Thanks a lot! Yeah we've made some massive changes to the overall appearance of the game as well as some less noticeable changes to some of the game's core mechanics. We're going to go public with the demo within the next couple of weeks, and we've to have more people to test it out. Please let us know if you're interested.

Hi guys, it’s been a while. Development hit a couple of snags that put us on a path where any progress being made didn’t give us a lot to show. But for the last three weeks or so we’ve been able to start churning out good, visual content again and we’d love if you’d tell us what you think.

Since my last update, we’ve basically replaced all of our level assets in an effort to create a busier, more easily-navigated level path. Our artist put together some really beautiful new models to fill the world with, and hopefully by the time all this is over we’ll be able to properly do his work justice.

We’ve also been able to add in some really beautiful new features, as well as perfecting some of the older ones. The new scenery really adds a lot of magic to the original features of growing grass and trees.

And the new stuff looks pretty good too, we think:

In the above image, the player is controlling the fairy to light his way through a nearly pitch black cave. A fire enemy prowls the ground nearby.

The fairy can also carry stuff for the player:

There’s lots more new stuff to see, and I don’t wanna ruin this thread by adding too many gifs and images, so I’ll keep updating as more stuff comes through.

Here's a couple of updates. Vines can be used as a tool or a weapon, and fire can be used as a light or can be deadly to the player. Below, you can see grass burning as a Fire Hound touches it and then the vines in action. We're just using placeholders now for the enemies and vines, so it looks a bit rough, but the foundation is in


Touching burning grass is deadly!





Also, please vote for Sprouts Tale for IndieDB's Indie of the Year!

Thanks for the compliment!

I don't know the amiga games though

The object you see in the video/gif is just a stand in for the actual enemy. The real model looks like this:



But we haven't animated it yet. It will be all black.

Rain kills enemies because the player will be using magic power to manipulate nature to use as a tool or weapon against the evil forces in the world.

As for Navi- we experimented with a lot of designs, and we landed on a simple fairy look. Leaf-wings and a light.

The fairy is used to assist the player, and you will have full control over its movement via the right thumbstick during game. She can provide light and pick up out of reach objects. You can see a demo of how the fairy is used here:

Thank you friken!

Also have the shader done for enemy deaths (we have a proper enemy model too, but havent animated it yet).



Gif shows an enemy being killed by rain

Wow wasn't a whole lot going on in that trailer. How was the game?

Thanks for the second link Paul. It's nice to see some other stuff, since I've mostly been studying Wall-E and a couple other Disney shorts.

As Swampyfoot said, looks like I'm going to have to get pretty comfortable with audio/visual. Especially sound effects and music seem pretty integral to conveying emotion.

Swampyfoot- what did you mean meet in person? Like, literally?

New update has tree growth animated and in the game. We also changed the animation to give the guy more "character:

Thanks for the replies.

Paul, to relieve your implied concerns, I am not doing this to be arty or because I think it will be a more fulfilling or truer kind of a story or any pretentious reason like that. I look at the game I am making and the story that it is trying to tell and imagine that the only way to accomplish my very weirdly abstract goal is to use very little or almost no dialogue.

Thanks for the video, too. I've watched it once already and taken some notes. I'll give it another couple of goes and then see if I can put the pieces together. I appreciate the help.

I guess Limbo did something like this, though it didn't have much a story at all. They hung the running away figure over the player like a carrot though, quite successfully.

As for Journey, I haven't played it. Though I desperately want to. Once PS3 is old hat I'll have to invest.

That's well put Paul. Social Media will definitely help with maintaining loyalty, but usually when it is discussed it seems to be treated as some kind of magical customer tree that Joe could become a millionaire from.

Maybe try to find some websites that cater to parents of young kids and see if you can get them to link to you or something?

Having a team definitely makes keeping motivated a lot easier, but other than just being accountable to someone, I'd say the biggest reason is that you get constant morale boosts. When you get to see that the other person is also working and you can see the fruits of their labor, you get a jolt of morale. Or at least I do.

Sometimes I don't know when second person is appropriate.

Sorry I can't help with the game but just want to say this all looks beautiful and also really makes me want to play Odell Down Under again

Been struggling with this all through development. I know roughly how I want my story to pan out, and I'm 90% sure I don't want it to use any actual words. Just symbols, sounds, and motion to convey meaning and emotion.

It gets tricky when trying to do something like explain to the character what the main villain of the game is and why he should be headed that way.

To a large extent, I have to rely on the fact that players will just be content with the notion that they should be going right because that's the convention. But I have to continue to establish the game's mystery and hang it over them like a carrot.

My question is, does anyone have any experience with a thing like this OR can anyone point me to games that made an emotional connection without using words?

Well if you want to get things moving while you work on the actual design, have the writer do some backstory and history to your world. These are things that probably won't impact game design, but may be a good source of inspiration for new features.

Just a thought.

In the past few years, I've read a lot of books on Social Marketing and the ONLY one I thought had any value at all was called Social Marketing is Bullshit. And it's pretty much right.

Every single book would go, "Look at this great viral marketing campaign by Nike, by Avida, by Dove, by Campbell's, etc; now you should try it!", and I'm scratching my head like, who do they think is reading this book? They use established brands to prove how brand building is important for start ups? Insanity.

Back to the library over and over. Same stuff, different author.

I think social marketing is absolutely necessary and valuable, but it isn't where you're going to get the majority of your business. Contacting members of the press and looking spots across traditional medium is the bread and butter. Social marketing should be used to bolster your main efforts.

That was pretty interesting. Definitely true that the little things can make a huge difference, but I think the trouble comes in in knowing where to draw the line and stop adding little details.

Damn this looks like it could be really really damn cool. Will definitely be watching.