As this year comes to a close, I've decided to settle a debt and complete an important development blog that was originally planned for much earlier, focusing on the topic of multidimensional temples in the game. However, like many other developers, our game underwent significant changes due to the unfortunate situation with Unity that shook the gaming industry.

Unity, Godot, or Unreal?

This blog has proven to be one of the most challenging for me so far, as it delves not only into new content and positive development narratives, but also explores personal experiences with the situation. Therefore, this blog might be a bit longer :) Warped Times is our third game developed in the Unity engine, following 3x64 and the initial attempt a Christmas mini-game from the old Warped Times series released back in 2014. Despite some shortcomings, I was satisfied with the engine, and the game development had been progressing smoothly. However, I, along with others, was shocked by Unity's decision regarding absurd fees and utterly opaque communication. In the first few days, I, like many other developers, could only observe the situation and contemplate our next steps. Eventually, I concluded that I didn't want to release a game, which I wanted to continue supporting and expanding long after its release, in an engine from such a questionable company. Therefore, I decided to at least try transferring the game to one of the alternative engines.
(our statement on the situation on Twitter) Although I tried both of the major alternative engines (Godot and Unreal), the decision was easy. Given my familiarity with writing games using programming languages, Unreal with blueprints was not appealing to me, and Unreals main programming language (C++) was too complicated.

First Steps with Godot

Getting acquainted with Godot didn't take long. Converting graphics wasn't a major issue, but there were some significant changes. Due to the division between 2D and 3D, I decided to transform existing scenes, primarily composed of sprites, into full-fledged 3D scenes. In this regard, the result was much more impressive than the existing game in Unity. I must praise Godot for its excellent work with lighting and the impressive volumetric fog, which added depth to both the dystopian rainy city and the colorful forest scenes.
Critical part of deciding whether I was going to continue with Godot was successfully implementing the dimension transition effect. Unfortunately, Godot, due to its smaller user base, didn't offer any existing shaders I could use. Still, because of the simplicity of writing custom shaders in Godot, I decided to give it a try. Godot proved incredibly helpful in this regard, thanks to its straightforward language. This marked a significant breakthrough that profoundly affected the game's visuals. Until then, I had relied on available effects from stores/the internet, but with this breakthrough, I could create any effect tailored to the game. However, this meant discarding many original designs and effects, adding a considerable amount of extra work. The first experimental scenes looked good in Godot much better and more natural than anything I had achieved in Unity so far and everything was on the right track. However, as you can sense, a turning point in the story was just around the corner.
(Godot - my first created shader)

Editor and Engine Limits

Graphically, the shift was enormous, and working with materials was very convenient. The first complications arose when dealing with the editor and asset browser, which I found less intuitive. While nodes in Godot are a matter of habit, working in the very basic Godot editor was challenging for me, considering that in Unity I had gradually customized my editor for the game's needs over the development period. GDScript was simpler, something I had to get used to after years of C# (in Godot, I hadn't tried C# due to more accessible learning materials for GDScript). On the other hand, Godot itself has many things out of the box that Unity does not, which I highly appreciate visually, it is evident that it is better designed for game development.
(Warped Times in Unity vs Godot) Many things are very similar to Unity, or, in their simplicity, Game Maker. Thus, I didn't encounter too many problems, and in this regard, I can only recommend Godot. Learning is more straightforward if you have some knowledge of both mentioned engines. Even though I couldn't (or rather didn't want to) see the extent of the work involved in transferring the entire existing game, I continued trying because the motivation to leave Unity was strong. However, over time, accumulating factors made the work less enjoyable for me. These included an overly simple and personally unintuitive editor without custom extensions for my game (just a personal experience; many others find it the opposite compared to Unity), cumbersome work with the asset browser, and unfortunately, encountering bugs that even break the editor a significant issue when reworking a game with a two-year development history, which is already time consuming. Moreover, I knew that ahead of me lied tasks that would be incredibly complicated to transfer this includes character movement, but also smaller elements like the camera, dialogue system, or shooting with all accompanying effects, for which I already had finely tuned scripts in Unity.

The Journey Home

Then came another challenge likely a limitation in the code, where I couldn't effectively duplicate the second dimension of the level and let it exist concurrently. This problem could probably be solved either in a different creative way, or by modifying the engine itself. However, given the lack of material on the internet and all the previous problems, I had to come to an inevitable decision. Despite my sincere efforts, I probably wouldn't be able to transfer the game with everything I wished for, and certainly not in a reasonable time. I'm ashamed to write this sentence, but the first return home to the familiar Unity editor tailored to my game was a tremendous relief for me :) In any case, this decision applies only to Warped Times. I dare say that transferring this game is impossible, especially when I'm the sole programmer. However, for future games, I will strongly lean towards Godot, as the experience wasn't bad at all, and I believe that it will become an even better engine in the meantime.

Results of the Experiment

The return to Unity did not go smoothly. After seeing the visual improvements with Godot, I couldn't revert to the previous version of the game. The existing version was mostly composed of 2D graphics, but after seeing the significant spatial enhancements, I decided to rework the existing scenes. Fortunately, I didn't need to change the graphics too much, rather I added additional details and used more realistic models, which aligns with the direction the game had already been taking. For example, the village or temples were already entirely in 3D.
(older 2D scene vs new 3D scene) This, again, meant a lot of additional work, but luckily, there were very few completely finished scenes, and from live game events, I know from players feedback that some parts that deserve a bit of rework.

Farewell to Old Shaders

As I mentioned, due to Godot and the unavailability of existing shaders, I had no choice but to learn shaders. Now, with the basics grasped, I can understand and modify much more complicated shaders I used in Unity, even without extensive knowledge. They are still somewhat beyond my skills, but through experimentation, I can achieve the desired effect.
(improved transition with custom shader) Most importantly, this results in an entirely new dimension transition that is now entirely smooth (for which I received praise from a friend without even pointing it out :) ), and technically much simpler, with the ability to tweak it as needed. But it's not just a transition this opens the door to new effects that I can precisely tailor to the game, and I am extremely happy about that.

Summary

What happened is terrible, and I must say that I admire those who managed to switch to another engine to the extent that they can continue developing their game elsewhere. Although I saw a return to Unity as unthinkable, unfortunately, Warped Times relies on it a lot. I want to complete the game without compromising on quality or content, and currently, it's simply not possible to rework the game unless I want to deviate from a reasonable release date (if its even possible at all). However, as it turned out, our game has been strengthened by this whole unfortunate situation. Even though we lost a lot of time by reworking the currently completed content, the new, more immersive-looking scenes already bring me joy. I hope that the next blog will be about the joyful successes of development. Thank you to all the fans for their support and patience during this difficult time. I hope the game will see the light of day within the next two years :) As always, you can follow small updates from development on our social media, and if you'd like to see more personal insights from development, you can now follow me on Mastodon :)

[ 2023-12-29 11:54:24 CET ] [ Original post ]

Recently, I finished designing the village, which has been the most difficult and complex level in the game so far. As I tried to write a short post about it, I realized how interesting the village's development was, and I felt I could write much more about it. So, I wanted to share this personal goal with you and create a more specific devlog about the process of designing this particular part of the game :)

Importance of the village

The village itself will be one of the most crucial scenes in the game. After traveling from the dystopian dimension, it will serve as the main safe haven for the player, and it will also be the central focus of the game's storyline. For these reasons, I wanted to invest more time in its design to make it unique, as players will revisit it several times, and it has the potential to become an iconic part of the game.

Searching the right style

I must admit that it proved to be a more challenging task than I expected. Prior to designing the village, I had worked on the dimensional portals, which was also quite challenging because I wanted something slightly different from existing creations. So, I gathered many inspirations and combined them, ultimately opting for a triangle shape. It's not as commonly used, and when decorated with specific symbols from the Warped Times universe and animated, it looks fine.
Portal in dystopian dimension Approaching the design of the village, I followed a similar path. I spent many hours searching for interesting pictures of various fantasy villages. However, unlike the portals, which can be designed more abstractly, I discovered that many villages look very similar. I was determined to create something distinctive and unique to the Warped Times world, but it was difficult as I don't consider myself much of a designer or concept artist; I just do my best to make things look good.
Collecting the inspirations In the end, drawing inspiration from the original Warped Times proved to be very helpful. I kept simple vector shapes from the old games in mind and tried to combine them with other inspirations. After several attempts, I achieved a design whose architecture is quite specific to the game.
Original village design Since I wanted the village to have a little more depth in its levels (allowing the entire village to fit on one screen, making movement for the player easier and more interesting), I decided to create the individual houses in 3D. Additionally, the bridges have already been converted into 3D, making the decision straightforward. Experimenting with the right textures and colors took some time, and the 3D model itself is currently the most advanced in the whole game. Nevertheless, I am pleased with the result as it blends well with the scene. It's possible that there is a slight contrast with the 2D characters in the village, but that holds true for the entire game. Designing more complicated characters would have been very challenging, and personally, I believe the simpler characters fit well within the game.
Final remake of village

Using skills learned from Warped Times

In the village, I used almost every skill that I have learned from working on Warped Times thus far. Besides combining all nature environments in the background layers, the village contains dynamic water, grass movement, material shaders for computing depth in every sprite, and many more effects. The most challenging part was creating the waterfall. Since the whole level is already the most expensive scene in the game (I am hoping for big optimization), I could only use a small number of particles for the waterfall. Fortunately, I managed to generate a complex waterfall in an empty Unity project, and it works well. Combining this rendered animation with a small selection of other in-game particle effects saved a lot of performance, and it still looks good. Now, the biggest challenge will be bringing life to the village and using it as a connection between the intro and the first environment. I already have some characters and player's movement finished for the village, but the whole story is still waiting to be told.
Village environment

Break after Game Access in Brno

Before concluding the talk about the village, I feel it's essential to mention that I invested all my energy into preparing another build for Game Access, where I met new players and gathered valuable feedback. I unfortunately took for now the longest break from Warped Times.
Warped Times at Game Access 2023 Nevertheless, I am finally beginning to implement ideas from this feedback and slowly working on new features. For example, the dynamic lava based on the water script is already finished, which allows me to create a few levels inspired by the original game. But I will keep some demonstration for one of the finished level :) Thank you for the reading and following! More interesting content will be coming soon!

[ 2023-07-24 12:47:09 CET ] [ Original post ]

The wait for the next dev blog ended up longer than I wanted (even past the new year), although I was looking forward to recapping all the development again. At the outset, I must explain why both the blog and the development process were delayed - in the fall, I had to deal with a change in my job position in the game industry. After five years in the professional game industry (=where at least some money is paid :) ) I felt for a long time in my entry position as a tester that I needed a change. Unfortunately, I ignored these feelings for a long time and got to a point where I had to deal with them immediately. But at the moment I can say that everything turned out well and I am currently continuing in the same company as a 3D graphic artist and thus moved forward in my field. But back to our important game :)

Direction of the game

I was putting together the last blog before the yearly GDS live event in Prague, where I was looking forward to the reactions to the first three finished levels in the first environment of the game. Looking back today, I have to mention that the event served its purpose even if it was much weaker in terms of getting new players. We collected a whole list of notes, and it fundamentally helped me decide about the direction of the game. On the one hand, it helped me a lot to see what types of obstacles were a problem for players (and in some situations it was also a problem with my level design), but more importantly, I became more convinced that Warped Times must not be too close to true hardcore platformers, since the parts with adventure, exploration, and level solving were much more interesting to watch for me as well. Still, I'm glad that most players kept trying the harder locations until they managed to complete the level. I definitely don't want to drop the hard sections completely, it would just be a shame to make it impossible for some players to progress through the story. The typical solution is, of course, to add optional tasks when completing the levels, which I was counting on as part of the story anyway, but I'm also very happy to keep the hardest levels as an optional bonus. Anyway, I have no ambition to compete with precision platformers, so the most important theme of game design is to make each level as fun as possible and offer something new - after all, this is exactly what I had in mind when developing the original games, and I'd like to say that it's working very well so far :) But dont worry, I will not cut off some really challenging levels :)
Warped Times at Game Developers Session

New content

Since the last post, I am very happy that I can boast really big progress regarding new environments and unique levels. As we manage to get into more advanced stages of development, I notice a gradual acceleration of the creation of new environments because we already have reusable assets and scripts. Unfortunately, this also means that there is almost no left usable content from the original Warped Times game, from which I wanted to select only the most interesting levels, and I don't have enough time to sketch the new levels due to the complexity of the new work. But I believe that interesting ideas will definitely come. When playing back the original games, I felt there were missed opportunities because of how some ideas were only used in a single level. That's why I decided to improve this in the remake, and use mechanics that can work in more levels - for example, I would like to find more opportunities to use changing water levels, or stone chasing sequences.
Demonstration of all finished environments If you watched the livestream during CZSK Games Week (probably not - but it doesn't matter, I wasn't a good streamer :) ), you must have also noticed the fast progress across the levels, which is also a very important thing that I want to focus on - I often repeat the mistake of simply not being able to see the playtime of the level compared to the previous ones, and also the time required for the creation of the level itself isnt helping with this, because it usually takes a few days - or even more for some iconic levels :) For me, it means I have to find a few moments during the creation to go through the whole level, and compare its length to the previous levels (if they are already finished, otherwise one must predict :) ). In the last week, I managed to catch up on another very important task, which I mentioned a lot in the previous blog, and that is the story and characters. I'm glad that the game is slowly getting to the point where it will be necessary to start thinking about the story very seriously, and I'm starting to develop the first characters and their dialogues. For this need, I developed a more final version of the intro and thus the entire environment of the dystopian city, and I also prepared a unique sample from this part of the game for this blog :)
City environment from the game intro

Technical improvements

In the end, I'm actually glad I waited this long to get the look of the intro right (even though the rough design of the city has been sitting in a test scene for a long time), because that brings me to the next big topic, which is the technical side of the game. Of all the game development professions, I'm probably the least experienced in programming (if I don't count audio, where my experience ends in assigning sound to the right channel in Unity :) ). Nevertheless, thanks to Unity I am surprised by how many special effects I managed to put together just in the past six months, and the whole game still works well even without dedicated optimization. A huge part of how I managed to bring to life even effects that I could only dream of (like hot air near the lava, water reflections on the cave terrain, or the transition between dimensions) is due to the perfect universal shader material that I use.
Lava effect in the burning forest But there are also things that look complicated at first glance, but with the help of tricks, they turn out to be very easily achievable. Of course, now I have to boast for example the dynamic snow on the surfaces of platforms, easily deformable only by moving the vertices, or 2D shadows created by simply rendering to a specific layer and then rendering to the main camera, and last but not least, dynamic water. I have to admit that finding ways to do these seemingly complex effects in Unity without deep knowledge of shaders or math is one of the things I enjoy most about development, and I'm curious to see what else I'll experiment with. I really learned a lot from Warped Times in this regard :)
Dynamic snow created by mesh deformation

Current challenges

The story continues to be the biggest challenge and my biggest insecurity during development. But as I mentioned at the beginning, I'm slowly managing to incorporate the first dialogues and other characters into the game, and so far it seems that the story is starting to fit together well even as I keep introducing new ideas. It would be great if the story is the topic of the next blog entry, but I would like to have its foundations ready even earlier - for this, I set a nice date for this year's Game Access, because we first presented the game at this event last year (yes, it will be a year already :D ), and this year I would like to show as much progress as possible and reach more people. I also think it's about time to show a short preview of the game, so I'd like to focus on a gameplay trailer in the near future. Animations have also become a new challenge, which will be very important as new characters are added. Apart from the main character, whose movement is mainly controlled by code, I have the challenging task of moving and animating many other characters within the story. The animations will certainly not be perfect in the first versions (so far I have tried animating two characters and one boss level), but we still have a lot of time left until release, and I have no doubt that, like many other things since the first build, their quality will continue to improve. The new Warped Times is very much about trying new things in both Unity and game design. One of the random attempts that ended up being really successful was a hastily made multi-character arena. Everyone enjoyed this local multiplayer during the test, and therefore I do not rule out that I will devote some time to this direction as well, and make it possible for players to locally play against each other. But there will definitely be more time for introducing potential new content like this in one of the future blog entries.
Experimental Warped Times party with split-screen multiplayer In conclusion, I would say that the last few months were definitely very difficult and I had to suspend development for a while, but in the end I managed to combine work on the game with a new job position again, and thanks to the set deadline, I am looking forward to what new things I will be able to present in the next post. For now, thank you to everyone who follows our progress :)

[ 2023-02-03 11:12:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

On the occasion of Czech & Slovak Games Week I prepared commented developer stream with demonstration of many levels in Warped Times and one new secret location :) You can follow the commented Stream here at tomorrow evening! Also don't forget to visit other games from Czech & Slovak Games Week!

[ 2022-11-15 02:23:16 CET ] [ Original post ]

After showing the game for the first time in May at the great Game Access live event, it's time to meet the players again and share our (quite a lot) progress. After two pandemic years since the last GDS event, I am happy to invite you to our booth at the annual 20th Game Developers Session in Prague :). This time I prepared four levels from the first regular environment placed right after the dystopian intro and discovering the village. There's been a lot of progress since the last dev diary too, so I'm really looking forward to your feedback and I hope you enjoy it - so if you're planning to visit GDS this year with lots of other great indie games, don't forget to visit us!
We start on the morning of Friday, September 23, and you will have the opportunity to try the first almost-final levels until Saturday evening. I will be looking forward to the visit and if you can't make it, you can stll follow us on our twitter where you will definitely find some photos from the event :)

[ 2022-09-18 12:30:45 CET ] [ Original post ]

Greetings to all current and future fans :) I am very happy that after two months I can bring you another important addition to the development diary of our biggest project Warped Times and at the same time I am very happy that there is a lot to write about :) In the first blog, I told you about the history of the original games and how we gradually got to the remake. I ended the whole story by attending the Game Access live event, where we got an amazing feedback (I was especially pleased that the game was well received even at a very early stage). And I would like to gradually follow up on this feedback in today's blog.
Warped Times at Game Access 2022 in Brno

Movement tweaking

We got the most valuable feedback and ideas for improvement on character movement no doubt, as it's a very essential part of a platformer game, and I'm sure it's something we'll be struggling with until release. Compared to the previous versions, the current movement is faster and more precise, but we are constantly looking for the best compromise between light fast movement and level design - Warped Times is a specific game and unlike most platformers, it is not so much based on action but rather on exploring the level and manipulating the environment, therefore the character will only use basic movement abilities such as double jump, heavy impact or sneaking. Nevertheless, there are also more action-packed parts of the game, including boss levels, so finding the best movement mechanics is important and it will definitely be tweaked many times throughout development. In the action passages, as in the original game, I rely more on the use of shooting and predictable work with the environment - here I am greatly inspired by, among other games, the original Crash Bandicoot series on PS1.
Movement development since the first prototype At the same time, on Game Access I collected a lot of tips for the best platform games, which I gradually tried and thus caught up with my neglected gaming experience from many years ago. While I found a lot of inspiration for all aspects of the game from level design to graphics (most of these games were really good), I was surprised to find that logic puzzle platformers are surprisingly few and far between which is both good and bad news, since we're working on a not-so-typical platformer, but also there aren't that many games we can learn from to find out what to avoid :) At the same time, I'm glad that I was able to explore the work of other indie developers in search of inspiration.

Prototyping levels as the biggest challenge

I come to the biggest challenge for me so far (and there are many to choose from :) ) and that is the need to adapt the development to the size of the game. As I started work on the first forest environment, making one whole final level is very time-consuming, especially due to the much more extensive and detailed graphics (not to mention two variants for both dimensions), and I am currently preparing them all by myself. I'm used to building each game more or less gradually, finishing one part at a time and immediately seeing the near-final result of my efforts, but it's much more important for Warped Times to have the majority of parts of the game done as soon as possible - both to give an idea of its length and level adjustments, but also for the screenwriter who can then plan the story better. So I have to accept development in such a way that a lot of things don't look good - either they are made up of placeholder graphics, or there is only hinted gameplay in a location so that I can move to another part of the game. I think this also creates the risk of possible changes or dropping some levels after I actually finish them and find out that they don't quite work, luckily so far all finished levels which were made this way are OK. And as reusable assets increase, it will be easier to estimate the result in this regard :) However, seeing a lot of broken levels and assets and being forced to leave them in this state is difficult for me as a perfectionist, but necessary for the size of the game and I simply have to trust that everything will fit together properly and if not, there will still be space for changes. Fortunately, from time to time it is necessary to complete a level in order to have something to show for the players :)
Process of completing one level

Dimension Change

It would be a shame not to talk more about the thing I'm most proud of so far, even if it doesn't work flawlessly yet - and that's the dimension change effect, or rather the time shift effect. Here I had to fight a lot with my lack of experiences with shaders. I started with a sprite blend shader for this time transition (for a smooth change of the environment I use a blend delay calculated from the edge of the screen) and at the same time I tried using the normal maps for some 2D sprites, and without shader knowledge it was difficult to work with both of these materials. In the end, I managed to write a script of about 500 lines, which can prepare the necessary variants for each object and smoothly transition between them. Small differences during the change can still be seen, but the transition between dimensions is certainly not final and the imperfections will certainly be even less visible. What pleases me is the fact that so far with each new asset I manage to highlight this change between dimensions nicely, and so far I am most pleased with vegetation and trees. I was very afraid of the treetops, but after experimenting with the transformation of individual leaves using the script, despite my very imperfect programming skills, a good result came out, which can then be easily adjusted for both dimensions (color change, wind strength, leaf density). At the same time, thanks to the just-mentioned normal maps, they look good even with different lighting, which gives a lot of possibilities in the future to play with the dark world, where it will stand out even more. I am curious about the darkest timeline at the end of the story, how it will affect the creation of assets and especially their blending so far, from earlier tests with placeholder graphics, it could be even more impressive than the timeline at the very beginning of the game. The next question will be optimization, but surprisingly, the game is moving well in this respect so far, at the expense of other things :)
Blending time dimensions with changing shader materials and normal materials

Further development

I think I've covered everything important that has happened behind the scenes of Warped Times over the past 2 months. In addition to the continuation of level design and the preparation of new environments, 2 big tasks await us in the future the first is precisely the story and its involvement in the game, which mostly includes the basic village with characters, for which we would like to decide their exact influence on the game and level design. The second task, which I am particularly looking forward to, will be the preparation for the next meeting with players at this year's Game Developer Session in Prague, where we will hopefully gather feedback for four completed levels in the first forest environment. As always, you can follow all important progress on our Twitter and Discord, where I always have something new to show :) I'll be looking forward to the next blog and thank you all for your support and wishlists!

[ 2022-08-09 16:37:10 CET ] [ Original post ]

I'm glad to be able to bring you the first developer blog of our new upcoming game Warped Times - and since it's the first part of the developer blog and so far we've only published some previews and teasers of development on our sites, we'll take it from the beginning :) After our first Steam game 364 received its final update and arrived to Android and iOS, it was time to move on to a more ambitious new project. After the release of 364, we tried a lot of things to keep the game fresh, from individual updates to several events (including one community event) and we were also lucky enough to present the game at two in-person game events just before the pandemic. At the same time, 364 represented our return to game development after a long break. Despite my low expectations of our first Steam release, the game was actually quite successful and had almost 400 copies sold or given away during its three-year existence. All these experiences have brought us to this moment and to the project that is a matter of the heart for me it's a remake of our old game Warped Times: Pres3nt, on which I spent the most time at school in the past and which was already technically obsolete at the time of release. For this reason, and also because we could do it much better today in terms of graphics, story, and level design, I decided to remake this game with a much more powerful engine and knowledge.
(Original Warped Times Pres3nt (2013) ) I started playing with basic movement and gameplay last year, but only occasionally, because I didn't want to embark on such a large project as long as we were still developing 364 (and also it wasn't an ideal time with returning back to work after the pandemic). So I was just taking the time to think about all aspects of the game. However, at the beginning of the year, I completed the last thing on my to-do list with 364 and released the game for iOS, so there was nothing to stop me from experimenting on remaking Warped Times in Unity (the original game was released in Game Maker 8, which was already obsolete at the time), and gradually put together ideas about the story, level design and graphic concept. The level design has undergone a significant change (and it will still take time, because at the moment I have designed only about five levels :)).The basic principle of traveling between dimensions remains, as does the division of chapters into environments ending with unique boss levels. But I decided to give the second dimension (where the player is looking for the second part of the magic stone) more weight and meaning and in the end it will be the same level in a different timeline, so the player can easily see the consequences of the unfolding story.
(First experiments in Unity) Warped Times will definitely be a project full of challenges, because I would like to bring the game to the highest possible quality that we can achieve in such a small team and with a minimum budget. We have already completed some challenges, so far the most difficult was design and animation of the characters (animations will be continuously improving until the final game). Compared to the original with primitive round characters, I wanted to give them a little more life, which has so far succeeded and people especially praise their dynamic reactions to the surroundings, which will be even tighter and more diverse with ongoing development.
(Characters with dynamic reactions) Quite challenging was the concept of the story, which is inspired by the original game and revolves around connecting the fragments of the stone of life in two different dimensions, but until we found the right theme and the contrasting idea of the utopian versus the dystopian world, the story branched out in a lot of other directions. For example, we are still not clear about how big a role the villagers will play, with whom it will be possible to interact, and it will also be a big challenge to write so many characters. Fortunately, I have a great screenwriter and at the same time a game reviewer and tester who has played a lot more games than I did, so I hope that this side of the game will work out in the end. At the moment, we just prepared the first preview build for players at Game Access in Brno, where we already get the first great feeedback from the players. I would like to gradually share all the progress of the game from the current version with the first levels and placeholder graphics to the finished game, and ideally continue that as we start working on DLC, so you will be able to follow the complete path of our game with me :) I definitely don't want to leave the game after the release, regardless of the success of the game in the end it's still a hobby and the money earned from our games will only cover some additional costs such as game store fees, purchased assets or participation in game events although I still have to finance it from my main job as a game tester :). Current build with less placeholder graphics I took today's first developer blog as an introduction to this whole adventure of development of our most extensive game yet. I already enjoy the design of individual levels, where two different timelines create more and more opportunities for puzzle ideas and minigames. Im also looking forward to (and at the same time I'm a little scared of) the development of boss levels, which Im planning to leave almost unchanged from the original game although I don't like a lot of things from the original game, I consider the boss levels to be successful :) We are currently processing a large feedback from the Game Access event, but in the meantime, you can follow the news on our Discord, Twitter or you can follow and wishlist Warped Times here on the Steam. Thank you to everyone who will be interested in the game and will support us until the successful release - it will be a long journey, but I believe it will be successful :)
(Replacing placeholder graphics)

[ 2022-05-31 17:57:29 CET ] [ Original post ]