when i flipped the switch, it was really creepy to see the Killer’s head peering over the bookcase blocking the hallway in front of BB, and then slide away to cut me off at the intersection of the upcoming hallway.
was there a game #1 to this? i didn’t see that posted.
i’m glad you enjoyed!! also glad i habitually don’t do anything in terms of reactive animation so adding in little cues to move that guy around ended up feeling like a surprisingly effective way to give him more presence. first game is here! https://www.dropbox.com/s/02y1l0qg2xzc5bo/FOTK_130620.zip?dl=0
A. Degen’s been making assets for a little self contained stage sequence to be found in the television, playing around with lighting ideas now.
had a funny idea for another one of these but it will require “research” so in the meantime i’ve started planning out a goofier one about a haunted waterpark.
tried downloading a free asset store thing for water effects this time. it’s quite fun and can do uncanny mirror effects if you crank the levels high enough. if i’d known about this stuff for 10 beautiful postcards i could have made that game five times more disorienting… well, it’s never too late. no swimming mechanics but for some reason enjoying the little effect of wandering in and out of the pool.
working on city area. still figuring out how to do outdoorsy type textures (plaster, cement, etc) but i also do enjoy the effect of making absolutely everything out of brick. i remember many years ago working on a detective game that never got anywhere, so it’s nice to be able to pick up where that left off in some ways (the detective himself comes back as a character in the first game, and it was also the origin of We!!! Sell!!! Knives!!!)
all going well with the new one as for some reason this is the first time i’ve felt happy writing up a plan for something beforehand and then sticking with it. but trying not to jinx. drawing larger and more detailed in-game pictures as a way of procrastinating, ripping off various reference things.
collection of some new and favourite haunted paintings. the bag one is just from resident evil, acknowledged king of ominous background paintings. gotta have a bag guy in there now.
thought “swimbo” was funny but might remove as too internet-poisoned for the mood. recently has been a bit of slow going due to dayjob b.s. and some health related aches and pains, but on the last few levels now and feeling good.
every time I visit this thread I make sure to scroll up and watch this gif until the clock guy. such a creepy image!!
this mf said “drowing”!
anyway here is build of the new one, complete apart from music and sound again: https://www.dropbox.com/s/r7jfiea3j9dem2n/DOTK_301120.zip?dl=0
gonna go back to the first and try adding that stuff in soon in hopes that the minor endorphin hit of dropping it on gamejolt somewhere will see me through december S.A.D.
finished version of the first game is now up on gamejolt, with new music by NEW VADERS: https://gamejolt.com/games/Voiceofthekiller/561933
ke he he… good, good.
so far uploading to gamejolt and avoiding most of my usual channels has been going OK. it’s kind of an interesting platform compared to itch as it sort of feels closer to older sites like kongregate in that the game upload section is handled as just part of a wider ecosystem of different little forums and chatrooms and friend requests and so forth. to be honest i stopped keeping up with my old account there because the growing accretion of features and notifications felt like a hassle, but i do think it means there’s a different type of crowd there. in my head itchio is more professionalised and intended to be complemented by socmed stuff, gamejolt is more hobbyist and self-contained which suits me fine.
trying to post on horror game discords and stuff has been kind of interesting - i guess it’s not too different to shopping stuff around on different forums but not sure of the etiquette. wasn’t sure if anything posted there would just get buried instantly, but i guess the smaller scale means it actually feels less futile than dumping stuff on twitter at least.
enjoying the rule of small numbers by which putting something out with no expectations and getting a few people to try it out somehow feels better than making a big push that objectively works better in terms of response but ends up feeling less satisfying. low expectations win out again. the second game has had music and sound filled in now so going to put that up later this week.
is it, you get more intensity or response, or more ability to absorb it?
i think it’s more contextual - by comparison, part of the attraction of putting something on twitter is that it’s kind of like a slot machine of “visibiity” where the stakes can get excitingly high. 100 likes, 20 retweets, but then one of the people retweeting has 4000 followers so that’s many more people who maybe saw the game, plus they’re friends with x account with a big platform who might also support it if they happen to see, etc. so there’s a kind of ambient swirling combinatoric pleasure, like the slot machines in Dragon Quest, but it’s almost entirely internal to the platform and doesn’t really leak out to anything else (esp the kind of downloadable videogames which involve having to tap out of online for a while as you play). i think one of the ways these platforms retain people is by encouraging you to not just internalise metrics but also a certain scale of that metric, beneath which things start to feel covertly disappointing. so has been nice to step out of that and basically just count anyone at all being willing to check this thing out as a win.
i think it also feels better knowing that anyone playing this is just doing so because they’re bored and curious and happened across it, rather than by being browbeaten into things by some spurious art discourse or media apparatus or peer consensus. “bored and curious and looking around” is the ideal, to me. it’s a relief to know this condition still exists after 10+ years of the internet treated as an attention battleground where even the silliest and most minor stuff has to be presented in hugely escalated terms.
it’s more or less just another abstract number and very occasionally getting a stranger to say “c00l game…” (someone on a horror discord server did say that it was “pog”) but i guess coming from a hobbyist background of just putting stuff on rpg maker forums for people to find, it’s also sort of nice to go back to that baseline.
Thanks, that’s useful. When I was releasing games in the early 2010s there was still an infrastructure of press thirsty for topics and it was pretty straightforward to get a few thousand downloads and decent critical coverage; it seems these days to be much harder to hit that bar, much more skewed towards the breakouts and away from the endless krill swirling around.
Yeah, as far as I can tell there’s not much in the kind of early 2010s Rock Paper Shotgun vein of larger sites that regularly try to give space to new work - everything either fights for space on social media (with most of the remaining press sites more or less playing catch-up for whatever’s already taking off there) or else there’s a whole galaxy of personality-led mini spaces, youtubers, private discords, etc that seem to have survived by being too spread out for anyone to keep track of or poach from.
I’m not much for games youtube but it is interesting seeing accounts like AlphaBetaGamer act as a kind of general curated overview of what’s happening and seeing other video people locate new games through that. It does feel like there’s maybe some infrastructure coming back up as people try to build their own networks for all the smaller work there’s no coverage of currently, like the Haunted PS1 / 10MinGames anthologies, but don’t think it’ll ever be another “next big thing” encouraging speculative attention in the same way. (this random unity game is the velvet underground of random unity games… cover it today for a chance to hit big in the cultural reward sweepstakes once the movement takes off in 5-10 years… winners every day, $$$). Hopefully that’ll mean it can be more interesting in some ways but tbh I’ll settle for just not having to aggressively spiel for stuff i’ve made on twitter like throwing pennies off the empire state building and hoping that one of them lands on a vice writer.
Also, game #2 is out now with sound effects, Tommy Tone OST, diorama, some small tweaks.
that’s my sense of what killed blogging; far, far more than we realized, people were producing unsustainably as an audition for later paid work. Once the breakout hits moved on and the dream was popped for everyone else, the scene collapsed even though all the non-social infrastructure remained.
yess, it’d be nice to be able to say that the abrupt disappearance of the Indie IPO from the horizon meant that all kinds of strange and unprofitable new fauna would emerge, but so far it hasn’t worked out like that and maybe never will. even with those low expectations gone it’s nice to be able to fuck around in the weird landscape that remains and i guess it feels a little preferable to just waiting for the money train to swing round again. was ever thus.
anyway, my main ambition for the new world is to eventually start posting my games on julian cope’s psychrock-and-neolithic-ruins webforum. maybe next time…
starting game 4, the dance is rough but glad it holds together enough to at least give an idea of what it’s meant to be.
feat. theatrical variant killer that i sort of like better than the design in game 2, thinking about maybe covering my tracks by varying the design with each game rather than trying to go back and change whenever i make alterations. i guess it also tracks with the horror movie tradition of monster costumes that look progressively more off-model with every sequel.
Drool Of The Killer is now up on Gamejolt as well, with new music and sounds.
Posting these there has actually been going pgood, better than expected. The second game has c1400 views and 300 dls after being up there less than a month. Nearly all of those came from either Gamejolt or Discord, from what I can see, and the game has no presence on YT/twitter/tumbl/etc. I know numbers are a trap constructed by the demiurge but am glad people still do play little free games at random.
The fourth game continues slowly. Why do first person 3D segments always take so much longer than any other kind? I guess greater emphasis on looking means more expectation of there being stuff to look at. But it’s only a few levels so I will push on thru.
