Tag Archives: teams

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.

Alba S. Torremocha (Music & Sound Design).png

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

 

Noah Kellman (Sound Design & Music).png

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.

Dream Team

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As Frank mentioned a few weeks ago, we’re getting closer and closer to the release of Where Shadows Slumber in Spring 2018, and as such, we’re going to try to take on a bit more of an active role in terms of publicizing the game. To that end, I’m going to take some time today to answer a question I’ve been asked a few times, that’s very vaguely related to the topic of publicity. “If you guys were to start another indie game development project,” they ask, “how would you want to expand your team? What skills and responsibilities would you want from your new team members?”

This is an excellent question – pursuing a decently-scaled project requires a lot of forethought and planning, and none of it is more important than designing your dream team. After all, you’re going to be working with these people for a while – so what does your dream team look like? The best way to answer this question is with experience. I’ve been working on this project on a two-person team for over two years now. What’s my dream team?

a-team_1

I will never cave and get Photoshop or something else “professional”!

 

In The Beginning…

When Frank and I first embarked on Where Shadows Slumber, we felt like we already had a pretty good team. Our personal dynamic was good, and we knew that together we had the set of skills that would be required – I would do the programming and design, and Frank would do the art and sound. Boy were we in for a rude awakening!

You see, for our first project, SkyRunner, we did the same thing. We built and released it, and it never really felt like our team had a gap in skills. It didn’t do so well, but we viewed it as a learning experience either way, so we never felt that we had failed to do anything in particular. When planning Where Shadows Slumber, we tried to do the same thing – design/programming, and art/sound. What we didn’t realize was that there was a huge gap in our skillsets. One of, if not the most important skills was something that we simply didn’t possess. We’ve been managing okay without it, but everything would be going a lot smoother if we had thought about it up front.

 

Where We Are Now

Before I get into the things that we don’t have, let’s talk about what we do have. We have a very lean, very agile team, with pretty strong design, artistic, and programming skills. There hasn’t really been a point when I’ve thought “man, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to implement this” or “wow, I really wish Frank were better at art” or anything. These are our strong points, and these are the things that we’ve consistently done well throughout development. I don’t think we need to do anything to improve on these skills at the moment.

On the flip side, there are a couple of areas where we are lacking. You’ll notice that I previously listed ‘sound’ as one of the tasks, but I didn’t mention it above. That’s because neither of us has any training or experience in sound design. Frank heroically took on the sound for the demo, since it sort of feels like a more artistic endeavor, but we quickly realized that we would need someone else to do the sound design for Where Shadows Slumber if we wanted it to have a real professional sound.

However, sound isn’t the thing that we were missing at the beginning. We’ve been looking for sound people, and we’re confident that we’ll be able to incorporate great sound design into the game. No, there’s something else, a huge blind spot, something that could potentially destroy us all and leave us with nothing, something that we never realized we needed, but can’t live without. There’s one more task that encompasses everything we’ve already talked about, and is perhaps more important than all of them put together.

 

Publicity!

A successful game is one that a lot of people download. The idea is that if your game is really good, people will download it. Unfortunately, this idea doesn’t always pan out – in order to get people to download your game, you need to give them some reason to. This is where a marketing and publicity expert really helps.

press

“Our game really speaks for itself.”

This can be a tough pill to swallow – paying someone who may literally never contribute to the actual game itself can feel pretty awful. Despite this, your publicity expert will probably end up being the most important person on your team.

Think of this person as a salesman, helping you sell your product. It doesn’t matter if you have a billion units of the best product on the market – if you don’t have someone to sell it for you, you’re not going anywhere. Infrastructure like the app stores make this a little easier, since you can publish a game yourself, but you still need someone advocating for you and getting people to download the game.

We don’t have the experience or know-how to actually do this. It seems easy – just talk to people, tell them about the game, take any chance to promote it. But the reality is much more difficult. In reality, it’s a full-time job. Talking to bloggers, reaching out to potential publishers, doing interviews, even writing blog posts, all of it adds up to a lot more work than we had anticipated.

In the same way that your game’s name is the first thing people will see about your game, any efforts you make at publicity – ads, going to shows, posts on Facebook – are going to be right up there in your first impression. Why wouldn’t you do everything you can to make sure you make the best first impression possible? It doesn’t matter how great your game is if no one feels like they want to play it!

 

“Doesn’t Play Well With Others”

Getting back to the question at hand – what would I take into account when picking out my DREAM TEAM?

Well, clearly, more people working on any aspect of the game means that the work will be done faster, right? While this is true, it’s also subject to diminishing returns. This means that two people doing the job will get it done faster than just one, but not twice as fast. In the same way, the third person on the job adds even less.

This effect is compounded by the fact that coordinating the implementation of a complex system is a tricky business. If I’m the only one working on my game, then I completely understand the whole system, and I know what changes I need to make and how they will affect the rest of the game. As soon as someone else is involved, we each have to coordinate all of our changes and work to understand the whole system. This overhead can slow things down quite a bit, to the point where it seems like it might be more efficient if just one person were working on it. You’d have to ask Frank, but I assume the same thing goes for coordinating artistic styles and assets.

how-complex-systems-fail

“Alright, new guy, here’s our system. It’s really pretty simple…”

Now, it probably sounds like I’m a crotchety old programmer who refuses to change or take a second opinion on my work. I like to think that this is not the case – I work with a handful of other programmers every day at work, and we do awesome stuff. The difference is one of scale, timing, and goals:

  • Where Shadows Slumber is a small enough project that one programmer can conceive of and manage the entire system. If I were working on a bigger project, you bet I’d want more programmers, just so that we could wrap our collective head around the tasks at hand.
  • We are nearing the end of development for Where Shadows Slumber. There’s still a long time and a lot of work left, but we’re about 80% of the way through development. Bringing someone on now would require spending a lot of time bringing them up to speed. Since there’s so little time left anyways, adding another programmer might actually cost us time, rather than save it.
  • As the only programmer and head designer for Where Shadows Slumber, I think of it as my baby, my brainchild. When working on it, I have very specific ideations and goals – hiring another programmer would mean there’s another person with their own ideas and goals. If they don’t line up with my own, then we’re gonna butt heads a lot throughout development.

Hopefully these points do a good job of explaining why I’m still the only one doing any programming work on Where Shadows Slumber. If I were to start another project, these are the things I would think about when hiring a programmer.

 

The DREAM TEAM

DREAM Team

Dreamin’ of the Dream Team

So, if it wasn’t obvious from everything above, my first addition to the team would be a professional, dedicated marketing and publicity person. Alongside that, I would want a sound designer – which, fortunately, we are actually working toward.

Those two roles, in addition to Frank and myself, would put us in a pretty good place, in my opinion. If I were to continue expanding the team, my next move would probably be to get another artist and programmer to help with the heavy lifting. The best way to avoid diminishing returns, I think, would be to divide the work into discrete parts – for instance, the art could be divided into the art for the game itself, and the cutscenes. If I were to bring on another programmer, I would want someone with expertise in graphics and aesthetics, since those are my weakest areas.

So, if you’re looking to put together your own dream team, my recommendations are to make sure that you don’t overload any one person, and to definitely, definitely not underestimate the value of a dedicated publicity expert. Otherwise you’ll end up posting blogs full of crappy MS Paint art and thinking “Eh, it’ll be fine”.

 

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If you want to know more about how our team is put together, or are curious about building your own dream team, feel free to contact us! You can always find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, 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 Name Of The Game

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As you (probably) know, Frank and I have been working for a while on a certain game-development project. And, as you also (most likely) know, the name of that project is Where Shadows Slumber. For as long as any of you have known about it, that’s what we’ve called it, so it might seem strange to think of calling it something else at this point. But the name wasn’t always Where Shadows Slumber – for quite a long time, our game didn’t even have a name. How did we get from there to here?

When I first came up with the idea for the game and we started on the proof-of-concept, we didn’t have any particular name in mind. We weren’t thinking about it at all, and we didn’t even have an idea of what kind of name we might want. That apathy followed us through the early phases of the game, up to the point where we started going to smaller events, showing it off to people, and getting feedback. We discussed different naming options, but we never considered it a huge priority, and didn’t dedicate much time to it. Before too much longer, we came to the realization – we need a name for this thing!

 

Why Do You Need a Name?

We were just getting started with a new, unknown game, and, against all odds, it was actually going well! People seemed to really enjoy playing our game. They seemed interested in our process as a small team. We had been perfecting our ‘pitch’ at every event we went to, and we know exactly what to say to people when we showed them our early prototypes. That’s when we realized the mistake we had made.

People liked the game, and they wanted to know more about it. They wanted to hear about updates, they wanted to know when it came out. The problem was, the game didn’t have a name – how can someone keep up with it if there’s no name to search by? That was when we stopped messing around. Making a game is hard, and making a successful game involves making the correct decision at every point in the process. This was a place where we had screwed up, but we resolved to fix that mistake immediately, and I think that our fast action was an excellent decision that did a lot to move us toward success. The decision we made was to meet up in person the following week. We would sit down and figure out a name, and neither of us would be allowed to leave until we had decided on one.

 

What’s In A Name?

Now, choosing a name is a surprisingly difficult thing to do. The biggest hurdle for us, I think, was the dedication that it implied – once you pick a name, once people start using it, you can’t really go back. What if we chose wrong?

whatsinaname

MS Paint forever!

While this was a scary proposition, it was also one of the things you want most out of your name. You want people to remember it and recognize it – you want it to last, and you don’t want to go back. Which just means you have to be that much more careful about choosing it. So lets look at all the things you want from your chosen name.

Recognition – The most important part of your name is that people associate it with your game. For us, when people think of the words Where Shadows Slumber, we want them to think of our game, and only our game. This is associated with having ownership over the name – nothing else is named in a way that’s too similar to Where Shadows Slumber. Take my name for example – Jackson Kelly. Go ahead, give it an image search, I’ll wait.
Do you get a bunch of pictures of my beautiful face smiling back at you, or a bunch of guitars? That’s right, the name Jackson Kelly is already ‘owned’, to some extent, by a guitar company. If I were choosing a name for a company or product, I definitely wouldn’t choose Jackson Kelly, because people (and Google) already associate it with something else.

“Pre-loading” Information – When people sit down and play your game, they won’t always know what to expect. There are some people who aren’t part of your target audience, and they might not like your game. Some games require the right mood or mindset. These are all good examples of how your game’s name can “set the mood”. If your game sounds like a puzzle game, then puzzle gamers will know that it will be good for them. If your game sounds like an endless runner, people will know what to expect. This leads, perhaps even subconsciously, to people more often playing your game when they’re interested in the style of the game, and when they’re in the mood for it. This also applies to people following your progress and keeping up with your development.

Telling a Story – Every game has a narrative of some sort – not necessarily a story in the conventional sense, but something you want your players to experience, outside of the mechanics themselves, when they play your game. For a game like Where Shadows Slumber, this is a literal story – something is happening in the world of the game, and the player gets to watch it happen. Other narratives aren’t so straightforward; take Candy Crush, for example. I’ve never played it, but I assume there isn’t really a huge storyline. Rather, what you want the user to experience are the rules of the candy world, and why the player should be connecting the candies.

Whatever the narrative, everything about your game should speak to it, should play a part in making it happen. The name, as the first part of your game users will interact with, is a vital piece. It’s where the journey begins, and you want to make sure that it helps tell your story.

Representing Your Game – Every part of your game should be great, but the most important part of your game is the beginning – can you get a user “hooked”? The name of your game is the first part of your game a potential user will experience, so it should, arguably, be the best part of your game. If you clearly didn’t put a lot of thought into the name, how can people trust that you put any effort into the game itself? [Editor’s note: see “Mr. Game!” for reference] The name is part of the game, and it should be treated as such.

 

How We Came Up With the Name

As I mentioned earlier, the way we came up with the name was to have a few rough ideas in our heads, and then to sit down and get it all done in one session, cagematch-style. Perhaps this wasn’t the most efficient way to get this done, but it stopped us from dragging our feet, which had been the biggest problem. So, we met up at 10 am on a Saturday, and got into it!

naming5

A spattering of words and concepts we considered using.

The first thing we did was to brainstorm – not for names, but for emotions. People buy most of their entertainment products based on emotion, and games are no different. What emotions do we think players will feel while playing, and what do we want them to feel? What kinds of emotions will motivate them to buy it and to keep playing it? By answering these questions, we started to figure out the tone our name should have. The emotions we decided to shoot for, to various degrees, were mystery, fear, suspense, and hope.

Once we had some emotions, we started to focus on the actual content of the name. Our name should be indicative of the things in the game, and, in particular, of the story players will find within. What are our main mechanics and story points? What words can we find for those things that fit within the emotions we chose? Again, we’re not thinking about actual names yet (for the most part), but just building up a collection of words. We ended up with quite a few, but some of the major ones were umbra, nimbus, slumber, wraith, and plenty of others.

After that, we finally got started on actually choosing a name. We tried to combine the words we had come up with into sensible, interesting names. We came up with quite a few, decided on our top four favorites, and made a little bracket. We discussed each of the names at length – what will people think, will it help us connect with players, are there other games with similar names – and eventually narrowed the search down to Where Shadows Slumber!

naming4

The final four!

This whole process took upwards of eight hours. It was an exhausting day, but I think we ended up with a pretty good name at the end of it all.

 

Aftermath

When we first decided on the name Where Shadows Slumber, I was pretty apprehensive, and I think Frank was too. We didn’t want to commit to a name that might not have been 100% perfect. That said, we knew we had to make a decision, so we did.

In the end, I’m really glad we settled on Where Shadows Slumber. I think the name does a lot to describe what our game will be like, we have good ownership over the name, and it really just seems to fit. It was a heck of a process, but I think we made the right choice at the end of the day!

 

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If you want to know more about our naming process, feel free to contact us! You can always find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, 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.

Progress Report

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Frank and I have worked hard on Where Shadows Slumber, and we continue to do so every day. As a team of two, designing a game at our own whims, it’s very liberating. No one tells us what to do, and there’s no bureaucratic red tape forcing us to work on any specific part of the game.

Unfortunately (for us), that red tape does have an actual purpose. Without anyone telling us what to do, we have to figure out what to do! I just touted this as a good thing, but it’s also terrifying! How do we know if we’re doing the right thing? We’re trying to get to a release of a completed game, and we’re the ones who have to decide how to get there! With success comes ultimate glory, but any failure rests on our heads. Given how likely failure is in this industry, we have to make the right decisions at every point of the way. How are we planning on doing it?

Well, despite the fact that I just really scared myself with that last paragraph, we’re going to take a deeper look into what we’ve done so far, and what we’re going to do next, from a project planning perspective.

 

How Far We’ve Come

evolution

The evolution of Grongus

Frank and I are just two normal duders. (Note: technical term)

We’re also two normal duders who happened to be perfectly suited to approach a project like this. He has some sort of degree related to art and technology, and I have some sort of degree in computer science. We both have the resources to survive without depending on the income from what will end up being a ‘pet project’, and yet we’re both driven enough to dedicate ourselves to that project, even though we’re not dependent on it. We’re close enough to be willing to work together, but not so close that we just end up bickering the whole time.

When the idea for Where Shadows Slumber came up, we knew we had something awesome on our hands. We came up with  a plan, developed a schedule, and started working!

Now, that plan and that schedule have changed a lot in the past two years. Features have come and gone, level design has gone through a lot of iterations, and even our day-to-day process has changed. But, through this flexibility, we’ve managed to stay somewhat on-track. We’re still here, we’re still working on our game, and we’re still in a position where we can have a timely release.

Those of you who have never worked on an indie game are probably wondering why that seems like an accomplishment, while those of you who have are dying to know how we did it. And, if I had to choose a word to describe how we got here, it would be introspection.

in·tro·spec·tion
noun
  1. the examination or observation of one’s own mental and emotional processes.

What I mean by this is that we are constantly looking at our process, looking at what we’ve done, the mistakes we’ve made, and the road ahead. We have to asses our project as often and as accurately as possible, and we have to be completely honest with ourselves, if we want an accurate plan of action.

We’ve done this many times throughout development, and last week, we sat down and did the same thing again. So, let’s take a look at that process!

 

Where we are now

In my experience, when working on a game, there are usually three mindsets you’ll fall into:

  • ‘Future me will take care of that’ – This happens when your target release date is far enough in the future that the time left and the remaining tasks haven’t formed into a concrete plan, but you have so much time that you know you’ll be fine. This is often accompanied with phrases like ‘I’ll still have  plenty of time for X once I’m done with Y’. Be careful with this thought process – in my experience, you always have more work and less time than you think!
  • ‘I’m behind schedule, and I didn’t even realize it’ – This might be the most stressful mindset, but it’s probably the best one. This starts to crop up as your release date is no longer ‘in the distance’, and the enormity of your remaining tasks really hits you. You start thinking things like ‘I don’t know if I can finish all this work in that amount of time’. If you’re here, then fear not! This is a great place to be – there will always be a lot of work to do, but at least you’re not in the final mindset…
  • ‘Finishing on time is literally impossible’ – This is where you don’t want to end up (obviously). If you put tasks off for too long, or underestimate how long things will take, or just don’t realize that your release date is approaching, one day you’ll wake up in this mindset. You’ll realize that, no matter how hard you work, there’s simply too much work left to do, and you’ll curse your former self for not working harder. Again, please don’t let yourself get here!

The first thing you’ll notice about these mindsets is that none of them really seem great! There’s no ‘everything is on track – lookin’ good!’ The first one kind of feels like that, but it’s usually just a trap. There’s a period of time, I think it’s usually like 6-8 months, beyond which it’s hard to see how a schedule will play out. You can end up in the first mindset, even if you’re incredibly far behind, just because it’s hard for us to instinctively schedule that time.

Checklist

It’s okay – the only thing left to do is everything!

But, either way, it’s okay! Nobody gets into indie game development for the relaxing schedule and numerous spa days – we expect to be behind the 8-ball. The reason I bring this up is so that I can describe where Frank and I are in the process. And you know what?

We’re behind the 8-ball. We have a lot of work to do. In particular, in the past month, we’ve moved from the first mindset to the second. When we had more than 6-8 months left, it felt like we had all the time in the world. Now that we’ve just crossed the border into the 6-8 month mark, it’s starting to hit us – there’s a lot of work ahead of us. Do we have enough time? Can we get everything done?

These are the thoughts going through our heads now. And there are questions that naturally follow – can we still make it? What do we have to do now? What’s next?

 

What’s Next?

planning

This is what planning feels like in indie game development

When you find that you’ve fallen behind in development, you have to correct your process somehow. In my experience, you have three major choices:

  • Delay the release – There’s not enough time to do everything. The fix? Just take more time! This approach is fine (especially when your fans are expecting high quality), as long as your fans are somewhat understanding, you’re not racing against anything (like a competitor, or your own funds), and you haven’t already delayed the release by a lot.
  • Reduce the scope – There’s too much stuff to do in that time. The fix? Just do less stuff! This basically means that you’ll make fewer levels, add fewer features, and maybe decrease the quality that you expect from your game. This is useful, but it can be dangerous – just make sure that the game you end up with is still good enough to be worth it!
  • Buckle down – This one is last, but it’s usually the first one we try. We can’t change the release date – we made a promise to our fans! We can’t reduce the scope – we will not sacrifice our game! Sometimes in life, you simply have to work harder. Before you realized you were behind schedule, it was easy to durdle about, not really getting the important things done. Once you know you’re behind schedule, sometimes all it takes is a mental shift to get more done.

These are the three biggest options you have. Choosing what you need to do at any given point is an entirely subjective task, in that it depends on the stage of development, the type of game, the personal lives of the team members, the average annual wind speed, etc. Basically, I can’t tell you what to do here – if you’re already working 50 hour weeks, maybe you simply can’t afford to work harder. If nobody knows what your planned release date was, and there’s no market pressure, maybe you can just move it back a couple of months. Just choose what’s right for you, and don’t be afraid to re-asses that choice as time passes.

The important part is to actually make a choice. If you realize that you’re not going to finish your game on time, you need to do something. The math isn’t lying, and the longer it takes to make a change, the worse off you’ll be. Recognize that there’s a problem, and do something about it.

Right now, Frank and I are behind, and we’ve decided that we’re going to buckle down. We’re going to work harder and get more done. In another week, we’ll asses our progress and take a look at the road ahead. If we’re still behind, then maybe we’ll resort to reducing the scope or delaying the release. Hopefully we don’t have to, but it’s important to be flexible and honest with yourself.

This post, of course, does not get into the minutiae of how this planning process relates to Where Shadows Slumber, but I hope it was either helpful for your own planning process, or at least entertaining. Until next time, may you examine your own progress, and I hope that you always find yourself ahead.

 

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If you have any questions or comments about our project planning process (or anything else), you can always find out more about our game at WhereShadowsSlumber.com, find us on Twitter (@GameRevenant), Facebook, itch.io, or Twitch, 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.