*i once released games under the studio handle ‘handmade games’

the ‘handmade games’ philosophy extends to every aspect of new game+:

• i must make the sound effects from recordings, synthesisers (and where i must use snippets of sounds i cannot get myself, i must heavily disguise them, not simply reuse the generously-given work of others on places like freesound.org).
• i must make all the songs with single-take recordings of live instruments and heavy, old synthesisers and a million wires and mics going everywhere, a million effects and guitar pedals on everything, two amplifiers recorded on either side of the room for ‘width’ (not only on guitar).
• i must storyboard the intro by hand on paper and work on it for over a year.
• i must draw all the maps and character designs on paper.
• everything must be animated by hand, not programmatically, even wind effects.
• i must code every part of the codebase (except one complicated shader) myself, reuse nothing, even if there is much better code available for free or cheap. unity has a great particle system? roll my own.
• i must use none of the built-in unity helpful systems or effects or even basic sprite handling and instead write my own engine within that engine.
• i must build all my tools (even my own pixel art software).
• i must never use ai, even for search (well except once… to help fix a tricky rendering bug. it did help but also i had to do a lot of work checking the code and i’m not sure what would have taken longer. it’s my nature.)

this is not all to say ‘look how much work i’ve done’, rather to illustrate the pathological amount of control-freakery that has made this project take 14 years and change. it’s something i’m advising against, to be clear. there must be a good balance somewhere. i just clearly don’t know what it looks like. then again, maybe this is part of what makes my games my games. and maybe it’s needed more than even now in a world with so much automation? i don’t know, really. ask me after about 16-17 when it’s done.

anyway, i’ve got a good flow at the moment. it’s taken many years to get a good balance alongside life and music career and some health issues which have made things slower than i’d like. but i with the aid of my new business manager and my putting my music on ‘quiet mode’ for a bit (i have a couple of albums to release soon but then backlog is not really increasing rn…), things are feeling achievable and not only that there’s a new passion and excitement there that’s reminding me of the old days. maybe it’s the similar doomy feeling of ‘this has to work or else i am literally broke’ that gets me in gear and perhaps i even relish that challenge. again, this is not a mode i suggest operating in because it also comes with a huge amount of anxiety that only builds the more years that pass and the lower the reserves get.

as i hit half a century this sunday it’s got me philosophising about how i spent my last decade and a half, almost a third of it i guess? i don’t regret it. i just don’t encourage or recommend it! perhaps there is a balance to be found there, after all.

but i do still love pretty much anything handmade. so i think including as much of it as can be considered practical is always a good way to go.

*like the 1995 Amiga game Keith’s Quest (apologies for stealing the logo, Terry Gilliam!)

So if you’ve been following my twitter feed, you’ll have maybe noticed my recent announcement.

“I’m going fulltime indie again!”

I was sort of forced into doing it last time (around October last year) due to being made redundant following the release of Kinectimals.  During that time I made Soul Brother, but was re-hired at Frontier.  I began working here again in December, and have been for the last four months.  I’m working on a great project, which I can’t reveal of course, so really my choice has nothing to do with dissatisfaction from work.

During this time back in the industry, I’ve had plenty of time to think about the possibility of making the indie hobby into a career.  As I enter my mid-30’s, I realise I’m not getting any younger.  And as I have been given some financial leeway by the sale of Soul Brother, there really is nothing else stopping me from taking the plunge.

So, for the second time in a year, I’m announcing Superflat Games is my full-time job.  And this time for good hopefully!  I’ve set up a real business account, and put my life savings into it, which should keep me going for close to a year.  I hope to finish Legend of the Starmen in less than 6 months though.

I’m wasting no time, and have already begun serious work on the new game.  It’s already feeling quite fun and I have to stop myself playing it (a good sign, I hope!)  I have figured out the class system (there are three) and how the multiple weapons / items you can pick up work together.  As this is mostly code and design, there’s nothing new to show in screenshot form yet (well, ok, have some rocks:)

Anyway, I look forward to sharing proper progress with you guys.  And I suppose it’s a good time to announce I’ll be adding the usual Donate button to the site when I am self-employed next month.  If you’ve ever enjoyed my work or want to help me keep making it, you could always send a few bucks my way…  Money is a bit more of an issue being self-employed when you have a wife and child to support, but if I do ok from a future game I’ll be sure to take it down again!

Anyway, here’s to the future, beautiful games and indie life.

This is the fun part I’ve been waiting for, and slogging through all the nasty bits for…  It’s time to make the game proper!  Now I can enjoy the rest of the project a great deal more because it’s all about:

– making graphics

– making sound and music

– making levels

These parts are why I make games – programming and engines are all a means to an end – and I’m pleased to discover that the engine is adapting well to having lots of shiny new content thrown at it.

In that sense I really feel like I achieved my goal of reducing all the bullshit you have to do to get stuff into the game – it’s now just a case of coming up with the creative stuff, and getting it in there is [almost] pleasurable with the editor.

So far there’s heaps of new locations, sound and animation – but I’m going to hold off on releasing any more demos until I reach the closed beta stage.

I’ll leave you with a new screenie – recalling Soundless Mountain II in some ways (I like bathrooms, what can I say?)

In other news, there could be some wonderful things about to happen with Superflat Games – I will tell more when it’s confirmed – but suffice to say things could get quite a bit more serious in the coming months…

Amnesia is a game I’ve wanted to make for ages… It’s in a pre-production phase and has changed from being a classic point’n’click to more of a Survival Horror title, partly due to the fun we had making Soundless Mountain II, and the fact that I now have a great artist to work with, ‘Lord’ P. Duncan.  The story is essential the same as the point’n’click I imagined, though – it’s about a Japanese man called Aruku re-discovering his identity through dreams and nightmares, in a recurring Groundhog day.  Solving puzzles ‘positively’ will give you a piece of a jigsaw puzzle that is white, solving them ‘negatively’ will give you a red puzzle piece.  When the puzzle is assembled you will regain your memory, although the ending depends on the makeup of your physical jigsaw puzzle.  

It deals with the theme of isolation from society so present in modern Japan (I lived in Tokyo until recently.)  In fact we hope to really tackle some issues about modem life with this game, the distance and loneliness people can feel even when surrounded by others.
 
Visually we’re using what we call a ‘Moving Mosaic’.  This is our tech term for chunky, grainy, dirty hand-drawn pixels with lots of noise and filtering.  As well as this we have dynamic 3D shadows, so the torchlight will be spectacular!  It still is very self-consciously low-res pixel art, but with a modern twist, scaled up 4 times as in SMII – although it is in a higher resolution than SMII and with no colour restrictions.  We’re using 3D cel-shaded characters, with a slightly Prince of Persia feel to the moment.  There will be a lot of ‘being chased’ in the game, and you’ll have to escape this unkillable antagonist time and again by any means necessary, pulling obstacles in his path, cutting rope bridges etc.  Dreams will range from flying to escaping a filthy prison, and that’s all I can give away at the moment!

superflat.