Texas. Just a short plane ride away, compared to some of the other places they hold this show. Just in the next few weeks, they have three events across the globe: Unite Melbourne, Unite Singapore, and Unite India!

Have you ever been to Unite? No? Then this is the blog for you. It’s a straightforward account of my travels this past week to Unite Austin 2017. If you’re deciding whether or not to go, I hope this honest blog helps you make a decision.

 

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Day 1: “Keynote? Never Heard Of Him.”

Time to confess… there is one problem with this blog: I completely missed Day 1 of Unite, so I can’t tell you what it was like!

I meant to be there, but my flight got rerouted in mid-air to Dallas because of weather in Austin. We stayed at that airport for 2 hours before taking off again. I was supposed to have gotten in around 4:30, which would have been just enough time to check into my hotel and walk across the street to the Austin Convention Center. Instead, we landed at 8:00 pm… right when things were wrapping up and badge pickups had already closed. Damn!

Perhaps you can consider this a cautionary tale. If your travel plan relies on everything going perfectly, you’re not planning – you’re dreaming.

You can check the schedule to see what happened, because your guess is as good as mine. There was a keynote talk, and I’m sorry I missed it! They put it online here.

 

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Day 2: Party Time!

Day 2 was my first real day at Unite. This was my chance to familiarize myself with the main showcase, the talks, and the crowd. My first impressions:

  • Unity gives out free food at breakfast and lunch and it’s really good
  • There weren’t as many people as I was expecting. Or perhaps Unity chose a convention space that was a bit too large for this show?
  • The main showcase seemed underwhelming…

The negative first impressions didn’t really last though. As I went about exploring I found there was plenty to do and tons of people to meet. In fact, Unity scheduled some meetings with me prior to the show, which surprised me! Their Analytics team wanted to meet face-to-face to ask me user questions. I really appreciated that, even if I didn’t personally gain from it. The fact that they want feedback that badly shows me they care about constantly improving the engine, which is a good sign.

The schedule for the talks is online (you can find them here), but if you were wondering what was in the main showcase, I saw the following:

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(a) This live talk show segment being filmed that you could watch

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(b) A live demo area that was for mini-classes

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(c) An Ask The Experts section where you could sit down with Unity employees

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(d) Unity demos with members of the company nearby to explain the tech

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(e) The usual showcase of professional, released games Made With Unity

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(f) A separate showcase for VR titles Made With Unity

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(g) A gallery of printed images, which I was not expecting!

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(h) Booths for sponsors and partner companies, like Nintendo

I didn’t realize this, but Day 2 is also party night apparently! Unity knows how to throw an awesome party. I went to three! First, there was an Amazon App Store party. I believe they invited us because the Where Shadows Slumber demo is on their store. After speaking with one of their developer outreach leads, they even gave me an Amazon testing device!

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What an unexpected surprise!

Then I went to the Unity Analytics party, which was a happy hour before the real deal – the Unite party. It was insane, man. They rented out an entire venue called Fair Market and had the whole thing catered! There were taco stations, chili bowls, dessert food trucks, an open bar… I went a little wild. I didn’t leave until 10:30. :0

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It might seem weird to keep mentioning the parties and the food, but it gets to the core of what Unite is. Don’t go into this expecting some kind of staid business trip. You can totally get a lot done – just networking with Unity employees was worth the money. But I think the real way to enjoy Unite is to treat it like a big gathering of indie devs who just want to talk, hangout, and get to know each other. I wish I knew that going in.

Recognize that the price of admission also covers events that are meant to promote bonding and companionship. Take the name literally! It’s not just wordplay – this is really about remote developers coming together and uniting!

 

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Unity takes their food seriously.

Day 3

By Day 3, I found my footing. I went to a steady stream of talks, with time in between to attend some of the mini-lessons given by Unity. Their employees are so friendly! I missed an entire talk about the Unity Profiler, so I went up to the presenter and asked for help. Not only did he help me, we went to the Ask The Experts section and spent a full half-hour going over Where Shadows Slumber and how to optimize mobile games. It was incredible!

The talks I went to definitely varied in quality. There were some I was looking forward to that really disappointed me (the “Lessons Learned from PSVR” one was not as fun as the description indicated), and others that didn’t seem relevant at first, but totally inspired me. By far, the best one was a talk about this Walking Dead mobile game by Jason Booth of Disruptor Beam.

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Go find this online when he posts it. There’s so much information coming at your face, your face is going to leave your body to find a new one. And that that body will EXPLOOOOODE WITH KNOWLEDGE! He wasn’t shy about the parts of Unity that he didn’t like. That just made me trust him more! Essentially the talk was all about how they got this ridiculous massive world to show up even on lower-end mobile devices. His command of graphics and optimization was impressive.

 

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Hoping to Return

I’m writing this from a hotel room in Los Angeles. (I went straight to IndieCade after Unite) Now that I’ve attended my first Unite, I’ve got just one piece of advice for anyone attending: fill your schedule. When I planned this trip, I allowed for gaps in my schedule to explore the main expo hall. I was expecting something along the lines of GDC – a massive expo hall you could never possibly see all of. Instead, I found it to be a bit lacking. I was able to make the rounds in an hour or two. So, avoid gaps in your schedule and fill your time with meetings or talks! You’ll find that more helpful than wandering around aimlessly.

I hope to return to Unite America next year! (I’m calling it “Unite America” because I don’t know if they’ll be in Austin again.) However, my one condition is that I’d like to return to give talks about Where Shadows Slumber and maybe have a booth in the Made With Unity showcase.

Which reminds me of another talk I saw, all about Unity Connect… time to jump on that!

 

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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.

State Of The Art – September 2017

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Welcome to State Of The Art, September 2017 edition! This monthly progress report is written by Frank DiCola and is focused entirely on how the game’s visuals have improved in the past month. Without further ado, let’s explore the major leaps forward we took in September!

 

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World 3, Aqueduct

This World has been started and is looking promising so far. It’s one of the easier ones on the list, since this World is mostly deep water and narrow pathways. Compared to some of the other ones I did this month, that’s a cakewalk.

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The Aqueduct is a cavernous waterway built by humans that Obe explores midway through his journey. The Levels here often make use of light sources that don’t come from Obe’s lantern.

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This World is not 100% finished – but nothing ever is, at this stage of the process. Jack is currently modifying a water plugin I downloaded from the Asset Store to work with our strange lighting system. There are also highly specific items I still need to model. That always gets left as the last thing…

 

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World 4, City

I’ve been looking forward to working on this World for a long time. I loved the cool mountain desert aesthetic we had in the Demo, and it’s a shame that didn’t make it into the final game. This is even cooler though – a pueblo style city in the middle of a sandstorm! What’s not to like? (Sandstorm sold separately)

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Creating these detailed environments takes time. As I sat down to write this, I realized that 3 of the 5 Levels in the City aren’t even in good condition to show the public! While every Level in this World is functional and the art has been started, very few of them are complete.

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Get out of there, Obe! Nothing good ever happens in alleyways…

This World tells a complex story in a short amount of time, and a lot of highly specific artwork is still in the works. Look out for those missing Levels in a future update, and accept my apologies. I spread myself quite thin this month in order to cover a lot of ground quickly.

 

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World 5, Hills

I really stretched myself this month by going even further and starting World 5, the Hills. I hadn’t originally planned on doing this, but I got artist’s block on the City and decided to move on. This is usually a good idea – by the time I return to my previous work, I’ve had some kind of epiphany for what to do.

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The Hills are modeled after the dreary cliffs of Ireland. We’ve decided to make this like one long graveyard, with mechanics to match: little tombstones that turn into ghosts when they’re covered in shadow. By the time you shine a light on them again, they turn back into tombstones… but they’ve moved. I think you can get an idea of how puzzles might work here. This is our own twist on the Boos from Super Mario, which behaved differently depending on whether Mario was looking at them.

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The Hills require a ton of very specific modeling to complete, and have proven really challenging so far. I prefer to use modular tool kits because you get more mileage out of them. Even so, you can’t argue with the results! I threw out the aesthetic seen in the Level above because it was too formulaic. It obviously made use of one piece over and over again and I got sick of looking at it. Now the Levels in this World will all look more like the image below.

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This is now my favorite Level in the game. I hope you can see why! (And it’s not even done, I still need to add little grass bunches)

 

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World 6, Summit

Since I was feeling insane this month, I actually got started on World 6, Summit. This is basically the top of a snowy mountain. It’s really not done yet – you could hardly call it “started”. I don’t even have any screenshots to show you! But maybe you can get a sense of what they’ll look like based on my Concept Art drawings of Jack’s finished prototype Levels.

Obe ventures out into the freezing cold. He’s completely alone… except for the ghosts of the damned! (Ghosts of the Damned sold separately)

 

 

Don’t Expect Much From October

I apologize for the lack of video this time around. I usually like to keep myself to the high standard of showing footage of the game instead of screenshots. (Video is harder to fake, which means I have to own up to failures in the game’s visuals.) This time around I took the easy way out, since I’m leaving today to go on a crazy week-long business trip. Speaking of that…

September marks one of the greatest leaps forward the game has taken aesthetically so far. To be honest, I was overcompensating for the fact that October is going to be a slow month. Because of this trip (and another during the middle of this month), I won’t have as much time as I normally do to make artwork.

In a perfect world, I would finish World 6 and 7 before we get to November, but I doubt it. Between Unite 2017, IndieCade 2017, and the Mobile Games Forum, I’m missing an entire 2 weeks of work this month. That’s insane! At least you get to hear my thoughts on the shows in next week’s blog post… [ ^_^]!

Just warning you not to get too excited. See you at the start of November for another recap!

 

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We hope you enjoyed this update about the game’s artwork. Have a question about aesthetics that wasn’t mentioned here? 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.

Introducing Our Audio Team!

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We’ve been waiting a few weeks to announce this, but now it’s official: Where Shadows Slumber will have professional audio designed by Alba S. Torremocha and Noah Kellman. Please extend them a warm welcome to the team!

It would be a shame if I spent this entire announcement post blathering on instead of handing the spotlight over to them, so instead I’ll let them write their own introductions. Take it away, you two!

 

Hey all!

“Here we are! Finally! The last pieces of the Dream Team, reaaaaady to rock! And roll. Mostly roll, since we’re recording A LOT.

Everybody knows that sound guys are always the coolest, but let us introduce ourselves
real quick so there’s no doubt left about it.

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Alba was expelled from Hogwarts for using her wand as a baton.

Alba S. Torremocha (Music & Sound Design) Alba comes from a highly-refined background in classical composition and orchestration. She walks around with an eyebrow raised because well, that’s what snobby classical musicians do. She studied violin for 10 years and then Classical Composition and Conducting in Europe for 4 years, with a strong focus on French orchestration techniques (hence the raised eyebrow). In the US, she won the residency of the NYU Symphony in 2016, and recently received the Elmer Bernstein Award. Her pieces have been premiered and awarded around the world, and she always makes sure everyone is aware of this at all times. Her alter ego appears under the full moon and is a kick-ass film and video game music composer. She recently collaborated with the renowned video game composer Tom Salta (Prince of Persia, Halo, Killer Instinct…) on one of his latest projects. More: www.albastorremocha.com

 

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Noah spits fairy dust when he’s excited. No one knows exactly why.

Noah Kellman (Sound Design & Music) Noah comes from an intensive jazz piano background. He toured the country at the Brubeck Institute while working with many jazz greats along the way. He spent year after year striving to be the best until someone finally said to him, “Your music sounds terrible and I don’t understand any of it, so it must be the best jazz I’ve ever heard!” At that point, Noah knew he was a true jazz master and he decided to pursue becoming a master of other things, including filling his medicine pouch in Horizon Zero Dawn and driving with cruise control set to 11 mph collecting rare Pokémon in NYC. But, in his glorious return to professional sound creation, Noah began creating electronic cinematic soundscapes using acoustic instruments to create strangely familiar yet unrecognizable timbres. Although he works intensively as a composer and sound designer throughout the film and game world, his pride, joy, and utter financial downfall is his independent Cinematic Post-Rock project “Nozart”, which has also garnered him attention as a songwriter, producer and performer in the Indie world. More: www.noahkellman.com

 

 

We often work as a team because, as you can see, we come from very different backgrounds and, when we combine them, really cool stuff happens. Also, it’s more fun to have someone else to blame and panic with when the deadline hits your face. We first heard about Where Shadows Slumber at Play NYC. We played it and were instantly amazed, but we quickly noticed there was no music or sound design.

When we asked them about it, they said: *slo-mo, camera closeup on their lips*

‘We’re looking for a Sound Team.’

(Actual footage of the moment)

Then, a choir of angels appeared and bonded us to this sacred quest. Next thing we know, we’re recording lantern sounds in our living room.

We knew right away that Where Shadows Slumber called for an exceptionally unique sonic landscape. After discussing this in great detail with Frank and Jack, we understood that Obe’s story takes place in a world that bears some nostalgic resemblance to ours, but is actually full of creatures, inhabitants and landscapes of mysterious origin. We wanted our sounds to be surprising, alien, and yet somehow recognizable. We tried to accomplice that goal by using unconventional methods to reflect familiar creatures and landscapes. For example, in the following video of World 0, we used a combination of synthesis and acoustic flutes to create the birds throughout the atmosphere. The two types of birds function differently within the game, bringing the soundscape to life.

We also wanted to break the barrier between music and sound design. Instead of an
inanimate loop that plays over and over, we created a soundscape in which both music
and sound design breath together, affecting and changing with each other as the player makes decisions in the game. For example, different layers of music are activated (or deactivated) with the player’s progress (or backtracking) in solving the puzzle throughout the level.

Overall, Where Shadow Slumber is an exciting challenge, and we love nothing more
than helping transport the player into a completely new, beautiful and immersive world.”

-Alba & Noah

 

Look Forward To More Audio Updates

Jack and I are thrilled that we’re able to bring Alba and Noah aboard! Our game has been a silent vacuum for quite some time, and it gets a bit soul-crushing. Hearing the birds chirping in the Forest for the first time suddenly made the game feel alive in a way that it hasn’t since the Demo days. It really is incredible how one missing crucial piece, like the sense of sound, can cripple the experience.

Well, no longer! Look forward to more audio updates as time goes on. We’re all working on different sections of the game right now; Alba and Noah are making their way chronologically though the Worlds starting from the Forest, as Jack finishes up the game’s ending Levels and I’m somewhere in the middle doing artwork. In time, we’ll converge and show our fan(s) the combined effort of everyone’s talents working together. Until then, you’ll have to be patient!

 

EDIT (Sept. 26, 3:00 p.m.): A previous version of this article mistakenly contained the wrong video file showcasing the game’s audio. The video has been updated.

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More audio updates are coming in the next few months. Until then, 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.