I'm a founder of a small indie studio Harvey Games and I'd like to tell you about the making of our
first game, The Witch's Cauldron.
Without a doubt most of you understand how hard it is to actually make a game – to bring an idea to
life, from a vague concept in your head to release, and without a budget, too.
In our case the idea and the theme were both kind of a coincidence. Mortiss, our lead programmer,
suggested we took part in Ludum Dare 50. The theme was “Delay the inevitable.” It was a welcome
distraction from our main project and an opportunity to try something new and push ourselves.
Starting with a brainstorm, we tried putting thoughts and images into words. We tossed around
concepts like flying killer bananas and dodging utility bills and touched upon more intimate themes
like love and separation. It was honestly a lot of fun but in the end we settled on a game about
witchcraft and inquisition.
The essence of the idea – the player, taking up a role of a witch, tries to survive during fantasized
Middle Ages and to save enough money to skip town before the inquisition arrives. For that, you
need to pay attention and keep balance between fame (to keep a low profile) and fear (because
shady reputation is bad for business). Look at us, we're basically 1/3 done already! Just need to
bring the idea to life.
Visuals and style were up for a heavy debate. Some argued for an interactive fiction game with
minimalist design, others were for a more detailed fantasy approach, with awesome spellcasting
effects. To please everyone while still being mindful of a three-day deadline we decided on the
minimalist fantasy style, which produced surprisingly funny and charismatic characters.
The crunch required was legendary indeed. These three frantic days forced me to heavily optimize
my animation process (and I'm very pleased with the results). Meanwhile the artist was producing
five characters a day while adding new environment elements. It all resulted in a finished game with
a somewhat coherent plot.
Our game was received surprisingly well and we ended up getting 6
th
place in the local Ludum Dare
contest. Unfortunately the thought about localizing that ton of text into a common tongue had come
too late. So in the global LD we've submitted our game only as an Extra.
Today marks one year since we began developing The Witch's Cauldron and now it's almost done.
During this time we:
–
greatly improved the visuals
–
added a bunch of game mechanics, including potion unlocks and a simple experimentation
process
–
rewrote the story and added several plotlines that can bring in seven different endings
The game now has a
Steam page and
Discord channel.
Only one question left –
what's next for us?Only time will tell.
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