Wow ! I hadn't seen the game since the world wrapping, and it's great to see it used in the construction of your new level. Wonderful work as usual.

@SamLewisJones  Thank you !


@eobet Appreciate your kind words regarding the art for the game world ! I just played a portion of your game, and the low polygon tunnels look wonderful ! I suppose our art differs a little bit with the addition of textures, lightmaping and a reliance on geometric architecture that Sketchup is particularly well suited to handle, compared to the organic spaces from your game world. Good luck with your game !



@Michaël Samyn  Really glad you like the game world ! I think you might be right about the characters though, they do seem to tend towards caricature. A feature that the game world itself does not reflect. I was hoping that bizarrely crafted people in a game world that is otherwise surreal would work, but these integrations might just be a little too cartoonish to sustain a serious narrative.  We might even tone the caricature down while turning them in to three dimensional meshes.

Thank you for the feedback, it certainly helps to reevaluate major game aspects form time to time !

Th game looks wonderful, especially the art ! Though wasn't this game called path of shadows before ?

[# Update four point two.]

# Update four point two.

People from Gubblepur. Character sketches from our current alpha, still work in progress.










Given that this is a somewhat early attempt at sketching humans ( and funny ones at that ) would really appreciate feedback.

I just saw the video and it looks amazing ! The sense of movement through the surreal procedural landscapes is wonderfully captured, and the discordant laser explosions also seem fun.

Good luck with further development.

[also we are still looking for an animator if anyone's interested !]

@mirrorfish  Thank you ! Glad you like the game's art style. Most of the screens that you see are from the playable build we released or the alpha we are currently working on.

also we are still looking for an animator if anyone's interested !

@mirrorfish  Thank you ! Looking forward to your feedback on the previous build.
We will also be releasing the alpha build soon. It is a much more intricate example of the game's systems and our storytelling capabilities.

@ephoete  Thank you !


Making some changes to the floor. ( wip ).

[And we are looking for an animator to work with us on a stealth and exploration game, called Somewhere.]

We are oleomingus. a tiny independent game studio.   

And we are looking for an animator to work with us on a stealth and exploration game, called Somewhere.

We have been working on the game for about a year, and have already released a pre-alpha build. We are now building a comprehensive alpha build which we plan to complete by the end of May.






you can get in touch with us at : oleomingus(a)gmail.com

About.

TIG Devblog

Somewhere is an experimental first person stealth game. Where you navigate the game world by becoming other people.
You can creep up on characters, possess them and use their stories, to unravel the game world.

The forum on IndieDB is probably the oldest repository for the game and we have been uploading there for a while now. And we also have a regularly updated Devblog on Tumblr.

Cargopage        Tumblog      IndieDB




Team.

Our core team is two people. An artist and a Programmer.
We also have two additional programers consulting on ai and shader specific scripts, And a music composer who
works intermittently on the project.

With our current team, the crafting and animation of characters is a bottle neck ! We have been working with a rather simple humanoid so far, and a set of rudimentary animations. But we now really need at least three or four of the game characters turned into finely crafted, animated-humans.




Your Role.

You will be responsible for the modelling, rigging and animating of about three to four characters.  Aside from concept sketches we can provide detailed description and intricate back stories fro each character, and reference images from the time period that the game is set in.

Send us an email if you would like more details about the nature of work or the specific animations we are looking to create.

you can get in touch with us at : oleomingus(a)gmail.com


Some additional links to our work :

A portion of Somewhere was developed at the art residency program at Khoj.

IndieStatik

Videogametourism

an old PC Gamer preview

Indie Game Magazine

[# Update four point one.]

# Update four point one. 








Images in this post are from a single room. A chamber within the Sarai ( resthouse ) where the game is set.
This room forms a fulcrum around which the player navigates the smaller personal spaces of the individual characters.

Having volume blocked our way into the first draft of the space we are now working on
intricate spaces, pendentive domes and vaulted ceilings.



We have also been experimenting with textures. Here there is a deliberate shift from the bold flat pallet
previously explored in fictions to a broadly painted but somewhat detailed imagery.

We are still getting used to the process so the screens are very much a work in progress.

Scribbled on the back of an old accounts ledger. Provenance unknown. Kayamgadh 1932.

" Our lives they softly come and go,
our words are softly sung.
In a crowd of silent people such,
our shouts are inert hung.

But still we shout our little words,
and with a whisper cry asunder.
Till voices from a silent thought,
shall roar the sound of thunder. “

Really wonderful art ! Reminds me of Owlboy a little bit. Good Luck with your Kickstarter.

@Giaddon  Thank you for playing fictions ! and the wonderful feedback.

I completely agree, that our first iteration of dialogue was rather heavy handed ! The restrictive verse, limited both storytelling and the complexity of the narrative itself.

The verse did serve the purpose of obfuscating the difference between dialogue and narration, something we had not wrapped our heads around at the time, but we have now shifted to normal dialogue.


We are working towards releasing an alpha build at the end of the month. It will be a stand alone build but with about eight characters, that you can can flip between, and an intricate narrative of it's own. A bulk of the storytelling for this build is dependent on changes we have now made to the dialogue mechanic, including dialogue boxes or the ability to overhear conversations when sneaking. This build is also an experiment in narration based on how dialogue is written for the theater, and how stories might be told without narration.

Thanks again for playing ! I am really glad you enjoyed the build.


@Minion Studios  Thank you ! Hopefully our just gets more twisted as we build further !

[# Update four. a Story Update]

# Update four. a Story Update


A lot of the writing we create outside the game world and writing that influences the form of the game feeds directly into the lore of Kayamgadh.

Kayamgadh is a mythical town of storytellers. Our game is built around the search for this town. In each portion of the game you investigate a path into Kayamgadh. You accumulate stories, myths and falsehoods about Kayamgadh when you change characters and navigate their lives. Characters who are all of them looking for Kayamgadh.

The largest repository of writings about Kayamgadh come from the notes of a British surveyor, who claims to have returned from Kayamgadh after having lived in the city for seven years. These are excerpts from his Journal.



from the diary of the protagonist
Kayamgadh  1953



It rained. And Kayamgadh was created.

The city was born of nothingness and it’s existence was not wondered at. The people of Kayamgadh were born with it, they emerged from the rain, onto the washed streets of a city that was always there. They were born without a history and they had no wonder in them at the marvel of their existence or at the existence of their marvelous city.

They felt a simple pleasure when the rain blurred their faces, and when it blurred the outlines of their streets. But they never wondered.

In their books Kayamgadh was pictured unchanging, an unmoving bastion. And in their temples and murals Kayamgadh was always there, never to be wondered at. Their stories never told of the birth of Kayamgadh, and their poets never wondered at the beauty of their being.

In the multitude that lived and toiled within the walls of Kayamgadh there was a contentment. A faith in the perpetuity of their city. They knew that to think about the birth of Kayamgadh would be to question it’s eternal form. So they continued to stare through the rain, and marveled at nothing. Wondered at nothing.

And when the rain stopped they did not remember Kayamgadh in the rains, they could not recall the overflowing fountains, and the paper boats in the gutter. They could not remember the gust of moist wind and the desperate streaks of water on their window panes.

They would remember nothing.

And every time they looked upon their fair city, it was with the faith that only this was Kayamgadh. Unchanging. Born the very moment they would look upon it.

.   .     .    .

Somewhere is not an absolute story. It is an exploration of how the unchanging truth of Kayamgadh tears the reality of the people who are searching for it. It explores the painful process of disillusionment whilst looking through the lens of it’s most ardent believers.

Kayamgadh does not exist, but there are stories about it. Kayamgadh cannot be reached but people will travel and will try and reach Kayamgadh. Kayamgadh offers no answer, but people will turn to it for salvation. And nobody can return from Kayamgadh because they were never there, but people will claim and even believe that they have been to Kayamgadh. And in doing so they will create a city of their own,  a city that would truly be a city of storytellers. An untruth, yes. But no less real to the believer, than the actual city. The one that does not exist.

Gubble ( our current build ) is an exploration of these themes. But most of all it is an exploration of the act of creating an illusion. A magic trick. And exploration of how the storyteller might realise the myth, he most firmly believes in. and how one might create out of absolute nothingness, something marvelous. Like the city of Kayamgadh.

The environments look wonderful, and create a strong sense of landscape and place.Especially the winter scene

Thank you !

Wow. Just WOW! 

[# update three]

# update three








Completed the second smaller room for this first draft of our environment.
Added some furniture in trying to make the space unkempt, dark and crowded. A dilapidated resthouse.

A bulk of progress this week though, was the completion of a first draft of the new conversation system.

We now add eavesdropping to your insidious repertoire !









While best explained through video, the changes to the dialogue mechanic now allow the player to overhear
people’s conversations while in sneak. Conversations that would otherwise change were the player’s
presence detected by the characters.








The conversations now exist within the game world rather than as an overlay.
This allows multiple characters to talk to you at the same time, and even with text it is now possible to simulate,
in part, the noise of a quick conversation amongst a group of people.

But most importantly it allows you to listen in on people while they are talking. eavesdrop !



While getting detected will feed into how difficult subsequent sneaking in that space becomes,
it also causes the characters to remark upon your presence and hastily change the conversation,
obfuscating from the clumsy player their private conversations.

Wow ! It was a pleasant surprise to find Somewhere included this week on the magazine. Thank you for featuring our Devblog.

Thank you. @jgrams for that wonderfully detailed reply !

The possession was kept deliberately linear, though I completely understand that forcing linearity within a stealth game can become frustrating, especially when you are meant to try and explore the environments.

We kept the storytelling very controlled and the level design linear, since this was a pre-alpha build, a test of our basic premise. The build we are now working on extrapolates from this basic template in almost all aspects. In subsequent builds, there is no enforced linearity, neither is the flip restricted to a singular person, you can flip between characters as many times as you like, and amongst as many characters there are in the scene.

Still, I do appreciate your meticulous cataloging of the major flaws from our previous build. Thank you again for taking the time to write about and play the game !

[# update two point five]

@acatalept  The brief introduction to both the director and his movies, is rather helpful.
And the short montage looks really bizarre and alluring. Thank you !

# update two point five

Reworking details and colors.

I really like your game title ! and manipulation of heat sounds intriguing. Good Luck.