One Last Sunset

An adventure game set in the New-West.

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I could tell by the stench more folk’d died in this clinic than’d been saved...

We’ve been silent, we’re sorry.

Our artist, Ben, moved onto other gigs earlier in the year and we’ve been deciding what that meant for the game. So for a while, we’ve been doing some redesigning and exploring other art avenues. Above is a background drawn by our chum Tara, for example. We’ll share some new character art in the next while, too.

It may be slow for a while as we’re needed over at Darkside Detective right now, but once that wraps up, we’ll be diving into this a lot more.

Long story short - things are still happening in The New West. Have faith and thanks for sticking with us!

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Our buddy Benjy Bates talks about making games, playing games and what has influenced his style over the years. Features some of his lovely One Last Sunset art too :D

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For reasons beyond my ken, the swordfish had a speaker jutting out of its mouth.

A few weeks ago, we showed you a progression gif of one of our locations. We figured it may have been moving too fast for you to make out one of our favourite details - the swordfish-turned-PA system - so we thought we’d post him, zoomed in and static for your enjoyment. Happy Saturday :)

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Didn't know him by anything other than Jeb. He lived way out yonder, just him and the largest, finest supply of gas I've ever seen, even to this day. I saw all sorts fuelling up there, but for some reason not a-one of them seemed to be fixing to try take the station from him. Never did find out why.

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Ain't no man greasier in these parts than Huxton Radler. He'll sell you anything: drugs, guns, love and people (alive or dead). Hell, I'm pretty sure the second we met he was trying to figure out a way he could sell me. 

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Hey guys here's a brief look at some of the stages that go into a location - first pass is a really rough outline, then Ben fleshes out the environment before finally adding in characters. This is for a clinic in the game, belonging to Apothacade Joones (bio previously listed here somewhere). Soon, we'll post some in-world info about this place :)

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Whatever he was smokin' did more than just cloud the room. Things I saw in that tent, well, I hope to never see 'em again...

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We’ve been quiet these past few weeks, eh? Sorry about that. We got caught up reworking some backgrounds, expanding locations and taking on some extra hours at paid gigs here and there to help prepare for the Christmas Vortex. This week we wanted to show you how this stuff comes together in the really early stages. The images attached are our rough notes on two locations - the town of Rust (on the left, written on a train in Vietnam) and The Cliff of Reflection (on the right, drawn atop Bayon temple in Siem Reap). (At this time, Tracey wants to point out that the writing and drawing belong to Dave who, if illegibility is anything to go by, could have been a doctor).

Anyway, with the Cliffs you can see the kind of rough-assed sketches that Ben gets handed to turn into nice looking environments, while the Rust notes show the kind of fast paced and scattered thoughts that slowly intertwine and build up into a place worth investigating. There are all sorts of spoilers hidden in those notes, so read at your own peril. They not only show the framework for Rust, but contain notes on how it ties into other parts of the world.

The next stages, then, are:

Rust needs some location art and these notes to be written up and expanded (on a Com-Put-Or, so they can be read by people who don’t write like 1st graders)

The Cliffs needs their bullet point mess, then grown-up notes

Both then get drawn up by Ben, written up by Dave and turned into something playable by Tracey

Fancy stuff, eh? Anyway this is really just a quick hello and “don’t worry, we haven’t forgotten about you!” We’ll probably be a bit silent until we get into the new year, but when we talk to you then we’ll have some funky stuff to share.

Until then, have some great holidays and we’ll see you in (a no-doubt) cracking 2016!

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Ain‘t nobody ‘round for miles Guess all that‘s left to do is sit here and bleed out

Running out of gas is one of those things that will kill you in a desert. There are others, of course, and between them all and scouring the place for Belt, well, all in all, you’ll end up seeing a lot of different sections of the desert as you play the game. Deserts can be pretty monotonous places, but our hope is to break it up by randomising the little snippets and details of the world you’ll see each time. Hopefully these randomly constructed wide open spaces will keep you entertained throughout your hunt!

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Out of respect for the horrific events in Paris last night, the lives lost and the grieving families, we're not posting a screenshot today. Instead, consider these words of solidarity:

The fundamentalist believes that we believe in nothing. In his world-view, he has his absolute certainties, while we are sunk in sybaritic indulgences. To prove him wrong, we must first know that he is wrong. We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. These will be our weapons. Not by making war but by the unafraid way we choose to live shall we defeat them. How to defeat terrorism? Don't be terrorized. Don't let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared. - Salman Rushdie, Step Across This Line (2002)

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So, where did the idea of One Last Sunset come from?

Our artist, Ben, came up with the idea and shared his concept art at around the same time that Tracey and Dave were looking for something to make for the 1GAM* theme Dangerzone. The IF game he describes in this link became the prototype for the game we’re building now - One Last Sunset.

Check out his original art and let us know what you think!

* one game a month, an event focused on making a small game inside a month, then moving on. We’ve clearly failed at the tail end of that sentence…

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After the Fall, you could live anyplace you wanted, long as you could hold it - or it was so far outta the way that nobody else cared.

Another location shot, this time showing off our current hotspot UI - let us know what you think!

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Sometimes, when she thinks nobody's watching, she looks at the pages of some old fashion magazine she's found. The way her eyes gloss over you can't help but think if the Fall hadn't happened, a girl like her could have been on the cover.

Time for our midweek share!

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Betrayal ain't never pleasant, but Belt made sure this one hurt more than most.

Take a look at this week’s screenshot!

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Exciting news everyone! Our very own programmer Tracey will be appearing in Orbero, Sweden next July to participate and give a talk at next year’s Castle Game Jam!

All details for this awesome event can be found on their website.

Tracey spent eight years in Trinity College Dublin learning to program and messing around with cognitive radios. A pauper, she fell for the shallow promises of cash and, well, cash in the financial sector. She spent the next four years writing back-end code, making rich people richer. Eventually, she came to her senses and decided to return to the pauper life to do something she actually cared about. Now she travels the world with her husband, Dave, making silly games which she really hopes you’ll enjoy playing. She is currently working on the comedy-horror adventure game, The Darkside Detective, and the post apocalyptic western, One Last Sunset.

Her life philosophy is <code> while (alive) { learn(); unlearn (); } </code>

Tracey will be talking about her journey into indie game development. For her, this involved packing all of her belongings into a storage container and heading off to somewhere she could afford to work for pittance. Her journey involved working remotely with teams in Ireland and in very close proximity to her writer/husband. Her talk will be about the diverse range of challenges and rewards both of these dynamics offer including living out of a bag, debugging on overnight bus journeys, bribing her husband with mash potato for a script rewrite, not seeing the light of day for a month just to be on the same timezone as the rest of her team and trying to photograph as many weird toilet signs as possible. She has learned, and is learning, a lot about herself and about making games. She’d like to share some of this with you and encourage you to make some equally irresponsible life choices.

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Old Jeb - how an old guy with only a fishing rod survives out here is beyond me, ‘specially given his endless supply of gas and proximity to the Molerats…

Note that this is very much a work in progress, friends. We focused on gameplay over animation this week - which means you cats get to see step-by-step progress - whoop whoop!

[Slightly better quality gif here : http://i.imgur.com/sAmS0EX.gifv]

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Ain't many folk out there who'd lose an eye and keep on smiling. Some folk say it's optimism, an unbreakable spirit, a can do attitude. But, way I hear it, any trouble in her town gets dealt with by live-skinnings or prye-burnings, all under her watchful, ever-smiling eye.

A midweek share to add some joy to your Wednesdays!