beastgamestudios

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More character art. I'm obsessed with Mylo and Ademia I'm afraid of designing more characters 01/17/2018

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Ademia, maybe a speech portrait. This might be the only in-game drawing of her outside of her sprite animations, so I wanted it to be good.

01/07/2018

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12/10/2017 Mylo helping me rework some things.

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Testing some GIF exports from Photoshop for the DARK REALM

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Some village concepts for TTDR. Safe to say Mylo is living in the first one :)

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Ademia painting

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WIP of the walk cycle still ongoing. Gif colour balance is pretty bad huh, definitely gonna brighten it. I just gotta do the back and then work on some actual tiles. Thinking how this would look on a painted background - perhaps the cartoon style will make the characters stand out. 

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Trying out some colours and scaling for the game! Painted a would be screenshot if the game was HD and not 32x32 tiles. Chris

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Sketches of the revised design of Ademia, the Alchemist

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We want to experiment with how Mylo would look without pixels, so I'm working on a very Chibi (probably will decrease the size of the head) walk cycle now.

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Ademia and Mylo, a colored version of the sketch! Spent a little too long on this one, but I got quite obsessed - Chris

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The Alchemist

The alchemist is Mylo's guardian and she's pretty badass. The images below are draft sketches of the alchemist's design. She looks a bit too young now, but I want to keep the chibi art style, especially in the sprites. 

- Chris

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Through The Dark Realm - Mylo Sketches

Name Idea for the supposedly genderless MC in TTD, Mylo. Subject to Change. Looks a bit like Undertale with that hair.

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Showcasing at Talk and Play

Last Tuesday Catherine and I attended Berlin Talk and Play #25 and exhibited our Nordic Game Jam game - To the Dark Realm!

Berlin Talk and Play is a free event organised by Berlin Games Scene that happens every 2 months at Game Science Center Berlin 2.0. It starts out with some gaming themed talks, then follows with announcements (usually jobs and events), and then the floor turns into an exhibit of games that have been submitted to be displayed.

Naturally, Catherine and I took the chance to showcase "To the Dark Realm" this Talk and Play. We knew it would be a great opportunity to get feedback through play testing. The crowd at the Talk and Play event is full of game enthusiasts that really know how to give constructive advice, which is super valuable.

What we observed:

1) Players, in general, do not read dialogue thoroughly. Anything in the game that required a player to read a bit of dialogue (eg: controls to exit the Dark Realm) were usually missed.

2) A lot of players tried to use the same button for attacking to pick up an item.

3) The UI for the timer telling you to leave the Dark Realm did not come across clearly.

4) There needs to be more feedback when the player is getting hurt. At the moment the hearts just disappear as the player loses a life and they do not notice.

5) There are inconsistencies in our scenes around how objects get possessed by the ghosts. Some scenes require the player to throw an object, while others let the ghosts go straight into the object. We should make everything consistent to make the world more believable.

6) The Dark Realm does not have a timer when dialogue is going on, but it does as soon as dialogue stops. This is another inconsistency to the player danger in the Dark Realm that should be addressed.

7) It's frustrating for players to drop items when they enter the Dark Realm. This does not add anything - it just means players have to keep picking up the object over and over if they miss.

8) It's not obvious to jump back and forth between the Dark Realm and real world as frequently as one needs to in order to hit the enemies.

What I've listed are mostly the things we need to improve on, so it might come across as a bit negative. However people did have nice comments too! Christopher's artwork went down well - the cover art on the presentation definitely helped to get attention! We also received positive reactions to the core gameplay concept. Although it did take people a bit of time to get used to the "Dark Realm" and "Real World" idea, once they did they really liked it! This is great, as the core concept is the one thing that's difficult to change without feeling like you are completely scrapping a whole idea.

The next steps for us will be to figure out how to solve these issues and document our next steps on one of Github/Slack/Trello. We will then make sure the highest priority features are put into the next iteration. Currently we think that addressing the on boarding of the game will help to solve the weakest areas. Further down the line, we're also keen to improve the overall feel of the game by rethinking some of the level design and UI design.

We were invited to present the game at an event happening on 10 June called Femisphere. The organiser happened to come round to our stall at Talk and Play which was fantastic. We're honored to have the change to display our game there and will use the deadline as our own to ensure we get the next iteration done!

- Emily

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The Nordic Game Jam

Last weekend was perhaps one of the best I’ve ever had. Emily, Christopher and I went to the Nordic Game Jam, the world’s biggest jam, and made a game together.

The event was absolutely incredible in terms of scale. There were over 700 people there making a total of 146 teams. Most teams were actually fairly large, the average being 4-5 people, and so our team of 3 felt very small. But of course it didn’t hold us back!

The theme of the jam was literally “not there”. With such a vague theme thinking of ideas was quite unsettling at first, but we managed by just discussing what the theme reminded us of. Our initial ideas felt pretty standard - perhaps a game about a child whose parents were never there for him? What about a game where the main character is invisible? But when we changed our interpretation of it to “don’t go there” instead of “not there”, things got more interesting.

We decided to make a game about a boy who wants to go to an alternate dimension called the “Dark Realm”, where ghosts and other being reside. He knows he’s not really supposed to, and he knows it might be dangerous, but he’s so curious and fascinated by magic and ghosts he can’t help himself. Finally he obtains the power to switch to the dark realm dimension! But he cannot stay there for long, as the dark realm slowly sucks one’s life away if you allow it.

However, he made a terrible mistake. On entering the dark realm for the first time he triggered an opening to it in his house which all his family ended falling into. The player must now go to every room in his house and defeat all the ghosts in order to bring his family back. As the ghosts are other worldly creatures, the player cannot touch them in the dark world, and so the only way to defeat ghosts is by having them possess a real world object and destroying that. But although he is able to see the ghosts when in the dark realm, he is unable to interact with objects in the real world. And so the core game mechanic revolves around the player searching for the ghosts in the dark realm and actually defeating them in the real world by throwing objects at them and forcing them to possess something. 

The dark realm. The player must defeat the ghost to save his brother!

The player can lift objects in the real world.

A possessed object which the player can finally defeat.

The initial idea was based on the game mechanic of having an alternate dimension the player can enter by pressing a button. We wanted to make it so that the player had to switch frequently between the dimensions, so we knew both the dark realm and the real world needed to be useful to the player in some way. As the dark realm is meant to be a horrific place you’re not meant to go to, we thought it would be appropriate if you could only see your enemies there and not in the real world. However, as the dark realm is an alternate reality, you can’t interact with anything in the real world when you’re in it, nor can you attack things like you normally can. This makes for a fun mechanic because you require both dimensions to achieve your objectives.

We would love to continue working on this game as it has so much potential. The game currently has only two different types of ghosts, and there could be so much more. We really want to flesh out the possession mechanic by adding in different kinds of objects the ghosts can be possessed by to create different enemies. We want to add more creative ways of making the ghosts possess objects, like adding several stages to the possession process or allowing the player to roll an object instead of throwing it. The dark realm could also be made more interesting by giving the player more than just the ghost locations, perhaps it could also give them hints about how to possess the ghost or what a possessed object’s weak point is.

There is a lot to do for it and we’re really excited! Hoping to post more about its development as we continue to work on it!

- Catherine

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Possessed - Splash Art

The title screen for our 48-hour game made at the Nordic Game Jam!

- Chris

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We're attending the Nordic Game Jam

This coming weekend 3 of us are going to the Nordic Game Jam in Copenhagen, Denmark. It goes from Friday 21 April till Sunday 23 April 2017 - just under 48 hours. It's the world's biggest jam and has 700 attendees. It will be the first Game Jam that Catherine, Christopher and I will enter together as a team.

It's a very special moment for us. After years of playing games and drawing things together, we will spend a weekend abroad to try and make something ourselves!

I feel that in many ways all the game gams and events Catherine and I have been attending in meantime have been leading up as prep for this one. It will be Christopher's first jam - but we're confident he'll be fine.

Things I'm taking (so I don't forget)

15" Macbook Pro and charger

Latest Unity installed

Photoshop installed

Affinity Design installed

Apple Mouse

Mouse Mat

Ipad Pro

Wacom Tablet

PS4 Controller

We're set on doing something 2D, as we're more experienced there. My hunch is that it will be easier to do something more gameplay focused than heavy on narration as that is easier to prototype. But let's see! I'm really looking forward to seeing what we come up with.

We'll post again about the game after the jam!

- Emily