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[PixelCows]

UPDATE 41 - The Sounds of the Ocean


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

Recently we talked a lot about Last Dive's UI design. We covered dialogue boxes, the title screen, and the main menu. Now it's time to change the subject once again!

Being stranded at the bottom of the ocean can't be easy. The otherworldly deep sea life, the clumsiness of the old diving suit, the insurmountable amount of water in every direction... As sweet as good graphics may be, it is audio that really conveys this sort of feeling.

Our vision for Last Dive is one that can't be imagined without closing your eyes and imagining the sounds around you. For this remake, once the gameplay groundwork was done, we immediately felt the need to start tackling this most important aspect of production. So today we will show a bit of how we do sound effects. Let's get going!




Pixel Cows' Sound Design Pipeline

For those wondering, a 'design pipeline' is just a fancy way of referring to a given sequence of steps that are taken to perform a task. This is what we do to design and produce our sounds:


For any given sound effect that we need, we start by trying to imagine as closely as possible how that should sound like.
Then we search through our company's sound libraries and some royalty free repositories for sound samples that are close enough to what we want to create.
We then mix with other audio samples as needed, and alter it with effects that change the pitch or create a reverb, or an echo. Sounds propagate differently underwater, in a way that we only hear sounds of a lower frequency when compared to the air. This is what makes stuff sound "muffled" underwater, and we emulate that by adding a low-pass filter.
Find a way to test if that sound fits and, if needed, adjust / remake / start over. Otherwise, move to the next sound.

These are the basic steps. Now let's talk a bit about our audio setup. We are true workflow maniacs here at Pixel Cows, so we always make sure we have an efficient way of creating the sound FXs we need and quickly testing it with other audio samples to see if it fits.

Hearing a sample while watching the event that triggers it or seeing how it mixes with the other sounds playing at the same time is an essential part of proper sound design. We only know for sure if a sample is working if we have some sort of visual feedback to go along with it. Adobe's Premiere Pro (image above), despite being an editing software, has been working really well for us. It has all the audio tools and effects we usually use as well as being good for mixing sounds together, and bunching them up with video clips to give us a feel of how it'll play in the actual game.


Creating an Atmosphere

We started the audio development by creating Dave's basic movement sounds, such as jumping, walking, and falling from big heights. These were some of the main sounds in the game and the ones our players would be hearing the most, so it was important to get them right.

Our next step was to give them some sort of context. The original Last Dive had a constant atmospheric underwater sound going on (what is sometimes called a soundscape), and it helped a lot with the game's mood and immersion. It has the goal of holding all sounds together. If this looping sound isn't in the game, everything feels a bit disconnected. Notice the discrete, but essential, atmospheric audio of the ocean in the background of the video below.







This deep sea atmosphere is our main looping background sound and will be present in most of the game, but it wouldn't fit well in the introductory coral reefs. For those, we made a new soundscape. You are a lot closer to the surface in this level, so we added wave crashes and seagulls muffled by the water.







What do you think of our sound effects production process? Got any suggestions on how we can improve? We'd love to hear! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 42 - Perfecting a Sound Effect

Hello, everyone! How's it going?

In the last update we started a new topic in our updates, sound effects! After showing our technical setup and talking a bit of how we create SFX here at Pixel Cows, today we will cover how we iterate on sounds to make them feel just right. Showing exactly what we aim at when creating effect and how design decisions affects the way things sound. Let's check it out!




Getting a Sound FX Just Right

After setting the core elements in the last update, we proceeded to other important sounds, like Dave's damage and death animations. This was divided into two parts, the hit that Dave takes and his feedback to it. We wanted the hit to sound a bit like a cracking bone or his flesh getting ripped. As for his response, we were looking for a muffled scream as well as bubbles coming out rapidly, as if he was gasping in his helmet. Here's a first try.





This was a bit outta place. Dave's scream didn't sound like it was underwater and it was way too close to the hit itself, everything seemed like one sound. We had to make the hit more distinct, emphasising the gameplay aspect of it. As for the "in danger" heartbeat sound, it was a cool touch but a bit too oppressive. Players would be spending a good part of the game with 1 HP, it that sound was always playing in the background, it would be too much.





This version was better, Dave's scream now sounded like it was underwater, but perhaps it could be a bit more muffled. As for the hit, it was still off, it now looked like he was cracking his back, especially because of the animation. So we tried a an approach less focused on bones and more on ripping flesh.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-WuS2mSQAU

This worked great for us! The hit and scream were connected but you could still tell them apart, and one wasn't outdoing the other. It also sounded way more like Dave was screaming underwater or in his helmet.

That's it for today! Audio is such a big deal, so we will save some more of our work in that area for the next couple updates. Next time we'll show how we did interface and monster sounds, with more vids to go along. Did you like this update? We'd love to hear you opinion! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[nathy after dark]

Just saw this, and I'm reading through the old logs & loving how you show the progression of game design elements. Following!

[PixelCows]

Just saw this, and I'm reading through the old logs & loving how you show the progression of game design elements. Following!

Thanks Nathy, glad to see you're enjoying our updates!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 43 - From "Great" to "Awesome": How to Create Effective Videogame Audio (Part 1)


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

In the next couple updates we'll wrap up our talk on sound design for project Last Dive. Before that, though, some important news. As you may have noticed, Pixel Cows has a new face! We've been on the road for almost 8 years now. Since our first days working in a garage, a lot has happened! We will soon be telling a little bit of that story and show how our new logo reflects that. As well as giving you guys an exclusive look into how we're rebuilding our branding.


For now, let's talk sound a little bit more! On the last update we showed how we create and perfect sound effects here at Pixel Cows. Today we'll dive a little deeper. Let's get going!


"Game Sounds" versus "Interface Sounds"

First off, we're gonna focus on SFX's creation from a game design point of view. You have probably noticed that Last Dive uses a semi-realistic approach for sound design. When Dave jumps, you don't hear a "boing!" sound as is common in more cartoonish games. Instead, you hear Dave's leathery clothing moving, and the sound of moving water.

But making stuff sound realistic doesn't attend to all game design needs. When players go out of their way to collect coins, they need a reward. It's not satisfying enough to hear the the clanks of Dave's metalic gloves touching the coins. Check the video on the left.

We then added the "coin being computed" sound (check the video on the right). It's not perfect, but man, what a difference, isn't it?









The coins are an abstract concept in this game. It's not expected that the player thinks that Dave is actually finding coins. He's not reacting as a real diver would: "Oh my, who put these shiny, perfectly-aligned coins here? I'll be filthy rich when I leave this place!" No. The coins don't exist in Dave's world. They are there for the player. There is a great tolerance for its audiovisual cues being more abstract than realistic. Their goal is to be satisfying, while only reasonable feasible. That's where the "semi" in "semi-realistic" becomes more clear. The coin sounds are interface sounds - just disguised so that they don't stand off too much.

The Secret Collectible (obviously temporary name) is another good example. There's a "realistic" sound when Dave collects it. But then there's a satisfying interface sound as it's computed. Players must feel that they found something important.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B5scZAO0h-4

Note that the computing sound has no intention of being part of that scene. It doesn't exist in Dave's world. It's there only for the player. Besides, it helps making the game more "juicy". Juiciness is a quality that a game has when interacting with it feels good. A combination of many small effects, animations and sounds can make a game feel "juicy". We'll certainly dive further into juiciness in some future update

To finish up this topic here's one last example of gameplay response, this time related to the HP hud. Can you spot the "realistic" versus the "interface" sounds?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BmFdj1PTN2c

That's it for today guys! Next week we'll show the last part of our sound effects production. For now, let us know what you think of the sounds we created in this update. We'd love to hear you opinion! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 44 - From "Great" to "Awesome": How to Create Effective Videogame Audio (Part 2)


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

In our last update, we started talking about how design decisions affect our sound effects' creation. The difference between Game Sounds and Interface Sounds and how important that distinction is from an overall game design point of view. Today we're gonna wrap this first pass through sound effects creation. Let's get going!


Adjusting Tones

As you can tell, sound design has a crucial impact not only in the game world but also in UIs and HUDs. As a first test of audio for our UI, we created SFXs for our pause screen. This task was really important, as it dictates how other interfaces in the game should sound like.







For this screen, we only used four different sound effects:

- One for opening the menu and for confirming an option
- A subtle one for when the player moves between options
- One for going back or canceling an operation
- One for closing the menu.

Notice how the "confirm" effect sounds positive, and the "go back" effect sounds negative? They are almost the same, but the confirmations go from a lower to a higher tone, and the negative is the opposite. This helps the player understand how his action affect the screen he is navigating. The more we can convey without words, the more natural the interaction becomes.


Missing Sounds

Curious fact: it's really difficult to list beforehand all the sounds you will need. As you start implementing sounds in the game, you begin "noticing the silences". Things you haven't foreseen end up needing some sort of audio feedback. You only know it's done when you stop noticing the absence of sounds. Check it out:







On our "Sounds to Make" list, the moray would only have the biting sound. The blowfish would have no sound at all. When we started implementing audio feedback in the game, however, their silence felt wrong. When planning your audio work, make sure to leave some margin for such adjustments.

Another example is the secret passage sound. At first we didn't plan to add sound to that action. But discovering a secret must be satisfying, so a "revealing" sound was in order!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUj3pNq71wU


Phew! Quite a lot to talk about audio... Hope you guys enjoyed! In the future, we'll surely make another update focused on this topic. For now, time to move to other areas! Did you like this update? We'd love to hear you opinion! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

This is us in a nutshell!


Hello everyone!

It's been a while since we posted something, sorry for that! We've been quite busy working on some none related Last Dive things, such as marketing, branding and our website.

To make up for our absence, today we have a pretty cool quick update focused on some of those things.

For those of you who have followed us for a while, or if you happened to stumble across this thread just now, we'd like to give you a better idea of who we are and what we have been up to these past years!

So without further a do, this is Pixel Cows in a nutshell





Phew! That was intense! XD

If you liked our newest reel and wish to know more about us, our games or Last Dive (our current game in development), make sure to stop by our new About Us page. Tons of cool gifs and info in there! And you can also join a raffle to win a key for Last Dive's Beta test. Don't miss out!

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 45 - An Emotional Bond with Games

Hello, everyone! How's it going?

It's been a while since our last game update. You might have noticed, but the past weeks we were really focused on some marketing and branding tasks. We updated the look on all our social medias, sections of our site and released a new reel featuring a lot of our past games. We also did some long due work on a About Us page! It has a bit of who we are, what we did and what we're doing. Check it out!

All right, so let's get back to what we're really here for! It's a funny thing, when we think about the design of mood, atmosphere and feeling, usually the things that come to mind are environments and music. Have you ever considered how certain interface elements have a huge impact on how you feel about a game?

Today, we'll talk about a mood/design overhaul that has been going on in the game, and believe it or not, it all starts on the File Select screen.


An Emotional Decision





We don't think that a game only begins when you're controlling your avatar for the first time. It starts the moment you boot up the application, or even before that. Call us crazy, but we like to take an immense level of care with everything that happens immediately after you start up the game!

Who among you is old enough to remember the awe of the 16-bits era? One of the greatest things of that time was how connected and attached you felt to a game. The experience of following a game's news through magazines, not quite knowing what to expect, then going to a store and buying or renting a physical copy, and finally unpacking and playing it for the first time! The mystery and sense of wonder of having an entire world fitting into a cartridge was the sort of thing that made us want to become game developers!

We feel that a lot of that magic is lost nowadays, and we'd like to recover a bit of it.
Be warned: Much of what we'll show here will seem insanely subtle and small, but yeah, we do believe they make a lot of difference!

The first thing is our new boot up screen, shown above. That's the first thing players see. That small animation is all about the mood, and it's also a great way to hide a necessary loading screen


It's YOUR game, not ours

Another important design decision in that direction is how we represent your save file. We see it as an important opportunity to further connect the player to the game. While opening a game, just selecting "Start" and having the game transparently autosave your progress for you is efficient and functional, we thought it didn't fit our style. Consider how different it feels to have your very own save slot! You get to create your own little space in the game by picking a save slot to call yours and adding your name to it, and then watching it get filled with little icons representing items you collected, bosses you faced, etc. The Legend of Zelda games do this very well!

There's also something about your save file being represented as a little rectangle that is 'stored' in some screen in the game. It gives your save a sense of physicality, as something that really exists and is there waiting for you to nurture it. It invites you to invest time on it. And it rewards you by showing treasures, items and coins representing how far you've come. This creates an emotional bond that, for us, is part of the magic.


Designing a Save Slot




You've seen this screen before. It's our previous save slot screen. It was pretty and functional, but we wanted something more connected to the game's concept. As Dave's sole connection to the surface is a radio, we thought so should be the player's connection with the game. For the next attempt, old phones and military radios were used as inspiration.




This iteration was sketchy, kinda empty and a bit too much "in your face", but it helped us nail down some important concepts. The idea of a vintage radio / phone really felt in place, and the radio clock inspired display gave just the right level of abstraction to the information being displayed.




We then created a much improved version, taking heavy inspiration from naval computers and command centers. It was meant to look like an information panel, as if you were monitoring Dave's progress through naval instruments.






That's it for today guys! Hope you liked how we approached the redesign of our file select screen. In the next update, we'll still talk about this subject, but focusing on save points and how we intend to make the player's journey a bit more personal.

Got any suggestion or opinions on this? We'd love to hear! We're always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 46 - Awesome Game Interfaces are all about Magic and Mystery



Hello, everyone! How's it going?

In the last update we started talking about how we intend to make Last Dive a more personal experience for each player. Mostly aimed at the saving system and the file select screen, we worked on specific changes increased the emotional bond with the game. Today, we will show a few more changes still tied to this topic and these goals. Let's check it out!


Adding some more magic!

We really like games that sometimes break the fourth wall, like Metal Gear and Eternal Darkness. We want to play a little with that on our file select screen every now and then, specially with the small map in your save slot. We don't wanna spoil it for you, so we'll just leave you with a quick example. Plus, a gif of the navigation flow of the new file select screen!





 



Dammit, I'm afraid of what's next, where's the save game option?!?

Besides how the save file is represented, there's also the how the game is saved. We made a deliberate choice towards having Save Points instead of autosave or other methods. This means you have to get to a Save Point to be able to record your progress into your save slot. We can then use it for a few things:

- A reward for finishing a segment of the game: you've made permanent progress
- Foreshadowing a major event. You know that feeling when you get into a room that has no music, just a Save Point and a huge menacing door? That's what we mean

At the start of this task we made a brainstorming session to come up with an object that would work for us. While that object should fit into the game aesthetics, it should also feel a little bit disconnected to the game's world. Save Points belong to the player's journey, not Dave's.





After playing with abstract and literal ideas, we decided to go with the small computer terminal, which was interesting enough and not entirely realistic. It follows the same vintage radio aesthetics of the save file screen, which is good since there is a conceptual connection between these two interfaces.

After surviving dangerous traps and hordes of bizarre sea monsters, it's a relief to stumble into one of these!





Hope you guys liked this update! We know, we know... Sometimes we look like one of those fussy painters meticulously adding tiny dots of color to a painting that already seems done, but rest assured that those things improved a LOT the game's flow and experience!

Did you like the update to our saving system? We'd love to hear you opinion! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 47 - The Different Roles of Animation


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

Before we start, remember we mentioned that "Last Dive" was a temporary project name? Well, we are really close to announcing the final name! We've been using the final name internally for a long time now, and all in all, it suits the game better for a bunch of reasons. We're wrapping up the game logo and we'll be showing everything in our site over the next couple weeks, so make sure to pay a visit!

Ok, on to today's topic: character animation! Instead of the technical bit-byte, which we may show in the future, today we'll focus on the things we like to consider when designing animation.


Animation Types

Animations play a huge part in Last Dive. Of course, if Dave is jumping, his animation must be that of someone jumping -  obvious stuff apart, animation must always have a clear design goal (just like everything in game development). So besides making sure Dave looks like he's jumping, what else must an animation do?
For starters, let's talk about two very different sources of design points: Action and Personality.


Conveying Action

Besides illustrating what is going on, action animations have the very important role of conveying to the player the rules he is subject to at any given moment. In the case of Last Dive, however, the gameplay is so radically different from what one would expect from a platformer that some extra context is required to make the game action more intuitive. In one sentence, what makes the gameplay unique is the fact that Dave is moving underwater while wearing a very heavy diving suit. Imagine what it would be like to try to run in a swimming pool - while wearing iron boots!

Most of the gameplay is determined by the amount of effort needed to move underwater while being pulled down by an iron diving suit and held back by water resistance. To make that feel intuitive, one of the very first interactions that the player has with the game is controlling Dave with his armor on, while outside of the water. Can you tell in the animation below which details help with conveying this weight?





Notice that these are not generic 'walking' or 'lifting object' animations. They were made to set expectations about how it feels to move underwater.

Now this is the funny part: once Dave is underwater, the water pressure brings with it buoyancy, which actually make things lighter! So once he's in, the main problem is not weight anymore, but water resistance. Starting a movement or moving at low speed is really difficult (think again on the 'trying to run in the swimming pool' parallel), but once objects receive enough impulse to start moving, they actually move much further away than they would outside of the water. Which also applies to jumps:





Buoyancy makes Dave's physics a lot like that of astronauts on the moon. In that regard, we can see how animation is essential to make the game rules intuitive to the player!

Still on that, a lot of game design is about understanding the underlying state machine that determines rule changes and the transitions from one state to the other (walking = moving slowly, jumping = moving faster, falling from a high place = short delay before being able to move again, etc). Animation makes these movement changes not feel unexplained or cheap, but rather a natural consequence of the game's physics.


Conveying Personality

Personality animations, on the other hand, serve a distinct purpose. They focus on displaying character. When playing games, you usually don't have a character's full background laid out for you, and animation helps telling this untold story in a subtle way. In Last Dive we've been careful when creating Dave's animations. Most of them convey something about the character: what he thinks, how he feels, and how it would feel to be on his shoes.





That's it for today guys! Next week we will have more to share regarding animation and a deep look into Dave's personality! If you liked the design decisions behind our animation process or have any ideas on how we can improve it, please let us know! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[sbeast]

Hey, the game looks pretty cool, will you be needing any music for it? If so I would love to help out, you can check out my portfolio here: www.sbeastmusic.com/portfolio

[☠️]

After playing with abstract and literal ideas, we decided to go with the small computer terminal, which was interesting enough and not entirely realistic. It follows the same vintage radio aesthetics of the save file screen, which is good since there is a conceptual connection between these two interfaces.

A great Save Point for the bottom of the ocean would be a black box recorder (with a flashing red light beacon) from a crashed airplane.

[PixelCows]

Hey, the game looks pretty cool, will you be needing any music for it? If so I would love to help out, you can check out my portfolio here: www.sbeastmusic.com/portfolio

Hey Sbeast, glad you liked it! We actually already have a someone creating music and sfx for us, but we'll save your info in case we need something! Thanks

A great Save Point for the bottom of the ocean would be a black box recorder (with a flashing red light beacon) from a crashed airplane.

That's actually a pretty good idea RLore! I'll take it to the team, thanks for the suggestion!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 48 - How to Build a Character's Personality Through Animations


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

In the last update we started talking about animation!  We focused our talk on the two main types of animation: Action and personality. Today, we wanna talk a bit more about the topic, but this time, focused on Dave's character and how animation helps build his personality. Let's check it out!


Who is Dave (and how animation hints that)?

Let's get something out of the way: Dave isn't your typical hero. When sending someone underwater in a diving armor to get something done, maybe you should call some expert marine, right? Someone who is really confident and ready for action, correct? Well, that is not Dave.

Dave will do what he has to do, and will fight for his life, sure... But Dave kinda finds himself in that situation, and while he knows how to move around and all the basic diving procedures, he's not super confident. He's more Peter Parker than Spiderman. Although he can clearly find his way around, he's not really used to the stuff that professional rescue divers might have to deal with on a daily basis...
 


     

When we created Dave's sprite, we decided to give him a big diving helmet. Given the extreme size limitations, we thought it made him more charismatic. However, how do you create animations that convey a character's personality when you can't see his face? How can you tell what he's feeling or what are his emotions? Our solution was to rely on his body, specially his arms, to do most of the storytelling. His exaggerated, Shakespearean moves also convey something about his personality.

Throughout this journey, Dave will encounter many perils that he isn't quite ready to deal with. When facing simple problems, he will sometimes handle it in a childish, stubborn way. When facing true danger, however, his reactions sometimes are really unpredictable... If he's in such a dangerous situation, shouldn't he be more startled?
His nods and nays while speaking in the radio are also a way of showing an incompatible behaviour. He's not very confident in his equipment, and his general good mood makes it seem like he doesn't fully understand how dire his situation is. It's also a great way to keep the player entertained with small details while going through long text boxes


Signature animations

The two animations below, despite being simple, are in fact really important to convey Dave's personality and the situation he's in. We will be covering signature animations in depth in a future update. For now, just try looking at these two gifs, and compare to how other characters would be moving if they were in Dave's situation. If the character was Link, he would be in a much more 'readying for battle' pose. If he was Duke Nukem, he would go "I'm here to kick ass and use my lamp, and I'm all out of lamps!"

Seriously, though. Compare that to how Dave reacts (or doesn't). We don't like to over-spoil story or lore related stuff in these updates, so for now, just know that this demeanor in Dave is not by chance, but rather the result of a very deliberate storytelling choice!




     
That's it for today guys! Hope you liked this update! We've been working carefully in building Dave's animations. Despite being a small pixel guy, it's important for us to work on making him relatable and empathetic.

Do you have any suggestions on how we can improve his animations? We'd love to hear! We are always hanging out on Twitter and Facebook!

Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[foofter]

Cute and fun ideas! I like the wild world of deep sea as a setting, I just never imagined it as a platformer! 

[PixelCows]

Cute and fun ideas! I like the wild world of deep sea as a setting, I just never imagined it as a platformer! 

Thanks man! Yea, it's a pretty weird setting for a platformer hahaha, but we're making it work XD

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 49 - Darkness Revealed!


Hello, everyone! How's it going?

We're super excited with today's update! As you all know by now, our current project is strongly inspired on our past jam game "Last Dive" - to the point where we've been calling it "project Last Dive" since we began development one year ago. We have even called it a "remake", but in all honesty, that's one hell of an understatement!

Our new game was made from scratch. It surely rests on the shoulders of the original's best insights and concepts, but we are rethinking and improving every bit and pixel along the way. Over the past 12 months, just about everything - from graphics to gameplay, to the whole game story - was so dramatically overhauled that our current game barely resembles the original Last Dive!

In that spirit, today we are proud to announce our game's definitive name: Darkness Revealed!

"How to Pick a Name for Your Game"

It's baffling how much time and work are required to properly answer such an apparently simple question! To give some perspective, consider the thousands of hours that go into making a game like Darkness Revealed. Try and take a grasp of the actual meaning of "thousands of hours". Next, try recalling the last time you browsed Steam's new releases session. Think about how much time you dedicate to understand what each single game is about, how it feels to play it, and so on. You'll surely take a closer look at the games that appeal to you the most, but... What about all the others that didn't immediately appeal to you?

Question: What did you really know about those games when you unconsciously decided not to learn more about them?

Answer: The game's name. And a thumbnail containing its logo. Maybe a screenshot if the game is featured. And that's it. With that minimum amount of information, on the blink of an eye, thousands of people will quickly decide if they wanna learn more about this thing you've invested your heart, mind and sweat over thousands of hours or not. Hell, we usually make that kind of decision in less than one second!

Does that help giving some perspective on why choosing the right name is extremely important?

Just for clarity's sake, we are not showing Steam's front page to incite anyone to go super commercial or anything. God knows we are not in this for the money, or we would have launched a bunch of smaller, commercial products by now, instead of spending years perfecting our craft and technologies while making dozens of games and releasing them for free!

Investing the right amount of time in figuring a proper name - and a proper image + logo that represents the core aspects of the game - is essential even for the design process itself. You need to understand your game really well to pick a proper name - and you also need to understand your game really damn well to make it good. So, despite what we, developers, usually think about when making our games, at some point we need to look at them from the outside.

What is the core appeal of your game? What is the game mostly about? What are the core concepts and feelings that you want to evoke when people read your game's name without knowing anything else about it?

Point in case, our game, Darkness Revealed is about many things. It has a deep, emotional, mind bending story. It has cool "moving underwater in a heavy diving suit" jump mechanics. It has giant bosses, failing radios and grappling hooks. However, if we have to translate the game's core sensation in a simple (animated) image, it is probably something like this:

The same goes for the name. Out of everything that we could be saying about our game, after much consideration, we understood that "Darkness Revealed" was the combination of words that better evoked the concepts and feelings that our game is all about.

To be honest, after calling our project "Last Dive's remake" for several months, it did take us a couple days to get accustomed with calling it Darkness Revealed. That's normal, and honestly unimportant. Most people will not be used to what you used to call your game before. In fact, most people never heard about your game before!


That's it for today guys! We're very happy to finally share this announcement with all of you. And that's only the beginning of some cool updates coming soon! Next week we will show a bit of the process that got us to this logo and poster. Some pretty good insights, don't miss out!

And as always, if you want to stop by and talk or share your opinion with us, we will be hanging out on Twitter and Facebook! Or, if you want to be among the first to receive these updates complete and with exclusive content, sign up for our Golden Chest Newsletter. Just one email every 15 days! Good content, interesting articles about gamedev and no spamming. And if you don't like it, feel free to unsubscribe whenever you want.

Thanks for stopping by!

[PixelCows]

UPDATE 50 - Creating Darkness Revealed's Logo


Hello everyone! How's it going?

After months of expectation and preparations for the announcement, last week we finally revealed our game's definitive name! "Project Last Dive" is now officially called Darkness Revealed! We also shared with you guys the game's logo as well as it's final poster. In case you missed any of this, you can read all about it here!

So today, we will be talking a bit more about the game's name and logo. But this time, focused on the logo's development process and how it's final version came to be. Let's get going!


Revealing the Darkness

With the game's name finally set, it was time to create a logo and a visual identity to go along with it. This process was fairly complicated. It took us a couple months and some major twists till we finally got to a version everyone was happy with. These were some of the first "the game translated into an image" tests we made.

For a long time in development we were using this placeholder logo. We weren't fully aware of what message we were trying to send with all of this. What stories were these images supposed to tell? We didn't know it back then, but the image that goes with the logo would become almost as important as the logo itself.

After a few months, we started working on the logo for real. We had long brainstorm sessions to generate ideas of what would make a good logo. Should it be underwater? Should Dave be in it? Should it have monsters crawling out of it? Once we had settled for some cool concepts, we made a first wave of quick and dirty drafts. The purpose of this was trying a big number of ideas with little time investment. It doesn't take much work to see if an idea works or not, if you can abstract from the rendering quality and focus on the design concepts themselves.

This step was huge in helping us identify elements and layouts we believed could work. And you can notice some of these elements are still present in the final logo. After this first batch of tests we tried out a new concept: underwater communication over radio. Dave's radio is his only link to the "outside" world, so we thought this could be a cool theme for the logo.

 

These were the two variants we liked the most out of more than 40 tests that were created. From these logos somethings was starting to become clear:

- Darkness Revealed is a big name, and it's hard to make cool details or smart plays look great. The simpler approaches were always beating altered versions. We tried several types of glitches, cracks and word slides. But everything was affecting readability, and was still unable to really capture the real feeling of the game.

- For the reason above, we wouldn't be able to stray too much from a simple logo. Therefore, the image in the back (or the poster as we've been calling it) would play a HUGE part in setting the mood and expectations straight. It would guide the production of logo thumbnails and overall logo usage in context.

- The radio theme was cool, but it was difficult to make the logo convey "radio" while not feeling futuristic, military or other notions that are not really representative of the game. Toning down the radio effects, however, made the radio theme unrecognizable. This led to whole batches of logos with image effects that felt arbitrary and unconnected to the game.

With that in mind, we went for a drastic change. We had plenty of internal discussions to help us figure out more clearly what story this image had to tell - logo included. So a new testing phase started. Realizing it was mostly a change related to the background image, we came to a new variant.

You may laugh at us, but we called this the "Spielberg logo"! We thought it had a 90's mystery adventure movie vibe, that was much closer to what Darkness Revealed is all about. Encouraged by this new approach, we completely dropped the radio theme and instead focused on fonts and layouts that contributed to a feeling of mystery, adventure and revelation. We took inspiration from sources such as Lost, Aliens, and Prometheus and, before we noticed, Darkness Revealed's true face came to be!
We've shown it on the top of this update, but here is the image again, just for the sake of completing the story:

Holiday's Coming!

We're very happy to finally share this announcement with you guys. And that's only the beginning of some cool updates coming soon! But the holidays are almost upon us, so go make a snowman (or a beach sand castle, if you're on the south hemisphere like us), and make sure to rest well, be with your loved ones and prepare for the awesome year that 2017 is bound to be! We will be pausing our updates for now, and we'll be back in January with cool new stuff, like Darkness Revealed's first trailer! =O

We will still be on Twitter and Facebook, so make sure to stop by and say hello! Or if you want to receive these updates complete and before everyone else, sign up for our Golden Chest.

Thanks a lot! Cya next year!  

[PixelCows]

On behalf of everyone at Pixel Cows, we wish you a
Merry Christmas and an awesome 2017!

We're immensely thankful for the great year that 2016 was for us. And 2017 is bound to be even better!

Challenges will surely come, and we’ll be here waiting for them! We'll be fighting, inventing solutions, and working our asses off to make some sweet lemonade out of whatever lemons life throws at us! Oh yeah, and we’ll be making games and having fun all the while, no doubt about that!

We will be immensely proud and thankful if you are there by our side for another year. You, dear fans old and new, are the reason for everything. You, the person reading this right now, is who makes it all worth it.

All that said, we do wish you some great holidays! This is the time of the year to chill out, hang with loved ones and gain some weight, so just go do that already! Thank you for being awesome, and see you in 2017!


With love,
The Pixel Cows team

[PixelCows]

Back to Work!

Hey guys, been a while since we last talked!

Much like Dave, our caribbean vacations are long gone...

We've been hard at work for the past couple weeks,
and appreciate your patience as we get ready to dive back into Darkness Revealed!

Lots of updates and cool stuff coming very soon!