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[Cabezotta]

ETHEREAL is a meditative game where you have to explore and solve puzzles in a shifting world by going through walls like a ghost or by using various types of mechanisms to modify your environment.

Each corner of its world has been carefully designed to communicate without any text and expose a novel puzzle to solve without time pressure, evoking an introspective state of mind.

ETHEREAL is currently under development for PC/Mac/Linux, aimed to be launched in the first half of 2017.

The Team

The game is developed by Nicolás Recabarren (me!) and Tomás Batista, from Nonsense Arts (www.nonsensearts.com), an indie game studio from Argentina.

Tomás is the one behind the music and sound effects, and i'm in charge of the programming and design.

Of course, a lot of game-design decisions are made within an agreement between the two of us, but i usually make a lot of small decisions, just to make things smoother. But well.. if something turns out very bad, Tom would tell me, and i would have to change that eventually.

We work with a 1000 km distance between us. I'm from Mendoza (very nice place, if you ever visit Argentina) and Tom is from La Plata (another very nice place, close to the capital city), so a lot of times the communication is tricky, but we've managed to work very well besides that.

More info about the game

ETHEREAL is being developed in UNITY (currently ver 5.4)

Globally we haven't achieved anything yet, but locally the game have gotten a little attention so far.

• "Kosice Biennial - Special mention" - First videogame on getting this kind of prize in this latin american event focused on digital and technological art
  
• "10 Most Promising Games from Argentina" - Selected among 9 other titles as the most promising games from Argentina in EVA 2015
  
• "Second Best Project" - Won second place in EVA 2016, at "My first published videogame" organized by ADVA
  
• "Best Game - Finalist" - "Best Game of the Year" finalist at Meet The Game 2016 organized by Gamedia
  

You can follow us and see more about the game here:

• facebook.com/ethereal.game
• twitter.com/ethereal_game

¿What should you expect here?

• EXPERIMENTAL STUFF: We're actually not sure if this is going to be a compendium of great game design choices. We're trying to do a lot of things different and, as you may know, that is a very good idea but very hard to do in the right way.
• PUZZLES: Probably we're not going to expose all the puzzles here, because nobody would want to play the game afterwards, but this game has like a specific language that we think the puzzles are based on. So, we want to talk about that.
• DOUBTS: Yep. This is our first "big" project, so we're not only scared of every decision we make, but also very unsure of a lot of them. Probably being developing this game for so long (almost two years!) intensify that feeling. We hope that this blog is going to help us with that.
• GIFS and other stuff: The game is cute, most of the times, and the gifs are pretty cool too. So, we're going to post a lot of them.
• TYPOS and BAD ENGLISH: Our natural language is spanish (we're from Argentina, remember?), but we can manage to say a couple of things in english, so we're writing the entire blog in that language, to be more international i assume. So, we're going to do our best to do this right, but don't keep your hopes very high

Disclaimer

This is our first "big" project, and this is also our first devblog, so we're going to see how this goes.

This first post is just introductory. In future posts we're going to talk more about the game mechanics, narrative aspects, design decisions, music, and everything we think that could be interesting to talk about.

We want to try to keep it very simple. Short posts, with lots of gifs or screenshots, exposing only certain aspects of the game or certain issues that we're having in the moment.

Of course, a lot of troubles already happen, because we've been developing this game for so long. So, a couple of those post are going to be retrospective, exposing what changes we've made in the past and what happen after that.

Additional info and stuff

We've been making games for a couple of years, but usually very little ones, mainly for game jams.

If you want, you can check some of them here -> gamejolt.com/@Cabezotta/games

You can contact us via twitter if you want!

• Nico's twitter: @cabezotta
• Tom's twitter: @7omasBatista

I think that's all!

If you find the project interesting, please feel free to ask, suggest, comment or otherwise contribute.

- Nico.

[Cabezotta]

Ok, i’m back!

I’m going to continue trying to explain, as well as i can, how the game works.

Probably some aspects are not going to be very well explained, but i trust that Tom in later posts is going to help me completing them.

The main aspect that i’m going to talk in this post is the movement scheme.

¿Why is the movement scheme important?

I believe this is a very particular game overall, but in its core is pretty familiar, because it's a kind of game in which every puzzle consists basically in trying to find the way from point A to point B. Sometimes you have to complete sub-puzzles to complete the main puzzle, but every single step is basically that.

So, the movement is really important.

Keep in mind that there is no direct relation between the physics of the real world and the things that happen in the game’s world. There’s no gravity, for example.

Movement Scheme

The most natural aspect, i think, is the horizontal movement. Is something that we have seen in a lot of games before: you can move sidewise as long as there’s nothing blocking your way.

Simple enough.

Is like a track where the player can move.

Things start to differ when you see the vertical movement.

Something really important to highlight is the fact that you can't move freely around every level. As you may have seen in the gifs, the player always moves sidewise, even when there's nothing above or below.

The player can move vertically just in certain situations.

The character can jump from certain position to another by going through floors, that are the ones that have certain height (that match the height of the track where the character can move around).

Of course, is not important to the understanding of the puzzles in the game how thin the block has to be to be “jumpable”, so every time that you can jump through a floor, the game shows you a little arrow in that direction.

So that’s the basic movement. Everything else goes around that.

Is very simple, i know. So.. how i’m going to explain that it can be interesting?

I probably should start developing the different mechanics that you will be able to find and use within the game, but i’m going to wait until the next post.

I hope that you are getting a little excited about all of this.
I promise that the next posts are going to clarify a lot of things!

What to expect in the later posts

• How the mechanics allow to design interesting puzzles
• How the levels are designed
• Introduction to the aesthetics of the game
• More about the visuals
• More about the music and sound effects
• Probably more and more about everything else!

Please feel free to ask, suggest, comment. If there's something that you're interested in discussing with us, please let us know!

- Nico.

[Tomas (Yawarjelo)]

Hi! My name is Tomas. I'm usually the audio guy (music + sound design). Thankfully in this project I can be more useful and analyze and do little “game design” stuff. Have in mind I’m not the official GD of the project, Nico is. I just like GD a lot. That’s why I’m very happy to help co-designing this game that is very important for us both.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                     

...So, Nico explained the movement scheme in the last post. Continuing in that line...

At first we had the problem of not knowing how to communicate how the movement works. We had a little “ghostly” character and that was it, the player had to figure it out how it moves. But that wasn’t that interesting.

So we put “arrows” when you are able to jump through walls. I say “arrows” in between quotation marks because I like to imagine that the walls are like disappearing beneath and above you and that causes the “arrow” form. At first we weren’t sure enough about this decision because we are not a fan of having an interface. At least in this game.

But it works. Because it let the player focus on the real part of the game and not getting frustrated by how move the character.

So you can move the character… now what?

I think this strange way of moving through the environment sets the tone for what expectations the player could have at the beginning. Because as Nico said, maybe the game at first sight it seems like a platformer. But it isn’t. And it doesn’t work with the rules of our “world”.

The real puzzles consist of connecting two dots (or nodes as we call them) of the same colour. Sometimes you have to connect one pair in particular to open a new path to another zone with another puzzle within it.

The way we organize the different puzzles and the pace of the experience is having a hub or “overworld” in which we teach the player the basics and she/he applies that in the puzzles inside “doors”. More on that in another post...

In the first introductory/tutorial level we have a very safe and controlled environment to let the player discover how the puzzles work. The very first situation that we present is having the player in the middle of the screen, and two nodes at the extremes of the horizontal track.

There’s no way the player cannot solve it even if is not knowing really what she/he did.

The player will probably touch every single node without thinking too much at first. But here what we intended to teach is that, once you touch one node, to connect it you have to touch the other one of the same colour:

Notice that right after the player touches the yellow node, the other one twinkles using sound and visual feedback indicating that to connect them you have to touch it. If the player chooses to touch the light blue instead of the second yellow, the first yellow node will re-appear.

This stupidly complex thing to write is more easy to understand playing the game. I swear it.


Once the puzzles are solved some part of the overworld moves opening a new path to explore. So the game has a linear experience. There are cases in which the path can branch into two (or maybe more in the future) different zones with puzzles. In that situation the player needs to complete the two puzzles to make the branch merge into one path again.

It was really hard to explain all this in a linear way. So here’s a couple of things that I want to sum in in one sentence each to be clearer:

-The player starts in a hub or overworld.
-That is where the basic rules of movement are "exposed". (and other mechanics too).
-The puzzles are inside doors in the overworld.
-The basic rule of a puzzle is to connect a pair of nodes of the same colour.
-This connection may unlock a path to another zone in the same puzzle.
-Once you touch one node, to make the connection you have to touch the other one of the same colour. (the other node will twinkle to indicate this).
-Solving a puzzle or a group of puzzles unlocks a new path in the overworld.


I'm sorry if this is hard to read or understand. I hope I get better over time at explaining this stuff!
Please feel free to ask, suggest, comment. If there's something that you're interested in discussing with us, please let us know!

Thanks for reading!


Tomi...

[tjpalmer]

Lovely animation there.

[Tomas (Yawarjelo)]

Hey there! Tomas "the audio guy" here! This time I want to talk a little bit about what I have been doing with the music of Ethereal.

First of all a quick description of my background as a musician:

I’m primary a drummer. I play drums since I have 12 or 13 years old. I think a lot in terms of rhythm, that’s why it’s the drums the instrument that allows me to get the closest to express myself.
Maybe that’s why I was into progressive rock since always. I played in a Dream Theater tribute band at my 15, and played Genesis songs, Deep Purple, Planet X (not very well though), etc. I think the rhythm doesn't have to be regular or excessively basic to help to express an idea (I don't undervalue simple but well executed rhythms either). In fact in the bands I just mentioned the rhythm has a very active part in the narrative of the lyrics or the feelings the composers wants you to experience. The rhythm it’s always evolving, always pushing forward.

To exemplify this check this video of the drummer of Dream Theater. Look how intricate the signature times are and how the drum beats are constantly evolving. Maybe the progressive rock it’s not of your taste (and I know Portnoy maybe isn’t my favorite drummer) but still check this out! At least watch it for a minute. Imagine how fun is it to play that stuff. To feel that evolution of the rhythm within yourself.

https://youtu.be/henkGn8ybWg?t=3m5s

The point I’m trying to make with this is that for me the rhythm means a lot. This has a lot to do with how I thought the Ethereal music process.

So… as I was saying...

I play a little bit of guitar, bass, keyboards and maybe sing a little bit too, but those aren’t my strengths at all.
In high school and college I studied harmony and counterpoint (but never finished my degree in musical composition).
The thing I think helped me A LOT in what making music concerns was that at the age of 14 I started to record my own songs. VERY crappy songs. But that helped me to build a certain notion or musical intuition. Yes, I studied theory but not that much and I kind of like it that way. This doesn’t mean that I won’t be studying musical theory in the future or that I think harmony knowledge is a bad thing. But makes me feel like I’m discovering the things I’m composing, and I have no rules that limits that discovery.
This is totally a personal thing. I’m not saying that musicians doesn’t have to study musical theory. Please don’t interpret that!

Okey. Going a little faster:

In 2013 I published a solo album called Claroscuro (http://tomasbatista.com/album/claroscuro). In that same year I started to make music for games in a more serious way, kinda. Also won a little music composition contest here in Argentina. In 2014 I launched with my friend Nacho Puccini a minimalistic arcade game called Colourless.

In that same year I met Nico and started working on several tiny games till he showed me the prototype of Ethereal and I INSTANTLY fell in love with the game.

Ethereal Trailer here:

So the thing that matters: The tests I made for the music in Ethereal.

Test I

It was clear to me from the start that the music has to be relaxing, not mentally demanding or too charge of things going on. It has to evoke a feeling of meditation. In counterpart, in my experience, inside game development always is expected that the musicians has to make a really-cool-non-repetitive-a-minute-long loop that help the game feel “not boring”. So in this case I was very scared at the beginning because if you want a “meditation” mood you kinda need repetition and “slowness”, but you can’t be boring, and repetition and boredom are very related somehow in the collective mind of the game developers.

Maybe “repetition” isn’t the right word. Maybe “iteration over the same idea” sounds better.

This is the very first try I made. Very simple, too simple maybe, and not that interesting. The project’s name at that time was “Poem”. We used it as a placeholder though. It has already a quiet mood, also a little bit of nostalgia, but a very electronic sound that I think doesn’t fit with the game. (At first we had not have the visual style and the game itself was very different than what it is today, but that’s another topic).

https://soundcloud.com/tom-s-batista/ethereal-1st-test

Test II

Here’s another iteration I made. It’s not the second I tried but here you can see an evolution. This track is a lot more “quieter” than the first one if you want to call it that way. The only rhythm you hear is an indian percussive instrument that I played in the Vst that comes with Logic Pro but with a low pass filter on it to put its presence a little more far away from the listener so it’s not taking away the player’s attention. You can still feel the pulse with the low frequencies. I took this idea from a track of  The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth Soundtrack in which the drum beat has a low pass filter on it and it’s so damn good I wanted to try it out. Can’t remember the level of the track though.

Notice how the rhythm is steady and there are instruments on top of it that comes and goes building the atmosphere and tone of the game’s environment. There are a couple of “mystic” sounds as I call them because in one point of the game there was like a god that speaked to the player.

https://soundcloud.com/tom-s-batista/ethereal-2nd-test

Test III

Okey here the thing get’s a little bit complicated. I wanted to try to build a system to do some aspect (ANY aspect) of the music... well… procedural. This means that the player would affect how the music evolves dynamically. I wanted to try this because it blows my mind to do something like that. And at the end of the day I didn’t want to make loops that were steady or solid things that just plays in the background of the game. In the gameplay I feel a sensation of “flow”. A streaming of ideas, of visual effects, of possibilities and I wanted the music reflect this in some way (if it's possible).

So this is one attempt to make dynamic music. The thing I tried is to combine several “blocks” of harmony that can change if the player uses different mechanics. This “blocks of harmony” are made by a tonal note or a couple of tonal bass notes, so you can have only a chord or two chords in the same “block”, a pad that brings the character of the chord is currently playing, and a lot of different instruments doing little melodies in the background and in the front of the music.

I like the mood of this one a lot. And some of the melodies are cool ideas to keep exploring I think. At the end I felt like the player has a little bit of control over the music but we felt that it’s not quite there yet.

https://soundcloud.com/tom-s-batista/ethereal-chords-test-3

Test IV

This one is a little more complex because I did a lot of layers but I’ve never could apply this to the game. Like... I had no idea what to do with all this layers. Do you remember all my rhythm rumbling? Well, at some point of development I asked myself “hey, I’m a drummer, why can’t I use my instrument in a weird way to make music for Ethereal?”. I never knew how to do it. But I made this test that involves actual drumming.

There are like 5 layers of just drums. One with Brushes hitting the ring of the snare and doing like a “shaker” sound. One with a swing and a little bit of comping. One with only brushes in the snare. One with the subdivision of the swing. And one with random hits. All recorded quite nicely I think. Then there’s like 3 layers of different very simple harmony but with different melodies on top. And for last there’s I think 3 layers of different “riffs” as I called them, that is a tonal pattern that repeat itself at some point.

So you have a lot of rhythmic layers. 3 riffs and 3 harmony + melody layers. The Riffs layers change based on if the player uses a particular mechanic. The Harmony layers are played randomly one after another. And the drum layers… I don’t know… This was a complete failure. I mean, it sounds nice I think, but is very different from the mood that I was building with the other tests, and the thing that doesn’t fit the most is… well the drums…

https://soundcloud.com/tom-s-batista/ethereal-dynamic-layer-test

To add more complexity to the situation I was learning how to use Fmod to do this without bothering Nico so much.

So I was learning how to use Fmod, trying to put real drums on the game, and trying to come up with a system that dynamically changes the music. All at once.

Wrong Wrong Wrong.

In a way I love that this project makes me leave my instrument almost completely. I could say that rhythm it’s not even vital in the music of Ethereal. I can have a couple of rhythmic elements sure, but it’s not essential or really needed in this context.

The game developed to a point I felt this is a portal to a new world. A different distorted reality, or dimension, or whatever you wanna call it. So it has to sound strange, mysterious, uncertain, yet calm, meditative, quiet. It has to sound like a real place. In that process I had an idea for the implementation of the music that could work. It kind of did in a way, not completely though. But I think we are there. It was the product of a happy accident and of thinking differently the sound design too.

I’m not gonna develop this now because the post is too long already. That would be for another day. But here’s the Main Theme for Ethereal. It came up playing with different samples and thinking in the game like a real place with all the words I mentioned above.
Hope you like it! =D

https://soundcloud.com/tom-s-batista/ethereal-theme

Please feel free to ask, suggest, comment. If there's something that you're interested in discussing with us, please let us know!
Also if you want to check my music, here you can find it: tomasbatista.com
Thanks for reading and Happy Holidays!

Tomi...

[Cabezotta]

Hi! I’m back! Sorry for the lack of updates all this time. We’ve been doing a lot of stuff, and also relaxing a little bit.

A couple of weeks ago we travel to Chicago to be part of the Indie Train Jam. Probably Tomi is going to make a post about that eventually because he is in love with that train.

Also we were at Game Connection America and Game Developers Conference. We probably are going to make another post about that also, so i’m not going to say much more in this one.

Was a very nice start for this year, we are highly motivated!

Now i’m going to talk about Stugan. Which is a very interesting opportunity to all developers around the world. There’s a lot of info. about this in english but very little (if none) in spanish.
That’s why i’m going to do this post completely in spanish, just talking about everything that i found about Stugan and trying to explain why (as we recently did) you should apply for it too!

In later posts i’m going back to english.

Entonces, esto va dirigido a todos aquellos desarrolladores hispanoparlantes que estén interesados en participar de Stugan o simplemente entender qué es y para qué sirve. Seguramente todos ustedes saben inglés perfectamente, pero siempre me gusta encontrar información sobre lo que me interesa en mi idioma (somos de Argentina, hablamos español), así que voy a aportar un poco a eso.

STUGAN significa “cabaña”, es una palabra sueca, pero también es el nombre de este programa acelerador de desarrollo de videojuegos independientes.

Desde el año 2015, en el verano (de Suecia, junio-agosto) el equipo detrás de Stugan (http://www.stugan.com/about-us/) elige desarrolladores de todas partes del mundo y los invita a trabajar en sus proyectos en una cabaña por unas ocho semanas. Lejos de la civilización, en el corazón de la naturaleza.

El objetivo de estos dos meses es poder impulsar proyectos que se estén desarrollando (en cualquier etapa de su desarrollo), dándole a los participantes comida, alojamiento y mentoría. Sin costo alguno.

Hasta donde tengo entendido, el único gasto que corre por parte de los participantes son los viajes.

En otras palabras: Stugan es un lugar donde podés trabajar en tu juego por dos meses sin preocuparte por pagar el alquiler, ir al super, etc., rodeado de desarrolladores y mentores que te pueden ayudar y darte feedback.

Suena como un sueño hecho realidad, ¿no?

Los que han participado solo tienen buenos comentarios que hacer al respecto. En la GDC de este año (2017) tuvimos la oportunidad de hablar un ratito con Robin Baumgarten quien aparentemente está enamorado de Stugan: solo tuvo cosas buenas para contarnos sobre su experiencia y nos motivó mucho a postularnos.

Otro de los participantes de Stugan que admiro y que también parece que disfrutó mucho de la experiencia es Ditto, del equipo detrás de GoNNER, uno de los juegos premiados en Indie Game Festival 2017.

Este programa no solo implica una oportunidad única para lograr nuevas amistades con desarrolladores alrededor del mundo, sino que además, por lo que uno puede leer en distintos blogs y notas al respecto, parece ser que Stugan propone una combinación de diversión y trabajo perfecta, a tal punto de que los participantes hablan de haber estado “motivados todo el tiempo”.

Nosotros claramente estamos muy interesados en participar, pero sabemos que hay muchos interesados alrededor del mundo y el espacio en la cabaña es limitado.
Esto obviamente no nos frena a la hora de tratar de motivarlos para que apliquen para participar de esta experiencia que, por lo que se puede ver desde lejos, parece ser una de esas que te cambian la vida.

Realmente espero que con estas pocas palabras haya, aunque sea, captado mínimamente su atención y en este momento decidan averiguar más al respecto.

¿Quién te dice que en unos meses nos encontremos trabajando en una cabaña en Suecia?

Así que no pierdan más tiempo y preparen todo para presentarse en Stugan, tienen tiempo hasta el 31 de Marzo.
Todo lo que tienen que hacer está en este link: http://www.stugan.com/apply/

[Tomas (Yawarjelo)]

Hi! Tomas here! Its been a while since we could update the devblog! But here we are!


First of all, a couple of good news:


Ethereal was nominated in the past Game Connection America 2017 Development Awards in a bunch of categories!
The categories were:

-Best Desktop/Downloadable
-Best Hardcore Game
-Most Promising IP
-Most Creative & Original
-Best Quality of Art (nice one Nico!)
-Best Indie Game

We couldn't won anything but it was a great experience non the less. We met a lot of interesting game devs from around the world and made some new friends as well.


BUT! (Round 2!)

We recently find out that Ethereal was nominated for Best Sound (yay!) and Best Latin America Game in the Big Festival of Brazil!
http://2017.bigfestival.com.br/2017finalistsen.html?lang=en

We couldn't be more happy about this! It really helps to recharge our batteries to keep going with this project. Plus we are accumulating a bunch of nominations from different festivals, that's encouraging!! We must be doing something "good" (we hope)...


So... About what we are currently working on


The project changed a lot in this past months. Nico is working in a new structure for the entire game. Let's say there's a percentage of non-linearity added to the experience now. But we are going to explain this in detail in future updates.
This new structure makes for a bunch of sound effects to not work as first intended. So I'm hurrying to try to fix those as soon as I can for the new demo we are going to showcase at Big Festival in Brazil. Plus I'm making new music for the different levels, fun work!


So, that's it for now but I'll try to do my best to keep updated this as frequently as I can. Probably with more shorter updates.

Thanks for reading!