CIDER @cidergame - Tumblr Blog

I’ve been working on a total revamp of my site and blog this weekend, and it was long, long overdue. I had been so busy over the last four years in the games industry and with starting up my own indie game studio, that an urge to refresh my site, my personal brand, and my approach has...

HERO CHARACTER CONCEPT ART by Xander Davis / July 19th, 2013

Introducing the hero of Project CIDER! This is a young boy who dreams of being an explorer like his parents. However, he is forbidden against it since his parents have gone missing on a recent expedition...

Designed and concepted by Xander Davis. New project team member Fatih Gurdal is now at work on modeling this character for the Art Vertical Slice Demo.

Please consider donating to the project here.

Super rough sketch for a poster. The newest member of the team, artist Jennyson Rosero, will make this chicken scratch look magical. I just had to do a brain dump of what I saw in my head to get him started!

ART VERTICAL SLICE — Hero's Bedroom

Here's a sneak peek at the first art-finished room in all of Project CIDER so far! Everything that has come before it was prototyped, but this is the first to represent the visual target for the full game!

Inspired by the classic JRPGs I grew up with, namely Chrono Trigger, and action adventure games like the SNES Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, here in Project CIDER, you start by waking up in your room, the full day and adventure ahead of you!

As the final phase on the push to finishing a demo, Art Vertical Slice continues moving forward! Please donate here to help sustain my efforts as I work and potentially recruit artists to help carry this the rest of the way!

—Xander

Atlased the hero's bedroom so I could sketch out things, just as I had on the concept sketch. Next, I'll texture it for reference, then I'll repaint everything to give it a slightly storybook/cartoony look.

Working on a rough sketch for the hero's bedroom. I started with a screenshot of the grayboxed room in GVS and am drawing over that in Manga Studio. Super quick to get ideas out and keep moving.

GVS to AVS

Gameplay Vertical Slice is complete! Art Vertical Slice begins!

"Gaming fans everywhere might want to take a closer look at Cider, and even consider supporting it financially. We may have another gem on our hands; and if it lives up to its “Zelda on crack” joke, many will be instant fans."

—Eric Bailey, NintendoLegend.com

GVS Progress Update 8/13

A lot of progress on CIDER's Gameplay Vertical Slice (GVS), where I am simply blocking out the game with temp assets to a fully complete gameplay experience from start to finish. This lately has meant a lot of head-down work focused on laying in 'big rocks', large and highly impactful systems, such as the Save System.

Well today, I finally got the Save System working and figured out a way to set conditionals for scenes without creating alternate scene files. These are incredibly important, but nothing that can really be shown with a screenshot to great effect.

Once these systems are fully implemented (there are a few kinks to work out yet), I can continue building out the demo's experience from start to finish. It is already at First Playable, I suppose, considering you can start the demo and play it all the way through to a completion screen, returning you back to the main menu. But there are a lot of sequences yet I have to build.

Those sequences are very JRPG-ish, a lot of characters talking, moving, and changing conditions in scenes. A lot of situational stuff. But it's all being designed in a way that you can explore and encounter on your own. I don't want this to be on rails and any 'scenes' are intentionally designed with brevity in mind to get you back into gameplay. There are very short scripted scenes, but they are all in-world and I'm not sure I'll have cutscenes. If I do, they might be in a motion-comic style and very short, since I'd be capable of producing that on my own and it would help convey the 'Saturday morning cartoon' vibe I want this project to take on a bit.

Lots of stuff going on. Most of it is currently 'system' stuff, building up the game systems so I can produce content and have it all glue together. Stay tuned!

"This was undoubtedly the game that changed everything. Yoshinori Kitase, director of the most important RPG ever, has cause for hyperbole. We felt a wind of change inside the company during the development process. There was this incredible feeling Ill never forget: we were making a new thing& making history. Imagine. He pauses. Imagine.

And this.

How a steampunk reboot snapped Square’s totemic series out of cosy familiarity.

This article is definitely inspiring for me on Project CIDER.

Establishing the new World Map (one of many...). Blocking stuff in very quickly using stock assets, just to establish all of the areas of the game and establish the ability to move throughout them.

Above is Remnant Hill, an observatory area and home of the Astronomy Academy, a very important institution of this world, where one of the hero's classmates was accepted into an apprenticeship.

August is dedicated to establishing purely all gameplay for the vertical slice demo, simply blocking out the actual game. Then an art pass on all of it with the actual IP will commence in September.

First-pass initial graybox build of the hero's bedroom, the first room built for the Vertical Slice.

A tough road ahead...

Vertical Slice Demo Storyboard 4

You can donate to Project CIDER here

Vertical Slice Demo Storyboard 3

You can donate to Project CIDER here

Vertical Slice Demo Storyboard Page 2

You can donate to Project CIDER here

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