JABUGA

[jabuga]

A short gamedev retrospective for my first solo-released game, Eschaton, a surreal lowpoly walking simulator set in Scotland.

Save 75% on Eschaton on Steam

Eschaton is a short, experimental, surreal first-person exploration game. Explore the 'aftermath' of a cult ritual in the grounds of a manor

The video goes into detail for development, stats, earnings etc. Going to start using tumblr again (I miss it) so will follow other developers, etc!

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CERNUNNOS, from ‘Eschaton’ (link to see more / wishlist)

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twin peaks inspired fanart in ‘Eschaton’ (which you may wishlist if you so desire)

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1951940/Eschaton/

source: https://twitter.com/ja_bu_ga

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There’s a numbers station now.

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Progress! No, I haven’t been sticking to screenshot Saturdays (I posted 1), and yes, moving house does mean you’re too exhausted to actually do anything. Consistency is a key to a door I haven’t seen for a while.

Progress has been made:

Story

I don’t know why I was overthinking the story when it’s not what I do best. What I need is a sort of semi pseudointellectual narrative that sounds cleverer than it actually is, one which can hopefully pass as deep because of implied worldbuilding, at least to start off with and grow from. I know the exact style I’m going for here and it’s reflected in the story I’m working on. It was a bad decision to create assets and gameplay before Story, shan’t be doing this again.

Story is my biggest progress so far. I am shit at stories but I’ve got something to work with. Worryingly I am developing the game as you would play it. I’m making Act 1. Then I’ll make Act 2, etc. This is not efficient.

Game name - “Eschaton”

I’ve got a name for the game, at least a working title; “Eschaton”. The name I saw by chance reading a book which has similarities to the game. I don’t really want to reveal the plot of the game (to who? to what audience? lol) but Eschaton is a massive clue as to both the style of the game and the story.

Programming and Art / Design

Nothing of import has been made in the programming dept. The video at the top was what I worked on tonight; learning to use Unity particles and it’s my first usage of an asset pack which I heavily edited. (The wonderful ‘low poly cars’ here: https://ggbot.itch.io/psx-style-cars). 

You can’t really tell, but getting the ambient light in the car bonnet to cycle both intensity and colour was a nice wakeup to Unity after a few weeks (took ages, forgot what I was doing.)

Oddly I’m not too fussed about the technical aspects of the game. Technical aspects can be solved, but interesting stories feeling like they need to be inspired. 

Art-wise, I will be using asset packs which I can edit as well as my own work. I always said I would use asset packs and I’m glad I started because it was easier than I expected. My only worry is consistency, I do not want  Eschaton to look like an asset flip garbage trash game.

Goals for next time:

Work through the asset list for Act 1

Implement assets in world

Ponder over a cohesive story

Until next time.

[jabuga]

State of the game (literally)

I'm aiming to have this game published on Steam by October 1st, 2022. That basically means getting it finished by mid September at the latest, so that's around eight months from now. Is that doable? Who knows. Most likely; no.

The current state of the game is actually a bit further along than I'd hoped it would be considering my massive lack of skill with Unity. The character can move around as I want, look at things, interact and describe things they see. There’s context sensitive interaction so all actions are tied to object (doors open, pickups get picked up, buttons get switched, etc).

I’m trying not to overcomplicate things here. This is the first game I am working on with the aim to release which is actually viable to do so, so I’m not overcomplicating things here.

There's a few hurdles to get over here. I am shit at writing stories, all the art needs to be made, I want the game to be fully voice acted as well. Welp.

Art

All of the art is going to be low poly - PS1 style graphics. I mentioned in my first post why; I just like the style. It’s got that tasty retro feel and still eaves some things up to the imagination. If it looks like a door or a statue or blade of grass then normally, that’s good enough. There’s also the general public appeal of it all. These ps1 style horror games are sort of in I suppose now. Or at least they were. 

I’ll make art specific blogs at some point but I’m sticking to some rigid rules; my textures are at most 128x128 and the models can’t be so complicated that they look out of place. as for effects, I’ll use whatever looks good rather than sticking to what was possible on a PS1.

Story

I’m shit at writing stories, and I don’t usually read them either unless I know they’re going to be good. It’s tough, then, deciding to make such a story heavy game, but it’s something I am just going to learn. I like things a bit surreal, so the story is really reflecting that. What I have so far may constitute about an hour of gameplay, with fluff and exploration excluded. 

Something I've found very hard is making this believable; why is a character here, what are they doing and how is that played out in a videogame? You can’t have a character kill a bunch of guys and then feel remorse for killing a special character, etc.

Design

The game has changed a lot in the 2 months I’ve been working on it (one month I suppose, if you count me going home for Christmas), but I’m somewhat settled on what features it will have, and will not have. For my first game lets just say that I am going to keep it simple.

Sound

Music and effects are one of my final considerations. I’ll likely rely on asset packs, free music and the like for this. When it comes to voice acting, I’m hoping to get some friends to do it. I hope they’re up for it, because there might be a lot.

Development

Might as well say it, I am using Playmaker here. I never got on with learning any programming language other than Javascript and web related languages, and I’m more of a ends suits the means kind of person here.

Playmaker has basically allowed me to think of how something should work and then get it implemented almost immediately. While I know there are gonna be issues later, I’ll stick with it for now and rinse out any niggling issues for Game #2.

Conclusion and short term goals

Not sure how often I’ll update, but it’s good to have a dev blog again. Funnily enough my last dev blog is celebrating it’s 9 year anniversary on Tumblr (it’s private and pw protected), but nothing came of that other than lots of half made projects. 

My next goal is to finish the story and whitebox the game. I’ve gone about things all wrong creating art test assets and putting them in the game, so it’s back to square 1 for now!

Anyway, see you in post 3 in the next week or so.

[jabuga]

A somewhat jittery GIF to start off the blog. Decided to start a new blog to track development of this low poly walking simulator I’ve been working on for a month or so. After the initial gains and struggles (learning to use unity pretty much), I’ve hit a snag where I have no idea what the game is gonna be, gonna be about, or what the actual point of it is.

I’ve got elements of a plot, the ingredients to the recipe you might say, but no idea how to put this together in a way that is going to be fun. To tell the truth, I do not like walking simulator games, but my goal is to get a game released and in terms of technical difficulty, they aren’t too tough; there’s no HP, EXP, enemies, just walking, exploring, and some light puzzling.

The key elements I have are that the game is set in Scotland, in an old manor house. 

I’ve gone with a low poly art / ps1 aesthetic because it’s a style I can make quite easily (I also enjoy it and love how it looks). The downside (?) is that I can’t really use asset packs for the art because it won’t fit in with the general unifying aesthetic but I don’t really mind right now .

I think generally the game will just be a character exploring a manor. I want there to be a way to complete the game just narratively, simply experiencing the story, with no “gameplay”, but the player can also go out of their way through noticing certain subtle clues to experience a deeper hidden level to the game. 

So far the game has been somewhat influenced by murder mysteries, Dan brown novels, old folk tales, French myths and legends and some occult practices.

I’ve got all the pieces I really need right now (player moves, can interact, can describe things she looks at), but what I really need is that mechanic to make the game ‘unique’, or do I? Or do I simply release a normal exploration game and save all that for game 2. Who knows!

I’ll use this blog to chat about the game and post updates, as well as likely write other things about game development that are relevant. Cheers!