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[nt]

I just realized I never talked about it here, there was this feature the guys at Qubicle made about In The Shadows for their Greenlight page, which is now greenlit. I use this software to do all the environments tiles in the game in voxels and it's pretty cool. They aren't giving me anything to say that, I just really love their software you should check it out if you like voxel stuff!

The video they made :


It features a neat "fake building the scene" sequence I made for them, and some stuff I might have or not shown before here.

http://www.getqubicle.com/
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=551541487&searchtext=qubicle

So that's that

[hyperduck]

How anybody could dislike that trailer is beyond me, this is a really beautiful game, I love the warmth from the lighting in it. Music is sounding good too! Looking forward to Q2 2016!

[and]

hey that's cool. I noticed the video has a good number of views which will be good for spreading the word about In The Shadows too!

It's actually a really interesting video, even though I use GameMaker so it's not something I'd probably try to implement in my games, it really shows you how you have given the game such a beautiful aesthetic.

[nt]

So, just updating, i'm hard at work on the game, making levels, fixing bugs, making things pretty. I don't have much technical stuff to share at this point since I'm full on production making levels. The stuff I add to the game are very simple stuff and I don't really know what to share really.

In other news, I'll be at Montreal jeux indie 2016 on February 20, to show In The Shadows, with a playable demo. So if you live in Montreal you should come take a look, there will be other cool games!

https://www.facebook.com/montrealjoue/ (in french)

This will be my first time showing the game in public, so I'm a bit stressed out, still a lot of things to fix to make things go as smoothly as possible, but its very exciting!

[blindskystudios]

will most definitely be keeping an eye on this game. It looks unreasonably beautiful!

[PixHammer]

Hey, I think I saw this somewhere a while back, and I remember thinking it looked super interesting! I had forgotten what it was called when I came around to looking it up again, and I'm so glad I've found it now. Looks amazing man! loving the DOF effect.

[nt]

Thanks for the comments guys!

Not much a devlog entry but an announcement. I'll be at GDC2016 with the IndieMegabooth in SF, so that's pretty cool  

http://indiemegabooth.com/announcing-our-line-up-for-gdc-2016/


With the other expo in February, and now GDC in march, I'm getting nervous.

Also here is the new logo for the game, it might get tweaked here and there, but I'm finally happy to have something that I like, instead of that bigpixel text I used since day one.

[oahda]

Woah, I haven't checked this game out for quite some time now. And I've been even worse at commenting. It keeps getting better and better. You're really using the lights and shadows very nicely.

The recent video was nice! I love watching "behind the scenes" videos like that, where I get to see how things are built up, piece by piece. I've also seen this done for special effects in movies and stuff. In general, extra material is usually at least as interesting as the main product!

[Marduken]

Wow really nice work, love the artstyle and ambience. Best of luck at GDC 2016!

[MereMonkey]

Just discovered you will be showing off your game at GDC! You can count on me being there! 

[TonyManfredonia]

Have fun at GDC!

Wish I could be there in support. You'll do great!

[and]

Good luck at GDC buddy! Remember to try and have a bit of fun while you're there!

[nt]

What's happening...

This weekend, Saturday February 20, I'll be showing the game for the first time in a booth at Montreal Jeu Indie. I'm really stressed out. I'm making this game, it's personal on so many levels, I'm scarred people will just find it boring. Also its just a demo of an unfinished game, I think what I'm scared the most is people walking by, taking the gamepad, playing 30 seconds and giving up... that scare me so much, but i guess it have to happen. I mean how many time did I try a game for 20 minutes and it just wasn't for me.

I updated the game website a little, to show the new logo, put a bunch of social media links and stuff. I need to redo this website from scratch at some point, it's pretty bad

http://www.intheshadowsgame.com/

The recent video was nice! I love watching "behind the scenes" videos like that, where I get to see how things are built up, piece by piece. I've also seen this done for special effects in movies and stuff. In general, extra material is usually at least as interesting as the main product!

I had to cheat and code a little script to animate those pieces falling into place, I just wanted to make something fun that shows that the environment is actually voxels since it hard to tell in the game. I wish I was confident enough to make an actual "making of".

Wow really nice work, love the artstyle and ambience. Best of luck at GDC 2016!

Thanks!

Just discovered you will be showing off your game at GDC! You can count on me being there!  

Cool, will see you there : )

Have fun at GDC!
Wish I could be there in support. You'll do great!

I'll try!

Good luck at GDC buddy! Remember to try and have a bit of fun while you're there!

I hope I will. My second time in Cali, But first time in San Francisco, I hope I'll get to visit a bit!

[nt]

So yesterday was Montreal Jeux Indie, I was showing In The Shadows for the very first time in public. It was really good. I'm gonna write up a little about how was my experience since it was my first time doing something like this, if anyone else is doing this for the first time, well I'm giving you my experience as a newbie.

Montreal Jeux Indie 2016 just before the door opened!

So I arrived there at 10:30 in the morning, the door opened at noon. I can't express how stressed out I was. I was so damn scared... The day before I merged a lot of new code that was barely tested, what if it break, what if they dont like it? so many things could go wrong.

I could not have asked for a better scenario. The official figure is 1000 people came to the expo, I got people at my booth non-stop during the whole day. I got maybe 15 minutes alone at my booth during the whole 12 hours expo, it was really exhausting. People enjoyed the game a lot, people gathering to look, people playing, I got a lot of good feedback and ideas to make things better for the game.

Playtest like this with the public is great, it's easy to see what you can make better, where people get stuck or confused. The only people who played it before were friends and family so this was a totally new experience for me and validating in a way. I would say around 40-50 people tried the game maybe.

I was happy with my build, I got 3-4 small new bugs that showed up but nothing game breaking, it was very smooth for something I would consider beta. I was also distributing post card, I had around 60 of them, they were gone in the first 4-5 hours. I was pretty angry at myself for not printing more. I recommend people to do that, instead of business card that I see people giving away, post card are like hot cupcakes.

Making post cards:

I made them myself with a old laser printer, but cutting them and stuff.. is too much work. I will do something more professional for GDC, since I need to print a whole lot more I think.

If anyone who played the game read this, thank you for playing, it was really nice, everyone was super nice and friendly, it was a great experience!

Only three weeks to go before GDC!  

[TonyManfredonia]

Congrats on the convention!

I remember my very very very first time showcasing a game for PAX East. It was overwhelming but so rewarding, as you said. Rest your feet! Those conferences are always tiring on the feet

[hyperduck]

Amazing you will LOVE GDC, I'm 100% sure of it, everybody is lovely, and they'll def be into this wonderful looking game.

[thefoolishbrave]

Hey! I hope you don't mind me saying that the game reminds me just a tiny bit of Braid where a seemingly average hero navigates a cool world :D

This looks really sweet! The solemn music is a nice touch.

Finally thanks for introducing me to a new tool! I'm going to try Quibicle this weekend :D

[nt]

Congrats on the convention!

I remember my very very very first time showcasing a game for PAX East. It was overwhelming but so rewarding, as you said. Rest your feet! Those conferences are always tiring on the feet

Thanks! yeah 5 day of convention is gonna be hard on the feet for sure

Amazing you will LOVE GDC, I'm 100% sure of it, everybody is lovely, and they'll def be into this wonderful looking game.

Yeah I hope I get enough people to play it. I have higher expectation after my first expo last week now ; )

Hey! I hope you don't mind me saying that the game reminds me just a tiny bit of Braid where a seemingly average hero navigates a cool world :D

This looks really sweet! The solemn music is a nice touch.

Finally thanks for introducing me to a new tool! I'm going to try Quibicle this weekend :D

Braid was an inspiration for the sort of difficulty level I was aiming for at first. My puzzles are much easier I think now, but I see people struggling sometimes, and other time people figure out stuff faster, when they take the time to understand before just doing random things.  Also yeah, Qubicle is really cool software!

Update on things :

So it's Saturday, I don't have much to show today, just fixing bugs and tweaking based on feedback. I do have a list of 20 items that I need to fix before GDC.  On of the problem I saw a lot was people having a hard time pushing box off the ledges, so I'm trying to find a way to make this more obvious. I'm gonna try to fix that today.

Right now It looks like this :

Playing it myself. I make it look easy, but trust me.. people struggle not to fall with the box.

Some problem with this :

1- People are confused about the dotted frame of the spawn zone.  Its not very intuitive and does not  blend well with the game look in general, it feels out of place. People sometime push other box in that zone thinking it does something. I need to find a way to make the spawning zone more obvious and less ambiguous. I need to define a spawn zone since when cubes get destroyed they respawn there. This I have no solution yet.

2- People missed the cube re spawning, they just didn't see it. Sometimes it's too dark, or they don't pay attention. So I added (seen in this gif) an animation when the cube re spawn, which make it stand out a lot more, especially in the darker levels. So this is solved for now.

3- When pushing the cube off the ledge, maybe 30% of the people would fall in the hole with the cube, 30% would struggle to push it little by little (making the cube stand on the ledge by 1 pixel at some point). It's not fun or nice or anything.

My plan for 3 is to make the cube snap at 16 pixels of the ledge, if you continue pushing the player start a "push harder" animation, which make the cube nudge by 8 pixel instantly (thus floating 8 pixels in the void) then if you continue pushing it just drop from the 8 remaining pixel in one shot with the player animation "falling" on the ground. I would make a half second lock on the player so people have time to release the dpad forward so they don't fall in the hole.

I don't know if any of that make any sense, it does to me. I'm gonna try this out now and post about it later.

[Overman]

How anybody could dislike that trailer is beyond me, this is a really beautiful game, I love the warmth from the lighting in it. Music is sounding good too! Looking forward to Q2 2016!

It's just a typical Fez copycat, except the main mechanic is... pushing blocks. 

[nt]

How anybody could dislike that trailer is beyond me, this is a really beautiful game, I love the warmth from the lighting in it. Music is sounding good too! Looking forward to Q2 2016!

It's just a typical Fez copycat, except the main mechanic is... pushing blocks.  

^ this guy

Its like i'm in a room with a bunch of friends and I talk about what I do, then someone gets in the room and piss on the table

haha

Well, to be more informative, the mechanics involve a lot of cube pushing I guess. and switches and stuff. You get to solve puzzles by moving around lights, and forcing monsters to transform into things. Check out the rest of the thread! I don't see why it would be called a "copycat" really.