The team and I (Adriaan) are proud to release the On Tour areas as a free update today!! Watch the trailer:

[previewyoutube=wFFx6MUPn1c;full][/previewyoutube]

I'mespecially proud of Celine and Sylvain for once again coming up with hundreds of funny stories and interactions. For this update, Celine took over pretty much all level and interaction design from me and, I hate to admit it, probably came up with more inventive interactions than I did! Playing Sylvain and Celine's first draft of the new areas was perhaps the first time I played Hidden Folks without knowing every little detail about it -the closest thing to being a player of the game as opposed to the developer- and I was blown away and laughed out loud all the time. You folks are lucky to be on the player side of this game and I'm super jealous!!!

[h3]Pricing changes[/h3]
As announced a few weeks ago, we decided to include all areas in your original 'Hidden Folks' purchase, including the Beach and the new On Tour areas, for no additional charge. To justify the 3+ years we've been working on Hidden Folks since release, we've increased the price of the game only for new players.

Yeah, to be clear: making the On Tour areas took a team of 3 people and a few part-time others an entire year to make. After the last free update, I got hundreds of comments and emails from folks saying they would have gladly paid for the update. We really, really appreciate that people want to support us, and if you feel that way, here are two things that help:

• leave a review on the store page.
  
• tell a friend about Hidden Folks.
  

Hey folks!

The team and I are super proud to announce a major update to Hidden Folks, launching on June 4th, called On Tour. The update will add 6 (!!) new music themed areas to the game, with more than 70 things to find, new mouth sounds (we even made weird music), new interactions, and plenty of new clues with mildly amusing or straight up bad jokes.

A couple months after the release of the Beach DLC, we agreed that the pricing model we slid into (abase game withDLCs) didn't feel right. After much discussion and consideration, we decided that we want to come back and unify all areas into a single 'Hidden Folks' purchase while increase the price of the game to justify the 3 years we've been working on the game since release. This means that:

• today, the game's price will on average (because currencies are weird) increase by 5060%.
  
• today or tomorrow or very soon (depending on how fast I can arrange this with Valve) there will be no more DLCs aside from the Mouth Sounds DLC, that will continue to exist.
  
• on June 4th, all players who own Hidden Folks will gain access to both the On Tour and Beach areas with no additional purchases.
  

Hey folks.

The release of the new Beach areas and game's release on Nintendo Switch mark the end of the fourth year of making Hidden Folks. Before I started working on Hidden Folks, I had designed a few games and programmed several prototypes, but I had never programmed an entire game. When I met Sylvain and jokingly told him we should make a game together, I did not imagine we would then proceed to spend four whole years making a game to be released on 7 platforms!!

I learned so much from making this game. About game design, playtesting, iterating. About community, fans, communication. About programming, scalable interfaces, different input devices, and localization. About business, marketing, and dealing with (my) mistakes. About finding motivation, or having too much motivation and working overtime because I wanted nothing else. I learned a lot about teamwork, finding the right collaborators, and being a producer as well as a creator. Making Hidden Folks was very hard at times, and wonderful and fulfilling at other times. I am still learning today!

With the Beach areas out and the Nintendo Switch version released, I (and I think the rest of the team) need a break from our adventure. It has become hard for me to think about anything else besides Hidden Folks and that bothers me. I fear I have become boring at parties! For the foreseeable future, I want to take a step back from creating new Hidden Folks content and let my mind drift and linger. Maybe come up with a new game or two, make some prototypes, test some ideas. And, of course, figure out what else I want to get out of making Hidden Folks. I will continue giving support to the game, fixing bugs and whatnot, but there won't be new areas in the foreseeable future. But when the energy returns to me (and the rest of the team), you will hear from us again!

Thank you so much for your continued support, and talk to you soon!

Adriaan

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Hidden Folks!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time

The team and I are proud to release an update to Hidden Folks today!! This update includes a Beach DLC that contains 5 beach-themed areas with 60+ more things to find. Watch the trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npFg7P14xe4
We also added some of the new sounds from Beach to the mouth sound pack, and we heavily optimised the game to run even smoother on your computer! You can read the full changelog here.

This massive content update was never possible without you, the community, the people who playtested and translated the new areas, and who stuck with all my ramblings on Discord!! We are so grateful for your support and the response and the fact all of you bought the game uugggghhh it means a lot to us you know

QUICKLY some art form the new Beach areas before I get too emotional:







And I just wanted to take one more moment to put the whole team on a pedestal. Sylvain and I were at the heart of Hidden Folks but without the contributions of the rest of the team we could have never made Hidden Folks the game it is today. So... here they are:



You'll hear again from me soon! First I sleep for many days

- Adriaan

Hey folks!

Announcement! The new Beach DLC will be out next week, Wednesday October 24th!!



The Beach DLC will have:
- 5 new areas with 60+ things to find.
- a price of around USD 2.99 in your local currency.
- pirates.

* H Y P E *

And as if that's not enough, I'll also update the Mouth Sounds Pack to include the funniest sounds from the Beach areas, some of which in my opinion are the funniest sounds we ever recorded.

* H Y P E H Y P E *

See you next week!!

- Adriaan

Today's Deal: Save 50% on Hidden Folks!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Saturday at 10AM Pacific Time

You read that right: multiple new things today!!!

Mouth Sounds Pack
We packed 71 of your favourite mouth sounds together, and you can buy them right here! As long as it's not commercial, you can do whatever the heck you want with these sounds: notifications, ringtones... you name it. The pack includes the much requested Roar03.mp3, Pling01.mp3, Toot04.mp3, and even Klaxon06.mp3!!



Dual-stick controller support
I listened to your feedback and spent a whole month rewriting the input code to support playing the game with a controller! I tested my code with a PS4 controller, an Xbox One controller, and some cheap knock-off controller, and I believe I have covered most dual-stick controllers. That said, I've never added controller support to a game before, so let me know if improvements are needed. I probably can't guarantee support for all controllers, but I'll do my best to support as many as I can.



The City Road
We couldn't let this idea for a small and simple puzzle area for the City theme pass. We know it'll be over too soon and you want more mOre mORE MORE areas, but rest assured: new areas are coming!



Join the Discord community
In full secrecy, I've been talking to the people who've helped us translate the game on Discord for a while now. Today, I'm opening up the chat for other people to join the conversation! I regularly post sneak previews of new areas, talk about design issues, ask for advice on clues, and give out beta access through Discord. It's fun :D Talk to you there?



You said ""new areas""?!
We have some really fun ideas for small puzzle areas in existing themes, which we want to make and release (for free) this year. We have already been working hard on a new theme with 5 areas that will become Hidden Folks' first DLC. There's a preview of that new theme in the game! But don't hold your breath: it's still a lot of work and won't be out in the next couple months. We just couldn't keep it to ourselves, that's all :)

Enjoy the sound pack, controller support, and the new area, and talk to you on discord!
- Adriaan

What's up everyone!

Adriaan here, the game designer behind Hidden Folks. While Sylvain (illustrator) and Celine (new addition to the team helping with level design) are working hard on a set of areas in a new theme, I spent most of the last few weeks rewriting the interface of Hidden Folks! You now have the ability to position the panel with targets at any side of the screen:



And, a much requested feature: you can now reset single areas! Go to the settings inside one of the areas and hit the reset button:



The menu now scrolls horizontally, because... it's prettier.



And there have been a number of other improvements, such as the interface scaling depending on your screen size, being able to zoom in more, and the game trying to tight-fit the level in the view when you open it up for the first time. The full change log can be found here.

If something doesn't work as intended, of you have suggestions, let me know in the comments or on the forums and I'll take a look at it!

What we are working on next: some secret content that will be hilarious!!! And I'm not even talking about the new areas. Hang on tight :P

- Adriaan

What's up everyone!

Adriaan here, the game designer behind Hidden Folks. While Sylvain (illustrator) and Celine (new addition to the team helping with level design) are working hard on a set of areas in a new theme, I spent most of the last few weeks rewriting the interface of Hidden Folks! You now have the ability to position the panel with targets at any side of the screen:



And, a much requested feature: you can now reset single areas! Go to the settings inside one of the areas and hit the reset button:



The menu now scrolls horizontally, because... it's prettier.



And there have been a number of other improvements, such as the interface scaling depending on your screen size, being able to zoom in more, and the game trying to tight-fit the level in the view when you open it up for the first time. The full change log can be found here.

If something doesn't work as intended, of you have suggestions, let me know in the comments or on the forums and I'll take a look at it!

What we are working on next: some secret content that will be hilarious!!! And I'm not even talking about the new areas. Hang on tight :P

- Adriaan

We are working on two new themes, a few surprise areas, and thinking about rewriting various internal systems to allow for features like controller support, resetting a single area, and a more dynamic interface.

More details as we work on these things!

We are working on two new themes, a few surprise areas, and thinking about rewriting various internal systems to allow for features like controller support, resetting a single area, and a more dynamic interface.

More details as we work on these things!

Sylvain and I (Adriaan) are proud to add three new Snow areas to Hidden Folks as a free update available right now!!! Check out the new Snow trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hLyHhuCi0
In this update, we are also changing the way you unlock areas in the game. Instead of having to play the game from start to finish, you can now start playing from every first area in a theme. So for those who were overwhelmed by the massive factory in the last update: you can dive into the new Snow areas regardless, which I promise will be slightly easier! We added / changed a bunch of other small things too; see the changelog for a good overview.





As Hidden Folks is currently #22 best rated Steam game of all time (browse all products > sort be user reviews), Sylvain and I couldn't be more proud. We want to thank all of you a thousand times for the heartwarming reviews!!

- Adriaan & Sylvain

Sylvain and I (Adriaan) are proud to add three new Snow areas to Hidden Folks as a free update available right now!!! Check out the new Snow trailer:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3hLyHhuCi0
In this update, we are also changing the way you unlock areas in the game. Instead of having to play the game from start to finish, you can now start playing from every first area in a theme. So for those who were overwhelmed by the massive factory in the last update: you can dive into the new Snow areas regardless, which I promise will be slightly easier! We added / changed a bunch of other small things too; see the changelog for a good overview.





As Hidden Folks is currently #22 best rated Steam game of all time (browse all products > sort be user reviews), Sylvain and I couldn't be more proud. We want to thank all of you a thousand times for the heartwarming reviews!!

- Adriaan & Sylvain

Yooooooo- Sylvain and I (Adriaan) are proud to announce the new Snow areas will release on.....

December 14th. HYPE!

3 new areas for free! ±1h gameplay! Android simultaneously! Whaaaaaat!!!

And while I have your attention: we are looking for a few more people to help us translate the new areas to:
- Japanese
- Czech
- Danish
- Vietnamese
- Arabic

If one of these is your native language, you have a spare half hour, and really can't wait to play the new areas (before anyone else!), sign up here and we'll get you going a.s.a.p.



More sneak previews soon!!! Back to work now,

Adriaan

Hey everyone!

Sylvain and I have been taking a little break from working on the game, enjoying the summer weather and thinking about our health first and foremost. We put a loooot of energy in Hidden Folks' launch and the Factory update, from which we are still recovering even now. We are both about to travel for a few weeks, and when we get back, we'll also get back to working on Hidden Folks.

On our schedule for when we get back from our holidays:

- Android (ughh this remains to be technically challenging)
- secret feature
- new areas

One more thing: right before I start travelling myself, I'll be at Gamescom on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you're there too, send me a real quick email letting me know you're there - I have a little something for you ^^ My email address: hello@adriaandejongh.com

<3

Thanks to Steam users Bucketsmith, Phaota, Prezombie, DNF, ZenWidjet, caga, Pavocado, Gameboyalex, and Lloydo for reporting the hundreds of sorting issues we fixed in this patch!!!

This patch also fixes an issue for Linux users not being able to use their mouse in the game (silly...) and a few other tiny things. See the full changelog for more info!

<3

Today's Deal: Save 25% on Hidden Folks!*

Look for the deals each day on the front page of Steam. Or follow us on twitter or Facebook for instant notifications wherever you are!

*Offer ends Sunday at 10AM Pacific Time

Sylvain and I (Adriaan) are SUPER proud to announce that the Factory Update is available right now!! This update comes with 3 new areas: one small area to get the hang of the new theme, one MASSIVE area - the Factory itself - and one puzzle area to finish the game (for now!).

Also: new Factory Update trailer!!! *click on thing below here*

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TZ5GcDePU8A
beep beep boop boop rktkrktkrktkrktkrktkrktktkrktkrkrktkrktkrkt hey! bbbrrrdddbbbppp brrr bbppp brrrrdrrr!

With 19,475 sprites, 3400 interactive objects, 921 characters, 540 sounds, and 28 targets, the Factory is by far the most complicated area we've ever made. You probably saw our making-of posts of the Factory over the last three days, but in case you missed them, check 'em out here!



Also in this update:

• 8 new languages: Arabic, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Ukrainian, and Vietnamese.
  
• Many small iterations to targets and clues of previous areas.
  
• Improved a lot of the sound mixing throughout the game.
  
• Massive performance optimisations!
  
• ... and more! Check out the changelog on the forums.
  

In this third post of Hidden Folks’ Factory announcement series, I (Adriaan) talk about the targets, their clues, playtesting, community translation... and I announce the targets of the Factory!

In our day 1 and day 2 posts, you read how we put together the stories and graphics of each area and how we added interactions, systems, and sounds to each scene. It is after all that stuff that we start thinking about the targets, the things you’ll have to find in the area. Both Sylvain and I make suggestions for targets based on the stories and the interactions in the game. We then go through our suggestions and cherrypick the targets based on a lot of parameters: whether the player has used the interaction required to find it before, whether there are other targets nearby, whether a target would have an interesting story to tell, how many interactions would be required to find a target, how difficult it is to see the target, etc.

(I almost put a map of Factory's potential targets here. Would have been a MASSIVE spoiler.)

So, we pick a bunch of targets and then reshape parts of the map to really make the targets fit in with their environment. We then ask my good friend Bram van Dijk to help us come up with the clues for the targets.



I’ll try to make sure a clue retains it’s “clue value”, the information that actually tells you anything at all about the whereabouts of the target, while Bram tries to make something funny out of it. Not the laughing-out-loud kind of funny, but the haha-omg-what-a-silly-joke kind of funny. A kind of 'funny' that, once you get it, you're like "pffffff alright I get it...". Yeah. Anyway - after coming up with a bunch of clues we're satisfied with, Sylvain and I reshape the area again if we feel that's needed to clarify the clue, but most importantly: we playtest the area.



We tell people to head over to a beta branch of Hidden Folks here on Steam and ask playtesters to record their session with the game. I watch every minute of every playtest to get a grip on people’s experiences. In general, those playtests lead to todo lists with hundreds of small and big things to be fixed. There are always a lot of sorting issues, and the specific wording of a hint will often distract players in ways we don’t intend to. So we reshape parts of the map again, rewrite a lot of the hints, fix all the bugs, and then ask the awesome community surrounding Hidden Folks to help us translate all the clues. Here's an unreadable snippet of the much, much larger shared Google Sheet the translators do their thing in:



The cool thing about Google Sheets is not just that it is super simple for people to use, but also that its API allow the translators to download their translation into a special version of the game (another beta branch on Steam) and see their text in the game, right after they translated it, without my intervention! Which is toooootally rad. Phew, technology these days.

However.... it turns out translating a game isn't as easy as just putting a bunch of words in a text field. We write all clues and jokes in English, which has two big downsides: a saying or rhyme that works in English will probably not work in any other language, and English doesn't have gendered words. This kept annoying the community (ughh so sorry folks) but their efforts and creativity is what really saved us there: translators kept talking among themselves about the meaning of the clues, tested their translations in-game to see if the clues fitted a target's context, and worked with me revising the clues when things were too unclear or just plain bad.



I wanted to mention that having such a wonderful and active group of people around me (see the in-game credits) was ultimately the reason to put that extra bit of care into the game, mostly because it was so nice to talk to people who obviously cared about what Sylvain and I were making for such a long time already. As a game developer, it's easy to forget sometimes that you're making a game for real people and that every minute of effort you put in it could translate to the enjoyment of others. With Hidden Folks, the community made that enjoyment - the result of our efforts - really tangible for me. So... thanks fam <3

When all hints are translated by the awesome community and all known bugs are fixed, we go through the game a couple more times to try to spot layering issues, sound-related issues, and other tiny bugs. Then, finally, I can compile a release candidate! (And then I test some more, and do QA... but I won't go into that today.)



When there's a Windows, Mac, and Linux build of the game on Steam and an iOS and tvOS build up for review on the Apple App Store, Sylvain and I then fully switch our attention over to finding ways to tell people about the update and sharing our excitement about it with you all! And this marks the end of the development process of the areas in Hidden Folks! If you are still reading this: awesome; definitely let me know in the comments if there was something that really surprised you in our three behind-the-scenes posts. Also let me know in the comments if there's something you'd like to see or hear more about in the future!

Now, as a final announcement before the Factory update releases tomorrow, here are the 28 targets of the new Factory scene:

Not only intern Ivo’s motivation is far below zero: so is he.

In this jungle of boxes, forklift spotter Sally found a particularly rare species. Look at that power! What a beauty!

Muhammad had a whole different idea of a boxing ring.

Yoko has the memory of a goldfish. Set her rollercoaster in motion and every lap will be a new and thrilling ride to her!

1. Heat the pan with no oil. 2. Throw your sausage in the pan. 3. Wait. 4. Wait some more. 5. Add some freezing foam topping. 6. Your perfect burned sausage is ready!

Nemo thinks he's safe behind glass, but he's an easy catch in open water...

Jasmin is so attached to her car, she will never leave it! Ever! Never ever! Never, never ever!

Are you serious, Toyoti? You need to be pulled out of a car again?!

Robby - whooping back and forth. Forever.

Bling-bling in da lock-r! yo yo yo yo

Daan will be dry in a second.

When this plant saw the end was near it decided to end the ride itself.

Garden fork. Garden. Fork. Get it?

How much Bruno is left in storage?

The high security warden is a key figure in this hiding scheme.

Sigge likes watching them sweat. So energetic! Power from the people!

What looks like an ordinary glass ball is, as a matter of fact, worth a hundred thousand Follars. It won't come as a surprise to you to know they safely locked it away.

From mechanic Melisa's point of view, it's pretty clear the chassis is broken.

To find Kiki, just follow the trail of a specific kind of fruit.

Conductor Stokowski rehearses with his orchestra. The horns are doing great tonight!

Mermaid Arial is chillin' hard underwater. Blub is a way of life.

"One more minute!" Huy yells, even though he has been clean for hours.

Nicotine isn't strong enough for Hot Hira; she needs something else to light her up.

Tammie is so TIREd of counting.

Toma was surprised her tire was delivered so quickly! But seriously; the assembly line needs optimization.

Armless Ayaz has to get out at the next stop! Let's just hope someone presses the stop button for him...

Train inspector Mark double checked the numbers and is certain this barrel train needs exactly one more barrel before it can depart.

Trainspotter Tara spotted a spot-on spot to spot some trains!

Trash pusher Page - someone's gotta do it, y'know, push the trash back and forth.



Your search for these folks and objects starts tomorrow!!

In yesterday’s announcement, Sylvain and I (Adriaan) announced that the Factory update will release on June 15th (HYPE) and we talked about the process of putting together the graphics and stories in the world. Today, I’ll try to explain in a non-technical way how we continue to add interactions and systems to those graphics, and sound designer Martin Kvale will step in to show you what sounds do with the Hidden Folks areas.

Making the interactions in Hidden Folks starts with Sylvain placing the pulled-apart objects in an ‘Interaction scene’. I then go through this scene and slowly put things together while writing code for new functionality if necessary. As an example, most interactions in Factory consist of only a few interactive scripts: rotators, sliders, and buttons. Here are a few GIFs that should give you a vague idea of the kind of technology behind it:



In the image above, you can see that the handle has a slider script that 'talks' to every part of the robotic arm individually. When you put the stuff together, it looks way more complicated - but also more coherent - than it actually is.



The crane has various different kinds of components: slider scripts for the pokes, a script to move and a script to stretch the crane's line, a script for the magnet to follow the end of the line, and scripts on the magnet to be able to pick up things.



In this image, the button on the top left creates a crate and assigns it to the conveyor belt, who then moves the crate to the button that determines which conveyor belt to send the crate to next.



In the example above, you can see that the vault wheel changes the water level of the basin, it makes the air pockets stretch up and down, and it makes the water levels in the canisters go up and down. What you see here is 6 different systems talking to each other. Pretty cool, I think! Without spoiling it too much, here is a GIF highlighting different parts of a system in the small area you'll get to play before the big Factory, a system of which you've already seen all components individually in previous GIFs:



I can already hear some of you asking: "So where's that Steam Workshop integration so we can put shit together outselves?!" Well.... my component-based system built in Unity has three relevant drawbacks:

Finally, and this is a very technical thing, the components I wrote make use of Unity's event system all the time throughout the project, which constraints making areas in Hidden Folks to use the Unity game engine, which would force a potential Steam Workshop feature to happen inside the Unity engine, basically asking players to make the game from scratch like we do. This would be ridiculous.

So anyway... Everything you find in Hidden Folks that moves or responds was put together or touched by me. The new Factory has exactly 3800 interactive objects that were each carefully put together and placed within their own system. Here's a few highlights:











You'll figure out how these and all the other interactions in the Factory work once you get your hands on them June 15th! :D

Another thing that we put a lot of effort into are the sounds. Even though Sylvain and I recorded every sound you can hear in the game, we asked sound designer Martin Kvale to do the mixing. I'm handing the mic over to Martin to tell you all about sounds in Hidden Folks! Martin?

----

AGGHUM, yes, hi, I'm Martin! Adriaan and Sylvain asked me to take good care of the audio in the game. They had already done heaps of great sounds effects, but needed someone like me to make the areas really come alive in terms of sound. I've primarily been placing sound in the areas, as well as balancing the sound volumes throughout the game. I also designed a system to manage the volume and reverb of ambient sounds throughout the game.

From the very start of my collaboration with Adriaan and Sylvain, they made it clear they wanted all sounds to be mouth made, unedited, and all made by Adriaan and Sylvain. This separates it from games like Eggggg and Burly Men at Sea who use human voices but modify it somewhat, as well as having music playing in the background.

The process of recording was done in batches, usually over Skype, with me on one end of the call listening (with my microphone muted) to the sounds Adriaan and Sylvain made, giving them suggestions on what to try next. Here's an example of me editing Adriaan making vulture sounds:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poz0wVPJNbA
After our recording sessions, I would cut the sounds out of the recorded track, pick the best ones, and either add them to objects in the game or add them as ambient sounds to an area. For the pleasure of your ears, here's some really good sheep sounds you hear in the farm area of Hidden Folks:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gwihFZ-QSo
(Fun fact: Adriaan once won an audio award during the Global Game Jam for these sheep sounds.)

Since we used only sounds made with human voice and did not heavily process those sounds, our concern was that crucial sound effects would get lost or obstructed when a myriad of other sound effects would continuously play as well. If you, for instance, find the chicken in the chicken coop, there's a corresponding 'found it + pling' sound that for the satisfaction of finding something is important to hear - but if there are 20 other sounds playing at that same time, you wouldn't hear a single thing! On top of that: I was concerned about listening fatigue as mosts sounds are in a similar frequency range, which could potentially wear out people's interests in the sounds entirely.

In the video below, I show our solution to these two problems. In short, we differentiate areas by grouping together certain ambient sounds depending on their location on the map. As a result, some places sound busy, some sound sparse, some sound hectic, and some sound calm. So when you play, you won't just be bombarded with exciting sound effects all the time, but you'll also get some rest here and there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EOAwtmh3tIg
In addition to having the ambience change when you scroll around on the map, we added an effect to zooming in and out to reflect you moving closer or further away from the action. Not that zooming only affects the ambient sounds, not the sound effects that happen when you click and interact with something. Here's an example of the zooming in City:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPn6zDWXyI0
All in all, these videos show the principles and methods we've used to craft the living world of Hidden Folks. I could probably keep talking about the sounds for much longer, but this should suffice for now :)

I hope you will have a lovely time seeking out funny sounds in the new Factory!! Back to you, Adriaan!

---

Thanks Martin Kvale! This wraps up the second post in preparation for the update on Thursday, June 15th. Talk to you tomorrow!

Yooooooo!

Sylvain and I (Adriaan) are SUPER proud to announce that this Thursday, June 15th, we will release the free Factory Update on Steam (and iOS) that adds the most complicated area to Hidden Folks we’ve ever made. The Factory has almost 30 targets, dozens of new interactions, hundreds of new sounds, and thousands of tiny stories.

In the three days leading up to the update, Sylvain and I have prepared three graphic-heavy posts, one per day, in which we show and talk about what makes us so excited for it. In today's post: Sylvain’s drawings and the hundreds of stories he puts together.



Like everything in Hidden Folks, the Factory started on paper. Sylvain uses a fineliner to draw every single element we’ll eventually want to place in the game. Sylvain and I brainstorm on the theme and possible sub-themes that could work well with interactions, after which Sylvain enters The Zone™ and just draws whatever comes to mind. After drawing a bunch of things, Sylvain scans them and (manually) places them in a sprite sheet.



Every theme in Hidden Folks has somewhere between 3 and 8 of these sprite sheets, and every area and every story you see is in the game is made up of the elements in those images.

Funny side-track: when Sylvain and I started working on Hidden Folks about three years ago, he decided to buy a somewhat medium-quality / cost-efficient scanner for the project. When that scanner broke down recently, he used a better scanner for a while only to discover that his digital drawings suddenly looked very different, and so we bought that same low-budget scanner just to make sure all Hidden Folks drawings look consistent.

Anyway - once we have those sprite sheets, we give everything a name, drag the elements into the area and sort them, one by one, so that they appear where you’d expect them to appear:



Oh my god I literally discovered today how awesome these putting-stuff-together GIFs are!! Here's two more for fun:





Drag stuff in the scene 19,475 times and you have the Factory:



(btw, this is not a joke: 19,475 is the actual amount of sprites in Factory!)

The image above might be a little unreadable, but we are getting ahead of ourselves here anyway. Because when we start working on a new area in the game, we first make an ‘interaction scene’ where Sylvain puts together all the interactions of a theme in one scene. One small section of this scene:



With this scene, I can start working on the technical side of the interactions while Sylvain can focus on putting together a rough layout with our ideas for sub-themes spread across the map. With a rough layout indicating how certain sub-themes make up sub-areas, Sylvain starts filling in the map, organically growing each sub-area bit by bit, while I add scripts to certain visuals to make them interactive - to give each sub-area not only a distinctive look, but also a distinctive feel.



As you can see in the GIF above, we revise the area quite a lot! Halfway through the process, we might decide to scrape half of the level as we did for the train yard in the Factory. During this process of filling up an area, Sylvain and I will continuously talk about the stuff we make and inspire each other for more elements and interactions. Even though it’s a lot of work, this is where all the fun and magic happens. Some of the things that happen in this phase:

• we try to make sure that the sub-areas are as distinct as possible so that when we add targets to them, the clues those targets get can point at those sub-areas as a way of indication an area as opposed to a single point or scenario.
  
• we try to spread the density of the interactions so that not everything happens only at specific parts of the map.
  
• together with sound designer Martin Kvale, we think about how the areas will sound and how that may influence the layout.
  
• we add and remove sub-areas based on their flow on the map or based on the interactions.
  
• we add characters and 'character randomizers', which decide the visuals and animations of the characters all around the scene.
  
• a thousand other things... ??
  

Exactly one month ago, Sylvain and I (Adriaan) released Hidden Folks. It's all been a little overwhelming for us; the bugs (I'm working on it!), the questions, the requests... but honestly; it's really been freaking amazing and it warms our hearts to see nearly all of you enjoy the game so much and longing for more!!

Thank you. We are truly grateful!!!!!

What blows my mind most is this:



Overwhelmingly Positive!!! Whhhoooaaaa! To be honest: I wasn't quite expecting the Steam audience (you) to find us here, with so many amazing titles made by huge teams with bigger production values and massive marketing teams to make sure you heard about the game. But here we are, having been in the Top Sellers list for almost a month! And not only did a lot of you find and buy the game, many of you have also finished it or getting close to it.



One more thing I wanted to mention is our forum moderators: palex00, scallysche, mindbokeh - you three are the best!! A few other members on the forums also helped translating Chinese posts, which was both awesome and absolutely necessary, for which I am super grateful as well! (I'm still looking for someone to help me moderate those in the future because frankly I don't speak Chinese!) You're all the best community really. <3

Sooooo.... I guess it's time for the new areas, right? Well, they're getting there; let me update you on our current status:

Sylvain and I have been cooling down last week, recovering from the very intense weeks around the release and my trip to the Game Developer Conference in San Francisco (where I gave two talks and talked business with businessmen and -woman. hrhrhrhr.). This Monday I started working on fixes for some of the harder bugs that were reported, and I've sent various bug reports by you guys and girls over to Unity (the game engine we used to build Hidden Folks). In the mean time, Sylvain has started drawing and implementing more Factory theme interactions. We already explored the theme a year ago but threw it out before the release because we needed it to be better and more interactive. A little under-development sneak preview:



On our schedule right now (in this order):
- bugfixes (touchscreens should work SOON)
- three new areas
- secret new feature
- optimisations to bring the game to Android
- more areas?
- suggestions?

I don't have any dates for you yet. You'll hear it here first when we've got something to announce!

And then..... there is the fan music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCa8AEMtmkI

Awesome, right? :P

Hidden Folks will release February 15th, which is Wednesday next week!! And holy shit we're excited! I'm also proud to announce that we'll ship with Steam Trading Cards. A full list of the game's features on release (with more to come later):

- 15+ hand-drawn areas
- 120+ targets to find
- 960+ mouth-originated sound effects
- 200+ unique interactions
- Sepia and night mode
- Steam Cloud
- Achievements
- Steam Trading Cards
- 14 languages (translated by the community)

Due to all the chaos that surrounds releasing a game, my brain is too fried to come up with what else to write down here, but please ask for any info in the comments if you want to know more.







See you all next week, right?!

Hey everyone,

We are crunching HARD on the game so I'm keeping this short!

- We've received a LOT of feedback from playtesters (some of you, I presume - awesome and thanks!!!!) that we are actively working on. Loads of bugs are found, but people are having a lot of fun so it's super promising!!

- We've made 4 new big areas since our last update here, and plan to make finish two more big ones and many smaller ones before the end of this month! Right now we're full on areas with laboratory and factory themes... Sneak peak:



- We've made a new interface and continue to make changes to it to make it clearer and better.

- We'll start translating the game soon, which is possible thanks to many of you who've signed up to help us out!

- Sound designer Martin Kvale has added our ambient mouth sounds to pretty much all areas and it's sounding awesome!!! Can't wait to let you guys hear it.



So... release is coming closer. More on that next week. *hype*

Wowowowow crazy big update today! Sylvain and I have been crunching away and we've made a loooooot of progress. We're still on track, and a release somewhere mid-February is still on our timeline! But aside from our progress on the game, loads of other things have happened too:

Playable posters and T-shirts

If you met us at PAX East or Gamescom, you might already have one: a playable poster! If you didn't see us there; you can now get our playable posters PLUS playable T-shirts (yes, playable) on the internet!



For playable T-shirts, go here.
For playable posters, .

Content progress

We recently did an awesome livestream where we had suggestions by viewers on what to put in the windows of the gigantic Hidden Folks city that we've been building:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c6_8Mniz8OY

Other than that, we've made a lot of progress on the suburb theme, a farm theme, and a jungle theme, all stuff we're eager to show. All in good time :)



Remember that timeline I gave you on these forums a while back? We're still on track! Release is still planned for mid-February, and we're doing everything we can to make that happen. Speaking about that....

Team expansion

We're super proud to announce that sound designer Martin Kvale will join us to make the sounds sound better overall! Martin is probably best known for the sounds behind the recently released Gonner, and while Sylvain and I will still be yelling into our microphones, he's going to make sure volumes are right and we mix the right sounds together.

Also joining Sylvain and I is Mirthe 'Mitty' Venbrux! You've probably already seen her work as she did the front page teaser! Aside from trailers and teasers, Mitty will be assisting us with production, marketing, and various things that need to be organised and managed.

Last but not least, we're asking Test Company Please Ignore to do some quality assurance tests to make sure that when we launch, your savegames won't break, all the buttons in out interface work, and that the game doesn't run slow on your device.



With all these awesome people helping us, the game is shaping up really well and real quickly. Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhh I'm soo excited to put it in your hands ASAP!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBBdkGioiMU

I'm in Austin, about to fly home to Amsterdam. Hidden Folks showed here at Fantastic Arcade, an event for a group of like-minded, artistic, and heartwarming people that all make beautiful video games. It was hugely inspiring, with games like 'Everything' by David O'Reilly, 'Loot Rascals' by Hollow Ponds, and 'TumbleSeed' by a group of friends in Chicago. I highly, highly recommend you to look up these and so many more games from Fantastic Arcade here!



If you're curious how Hidden Folks is made, I gave a talk you can watch on Twitch's archive! And oh man... Hidden Folks looks so good on a cinema screen!

Development timeline

Alright, so, I've decided to share with you a more elaborate plan on releasing Hidden Folks. Making and releasing multi-platform games is really hard, so I hope this gives you insight into the effort that goes into it.

The following is our current development timeline, based on everything we know about making the game at this point, for 15 hours of gameplay / 20 levels on release, for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Apple TV:

• Oct. 23: base interactions, interface iteration
  
• Nov. 30: half of all levels done
  
• Mid-January: all levels done, QA focus / private beta
  
• Mid-February: release
  
• March: content update 1
  
• April: content update 2
  
• May: content update 3
  

TL;DR: Check the awesome GIFs in this update! See you at Gamescom?

Hello folks!



As I'm typing this, I'm on the train to Gamescom, which takes place in Cologne, Germany. Hidden Folks will have a booth at the Indie Arena Booth - if you're there too, come find us!!! We'll be showing some brand new levels with many new interactions and sounds and we're super excited about this build!!!



We've been working on a new type of level in which you follow folks that walk you through the level. You'll find this in a few bonus levels, probably. We also worked on a new level selection screen, and we added particles and sounds to trees, water, and bushes. And a LOT of interactions - but I won't spoil those for you right now!



Sylvain and I are also livestreaming weekly on twitch.tv/hiddenfolks, taking suggestions and implementing them LIVE. Follow us there and join us when we're live (usually on thursdays)!

That's it for now, folks!

TL:DR: PAX East was awesome. We're redoing all the levels in the game. We ported Hidden Folks to Apple TV during Unite Europe. And did anyone say Linux?!

'Sup! It's been a while! How are you?

Two months have passed since PAX East, but its not too late to tell you what an amazing show it was! Hundreds of people played and loved Hidden Folks, we met a few of you there, and even spoke to a few journalists and business people! I wrote a lenghty post-mortem on the organisational aspects of running a minibooth at the IndieMEGABOOTH here, a good read if you'd interested in what a show like PAX East is like from the perspective of a game developer.



Even though PAX East was our biggest playtest yet and we found many little things that really didn't work the way we intended, Sylvain and I feel really confident about the direction we are taking the game into. We're starting to understand the 'language' by which people want to interact with the game, and so our level creation process slowly takes shape - rather than just throwing things together, we now model the level based on the interactions that will be present and the hidden folks we have in mind. For more smiles, surprises, tiny puzzles, and less frustration.

That said, all existing levels were tests more then anything else, so we've decided to throw them all away. All of them. Because making a good level starts with level design at its core, not wil level design slapped on top of it. It's a lot of work, but it will definitely be worth it.

Anyway - two weeks ago, we showcased Hidden Folks at Unite Europe and as the event itself is a bit weird to showcase at - developers only, talks-oriented, no press, barely any business - we decided to go into FUCK IT mode and do the impossible: to port the game to Apple TV and implement heat map analytics during the show, in three days. And we did it! Apple TV is a weird platform, but it's a nice step up to controller-based platforms (this is not an announcement, I think). Heat maps will be SUPER useful once we go into beta and need some data on what works and what doesn't.

Also; some of you asked for a linux version of the game, and I think I can safely say that I will try to make that happen. I'll need some help from you people running linux to make that happen, though. Alright? Alright!

Can't wait to give you all more and more sneak previews of the new levels!!!

- Adriaan

TLDR; Awesome press coverage in The Verge and Polygon, play Hidden Folks at Now Play This in London, and development is going well!

'Sup.

After working our asses off to make a presentable version of Hidden Folks, we flew across the ocean to show the game to a few selected journalists at GDC (San Francisco). Among others, The Verge and Polygon loved it. Read their articles full of here and here.

April 1st to 3rd, an early version of Hidden Folks will be playable at Now Play This in London. It's a fantastic event with an amazing line-up of games and we're very happy to be part of it - and obviously, we hope to see you there if you happen to be around.

We are constantly learning new things about the game, how people play it, and improve based on that. Currently, we are focussing nearly all our effort at creating some sort of visual language so that players are guided even more to know which objects are interactable and which aren't - without spoiling the fun of discovering them. Another thing that's eating up a lot of our time is the games interface; we're now in the 4th iteration and it's still not as good as we want it to be. Conclusion: things are being improved a LOT and development is going great!

We'll have some sweet announcements next month. Stay tuned.

Sooo excited!!!!

We are Adriaan de Jongh and Sylvain Tegroeg, working together to make Hidden Folks: a game like Where’s Waldo, but black and white, animated, and interactive: play with the environment to find characters in super busy areas!

We've been working on the game for a while now, but only just now decided to start talking about it. This is going to be our first Steam release so we're still discovering what the best way is to communicate with all of you. Anyway, make sure to wishlist us and join us on the forums, and give us all the feedback we need!

Adriaan & Sylvain