Welcome to State Of The Art, November 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.

<Don’t forget to add in some lame excuse about Thanksgiving before you post this>

Without further excuses, let’s explore the major leaps forward we took in November!

The Game’s First Level, “Fallen”

It took me a while to get around to doing this Level, because there’s a bunch of triggers I had to animate and I didn’t feel like doing those. For the longest time, Level 0-2 has been our de facto “first level.”

But the game really begins here, along this spooky Forest path, where Obe first encounters the Lantern. You can watch the entire Level in the video below, since it’s so short. (Just ignore the missing sound effects and animation polish, all of that comes later.) Jack and I have a rigid philosophical stance when it comes to game design: we don’t like using text to tell players what to do. That’s annoying! So this Level is designed so that people can learn how to walk. It’s impossible to avoid picking up Obe’s lantern because he automatically does that when you walk on the first open space in the clearing.

This Level didn’t take too long once I actually sat down and did it. Since Obe can only walk around the center of the Level, and his light radius is quite small, there’s a lot of art I can intentionally ignore. This may seem lazy, but there have been times in the past where the opposite has occurred! I’ve done beautiful artwork around the edges of the Level only to be dismayed to find the light never reaches there, and players will never see it. But I still see it. In my dreams.

Level 4-3, “Ramparts”

One of the most ambitious Levels we planned for the game has you scaling the ramparts of a city wall as you climb to the palace on top. It’s a transition Level, which makes it super important for the story. The first two Levels in this World take place in the slums, and the final two Levels in this World take place in beautiful palace gardens. We need a bridge in between those two, otherwise the jump from one to the other will be too abrupt for the audience.

Enter Level 4-3, “Ramparts,” a vertical bridge between two different worlds separated by economic class and power. It’s easier to show you than tell you! We begin on the street, with the dogs.*

*Dogs not included

Then there’s the middle section:

On top, we can see the palace architecture more clearly:

This Level took forever for Jack to make and for me to decorate. Even now, it still needs an extra coat of paint! The puzzle isn’t difficult, but the vertical nature of it means we need to cover up a lot of the screen. I want to put more plants closer to the top, which I didn’t really have time to do yet. Plant life would indicate that even in this barren desert, the wealthy King who lives in the castle gets to be surrounded by beautiful foliage.

Paradise Begun

The game’s final World is a beautiful island paradise floating in the sky. This is somewhat of a story spoiler, but we’ve blogged about it before so I’m not too concerned. Read on at your own peril, I guess?

It’s taken me a while to return to this beautiful setting. Anything that comes last in a video game usually gets the least attention. It’s regrettable, but understandable. After all, if you see a movie in theatres, you often see 100% of it.  Unless you leave in the middle for some reason, you’ll experience the beginning, middle, and ending. But video games are different. Only a fraction of players make it to the end of the game, but by definition anyone who plays a game experiences the first 5 minutes. That’s why those first 5 minutes are so crucial and get so much special treatment.

I’d like to break the chain, if I can. I want people to feel rewarded for getting to the end of this difficult puzzle experience. Here’s the current progress on World 7, which I just started last week. They’re in rough shape at this stage, but you can get a sense of where I’m going with these.

Level 7-1, “Ladder” is all about compiling a ladder from a bunch of broken pieces. The ladder comes together using the shadows from that conveniently specific rotating object. It’s harder than it looks! I designed this one and I forgot how to solve it. Good luck!

On the first landing, we get a chance to show off that majestic Bermudian inspired architecture I love so much. If I have time, I’ll even include a cool dude relaxing on a chair just to show how far removed this World is from everything below.

Level 7-2, “Pond” is due for somewhat of a re-do. The major thing I forgot to include here was a pond in the center where that button is. We want some kind of a sacred grove with a sacred button because that’s how you solve this Level – you need to use the center piece in order to drag boxes around and cast the shadows you need to fix the ending staircase.

This is where design and aesthetics conflict. The pathways we need are very specific and jagged, but the “look and feel” we want is uniform and symmetrical. It’s a tough compromise. I’ll return to this one and remove that weird green rock path (a placeholder) and try to do something closer to my original “Toolkit” Level I posted so long ago:

(This isn’t a Level in the game, but rather spec work I did a few months ago when I was beginning each World’s “Toolkit.” But that center pond is making a comeback, just wait for it!)

Level 7-3, “Tower” isn’t very far along, but it’s such a cool design I thought I would tease it here. You need to see a video of it in action to really grasp what’s going on, so no more for you just yet! Be patient [ ^_^]!

User Interface Sketches

Generally I prefer not to show off drawings that are not part of the game. But Jack and I just started on the user interface design, so it can’t hurt to show you a tiny bit of what I’m working on…

It may seem late in the game to handle this, but we decided long ago that we don’t want a complicated user interface. Above, you can see that our Levels contain all the features that a Main Menu would normally have. We don’t really like having a separate menu detached from the game, so you can access all the key stuff just by “pausing” the game.

Note: this is just a Photoshop design. We haven’t coded this in yet, and not all of the buckets you see above are necessarily being included in the final game. For example, being able to take a picture of the Level is an important social feature, but it’s not essential for the game’s launch and may fall by the wayside.

Interacting with phone features is a big pain and it’s one of the toughest things about game development. Making your game work on every single tablet, flip-phone, e-reader and seashell Kindle out there is a nightmare. Maybe we’ll write a blog about that topic once we get more into the weeds of cross-platform development…

See You Next Year!

The next time you read this particular blog series, it will be 2018 and I’ll be recapping December. Man, where does the time go? This year has gone blazing by!

This month, I hope to finish World 7 and move on to polishing up each Level. That work is highly specific, which is why it was left until the end.

Polishing the Levels will intersect with working on the game’s cutscenes. That’s because some of these Levels have animated characters in them. I’d like to be sure that the animated characters I create work well in both settings, to save myself time later. So don’t be surprised if next month’s update is a bit of a mixed bag. That’s the way it’s going to be from now until the game launches!

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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.