Intro:Hey guys, I’m very new to the indie scene, but I’ve spent the last year working on a game with a couple very talented people, and I wanted to start a thread here to backtrack, share a bit of our development process, as well as keep people updated on our future stages.
The Game:The game is called Sleep Tight. You play a kid defending your bedroom from monsters that come out at night. You spend your day’s building pillow forts, unlocking new guns, and buying power-ups, all to prepare for the night and the next wave of monsters. The goal is to see how many nights you can survive.
The Idea:Jed and I grew up together, and have known eachother since we were 8 years old. In high school we made some games together. He is an amazing programmer, and I’m a decent artist. After high school, I went off to pursue a career on the art side of movies and video games (
www.maxxburman.com) and Jed went off to pursue Computer Science.
While Jed was in college, he sent me a little protoype. It had placeholder art and was made in Panda, but it was super addicting and fun. I fell in love with the gameplay, and knew that it had a lot of potential. Years passed, but I never forgot about that game. In 2016, I finally sat down and started teaching myself unreal. As I started to resurrect this game, and come up with a look and style, Jed joined me to make the game we’ve wanted to make for so long.
The Gameplay:It’s a twin stick shooter, with a progression system and different strategies you can take to try and survive. Killing monsters drops stars, which you can spend to unlock different skills in different categories. Each day, you’re given 8 suns that you can spend to build defenses, buy ammo, heal, or get powerups. Once you’ve spent all your suns, the next night starts.
The game gets progressively harder, and what starts as a few monsters, quickly turns into swarms. Building a giant fort with turrets, or unlocking strong powerups becomes crucial to surviving, as well as choosing the right gun, to deal the most damage, but manage your ammo use.
The Art:The art style is very Pixar inspired, with hints of Ratchet and Clank. I wanted to make a game that hit the nostalgia bone, and made you feel like a kid, playing in your room. I’ll be sharing a lot of our inspirations and design work in the next couple posts!
The Team:-In additional to Jed Jackoway and myself (Maxx Burman), we had a ton of amazing people help out with different parts, and I’ll be sharing a lot of their work in the coming posts. Check these guys out, they’re incredible:
Matt Kohr / Concept Artist
Dylan Ekren / Concept Artist
Marcelo Pinheiro / 3d Artist
Dustin Mellum / 3d Artist
Josh Dyer / Animator
Tugdual Jaffre / Fx Artist
Fredrick Rattzen / Cover Art
Max Repka / Music
Current Build:Here’s a few screenshots of where we’re at now! Just a preview. Thanks for checking this out and let us know what you think!
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