[Tharon's Garden]

We've been working on a pretty big part of the game, it's called Tharon's Garden. It has all this important magic babble thing about the world the game takes place in, but what's important for the game itself is that it is a hub, from which players can move around the world.

This is a small sneak peek of the place. We are still keeping it's main features hidden until we call it done, but in the meantime you can bathe your eyeballs with this sweet pixelart of one of its corners

I love when games works on this huge areas. It's so inspiring and gives a lot of feelings about the game. By the way, this really looks like a great game, keep the good work!
PS: Now you have one more follower 

Very cool idea, when you have a proper soundtrack it will be even more atmospheric and immersive. I'm really expecting to see where this project is going. Keep the nice work

Very cool idea
It'll be even better when it have sound. I also liked how you put some different genres together.

I'm totally following this.

Loving the origami bird!

Thank you

Writing any game is hard. Fuck, writing is hard. But writing this game is especially hard. There is a lot of writing to be done, and I am nowhere even close to scratching the surface.

I'll agree with you, writing any game is hard. We are passing for some problems with it too, I know the struggle. What helped us a lot was watching talks in GDC Vault and searching some examples in the internet, but when you have to do it for your game is a whole different story.

Good luck with your game

I'M DIGGING THIS

Thank You

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We have some more art from the pre production of White Lie, those to help us define the mood of the game, know some key scenes in advance and will help us a lot as input when we start the production of the game

I read the entire devlog, and I really like where this project is going, especially having these ^ kind of concepts. The art is  consistence and it sets the mood and ambiance for the game really well. Will be following.

Thank you

We had some hard time before getting to a process consistent to our team and project. After specifying better what to do in pre production and talking to more experienced developers we could get to the point were we made this kind of concept and now it's working way better than before for the team. We are still finishing pre production and it's taking more time than we predicted but it's giving us good results and overall we think it's being a well spent time, it's more motivating when we see this results coming and create expectations to translate it in the final game.

You could always ask how the developers of Oxenfree how they did it.

Yeah, I send them an email, maybe they will answer me, will see in the next days. Don't know how much emails they receive, sometimes is hard to get attention from studios, not necessary because they don't want to answer your question, but sometimes they don't even see it, depending on the email flow they have. It would be easier if I knew someone who could introduce me to them.

But anyway, thanks for the insights
I had the same impression when I played the game, but I read in some place that it was 2D, but was not something the devs wrote, so I started wondering how it was made, if it was 2D or 3D.

[What are we doing with the game?]

This looks beautiful!

Well, thank you
Never expected to meet the composer of Antichamber and Stanley Parable here, you did an amazing work in those games.

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Just a quick remind: We now have a Facebook page, so if you want to follow us there your like would be very welcome and appreciated.

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What are we doing with the game?

We are trying to implement a system to get input and make the player walk through the level. Since we will be launching it primarily for PC/MAC/Linux we want player to be able playing in a controller/Keyboard. Also, since our inputs are not complex and our game could be easily played in mobile devices, so we will port it to iOS too, to increase our market. The problem is that it requires another way to process inputs, because we will be dealing with a touch screen.

We have implemented a way to work with mouse/touch. We create a path and define a region the player can click/touch. If a input is processed in this region we calculate how much the character should walk, generate a path and move him to where it should go. The green area is where the player can walk and the yellow one is where inputs will be treated as movements one. We could easily change it create a walking area for each new level.

It's is easing dealing with this kind of input but it won't work well with an analog stick or keyboard arrows/WASD. If we would use this system we will need to check the direction pressed each frame and keep calculating and generating a path to follow, so we are thinking in create a path limited with colliders and make the character walk the usual way. We would still need the two ways to process inputs and movements, because one is better for a specific input and bad for the other. Using colliders would make harder to generate a path and walk to there using touch input, compared to the other way.

We will do some tests to see what works best for us. If anyone has any suggestion it would be very welcome. I know that Oxenfree did a really smooth path and the characters walked through it very well, but I don't know how they did that

And thank you for following our TIG! 

Following for the prettiness.

Thank you

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Below are a new concept from our new artist, Cynthia. She recently joined our team and is in the process of adapting to our timeline, workflow and learning our art style. This first concept is based in one of our moodboard images and is going together with the previous art we are creating to help us see the mood of the game, some key scenes and important moments we will have to implement in the gameplay.

"We all have memories locked in some deep place of our minds. Things we want to be forgotten. Actions we wish we wished we had not taken. Relationship we didn’t want to have spoiled.

But a time comes when we must face the truth. When you look into this cages will you want this memories to stay there or will you set the free to become part of what you are?"

I also concur - it¨s super beautiful!

Thank you for the kind words

While working with the game we are also structuring our Marketing and for that we create an email list. We will use it to send newsletter that can be important updates or some exciting news, like when a demo are released or we are participating in some event, this way if you are near you can pop up and talk to us. If anyone wants to subscribe here is the forms:

http://eepurl.com/ciEyrn

[Besides that:]

In the core of your mind exists a monument where your most precious memories are kept, where your secrets are held. This is the place where you must confront the truth, where you must face your true self.

Maybe in the most remote corridor you will find some darkness you will have to accept before going further into the essence of your existence. Is Emma in the top? Is Emma in the bottom? Maybe she in the underground. The Tower is huge and to find a way in it’s labyrinth is to find a way into yourself.

But a place this important isn’t easily accessed. Some mysterious creatures travel the only way in. Maybe there is another way. But you will probably need to ride some of those carp. The world without Emma is huge and you must learn to be strong or she will be lost.

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Besides that:

We are finishing some sketches for our prologue, so we can make a storyboard and start implementing it. We are also testing some things with light and effects in our images to see how it works and how to better implement it using Unity.

WOW, I discovered today about this game, so amazing. The game looks beautiful, I love narrative games and you have a lot of potential to create an unique work. Really expecting to see it in the future.

The bad point is that it's only 30% done

Good luck finishing it, I'm expecting it to become a great game I would like to play!

Just saw this game on Kill Screen and I loved it. Already voted on greenlight

You have an interesting art style, good luck and I'm excited to see it become a good game.

Looking good. Even if those are not final art, I like them a lot.  I'm looking forward to where you'll take them. Those remind me of a few animations but have certain unique aspects to them.

Thank you
Since we are finishing some things in pre-production we needed to draw some key scenes to have concepts ready when we start implementing it in game. One of our artists likes to make this smalls concepts without color so it can be done fast and the team could have this scenes to see what the game will look like and how the player should feel while playing it. We have another artist that draws colorful concepts with a lot of green, he is making some things and as soon as we have something to show I'll share it here too.

After we finish this things in pre production we will start making a demo to test some things.

Congratulations for launching this game! I love this artwork, I'll try it next week when I'll have more time to play.

Hopefully it will be a success and you be able to create more great games!

Some more concepts we are creating to help seeing the mood of the game (they are not what we will use as the final art, only inspirations for the ambiance and atmosphere). Even tough they are not polished as our game art they are still helpful and the whole team uses it to see the nature of our game.

Love when games have art this unique!

Thanks! It really motivates us hearing people noticing our art style and giving credit to it.

Do you have a producer or the whole team manages all the production on their own in a cohesive way?

In a way I'm working as a producer. I'm not exclusive working with it, I'm handling business and marketing too, but I'm managing the team and creating this cohesion. Besides that we have our art director and she helps creating coherence within the art and the game, since it's one of the most important pillars to the game and the main motivation of the team (create beautiful games). But having a small team sure helps in this, since it's easier to communicate and keep the cohesion during the workflow (we have 6 people working in White Lie).

We started without this roles well defined and we had some troubles, since we are new to game development we didn't predict some things, but when we did kind of a post mortem and identified that this was missing to our team and we decided to divide responsibilities better, things started working more fluidly.

We have some more concepts we are using to set the mood, ambiance, characters and environments of our game




Those are not our final art, only concepts we have to look to see the mood of our game and get inspiration to keep drawing it. It's kind of a guide to show us what feeling we have to pass while the game progress.