This is a general update which addresses the final news reports for Burden of Proof and what I've been working on for the future.

Thank you for playing!

It's been a little over a year since release and I'm humbled by those of you who have tried out the game and continue to support it. This game would not be what it is today without the community feedback and suggestions I received in the discussion page, and those of you who had left me positive messages about their adventures solving crimes have been a huge motivation to keep working. There's no greater reward for working on a game than seeing people having fun with it.
There won't really be any new content to this game, as I've decided to focus all my efforts into other projects, but I will continue to monitor the discussion page and Twitter for bugs and other minor improvements in case something gets suggested. In case you missed it, I posted the official OST on YouTube, free for everyone to listen to and download!

The "Endgame"

It's been a year since release, so I think it'd be fun to reveal some of the secrets I've hidden within the game world. Looking through the discussions and screenshots, it looks like many of these "easter eggs" have gone unnoticed. If you're keen on finding those secrets for yourself however, be wary of spoilers! This is by no means a complete list of all the easter eggs, but should serve as basis for understanding where such things might be hidden. In fact, what you'll learn here should go a long ways towards finding more secrets in my next games ;) Okay! Let's dive into a few of these. The main way I'm able to look at these secrets is by using the Debug Camera mode which is built into the game for everyone. This is accessed with the P key if you turn on Debug Keys in the options menu. You can also use the console to activate it.
If we take a peak behind the defendant's side seats in the courtroom, we can see this odd railing hidden where no camera would normally ever see. This is an asset from one of my previous games, Skyway, it's used as a detail object for some of the platforming sections.
In fact, you might recognize something here from that game as well...
Uh oh. Looks like the Judge is the only one that got a chair!
Many of the hallways in Burden of Proof are unseen by the camera, which makes them prime candidates for cookie placement.

You don't need a full city to give the illusion that there's more there!
In fact, why even bother with the rest of the building if you're always indoors?
You can even see Flowers' office [spoiler]before it explodes[/spoiler] if you look closely enough, the same office that was present in Chapter 1.
An important part of Chapter 2 is the back door of the bank, which is where several important characters passed through. Sadly, the 3D model doesn't actually include a door since it is never seen.
You'll notice many of the signs in this game contain Korean translations. This is a small hint to a game design I was working on at the time which involved a trip to Korea over the Pacific Ocean. I've since been working on other projects, but I might go back and revisit the idea later.
There's a small gap you can pass through to reach an area outside of the investigation. I'll let you figure out what's back there ;)
If you look extremely closely at some of the evidence you find some hidden messages. It's probably only noticeable with a 4K display, but there's a couple of them scattered across the Chapters. Some are hints to upcoming games, and others are more world-building for the game.
Finally, the credits are jam-packed with assets from previous games, one of which is called Shadow Apex, a huge open-world game I scrapped a long time ago. You can find traces of it on my old Ludum Dare blogs. That's all for secrets! There's actually quite a few more that I can remember but I'll hold off on revealing everything for now. I hope in the future more of you can stumble across these kinds of easter eggs and discuss them online. I'm notoriously obsessed with worldbuilding details, secrets, and consistency, so it always puts a smile on my face to see people explore what I've hidden! Thus concludes the news for Burden of Proof. As mentioned I'll still be updating the game for bug fixes, but aside from patch notes there won't be much more about BOP. It's been a great ride and I'm happy I was able to get this game out there. I've improved so much in the span of a year and I hope you'll bear with me for a little bit longer to see what's next from me.

MOONLIT MOTION

I've been working on music in my spare time and have recently decided to put a few of my new songs online. I didn't have a good place for them on my old SoundCloud, so I decided to make a new one. It's called MOONLIT MOTION, and all the songs there are free to listen to at any time! The genre is mainly Future Funk, which I realize is a far cry from what you hear in my games, but I'm hoping people will still enjoy it for what it is. If you're into the remix/electronic genre, check it out!

My Next Game

For most of the past year, I've been working on a game which I now call BloodFire: New Edo. It's a procedural stealth game, where you must infiltrate a building overrun by rebels and upgrade your character to take down the leader. I got pretty far in designing the character controls and the world.



Sadly, I underestimated the amount of work it would take to complete. My expectations for it kept growing and eventually I got to the point where it was taking months just to do a single cutscene. It dawned on me that the game required at least 10 cutscenes to be viable for release, and so I had to move on to something else. I'm still working through college, so it would be impossible to continue something so ambitious. Instead, I decided to start something new, something more manageable. Now, I'm working on a hack-and-slash fantasy game with a unique movement ability. I've only just started so there's not much to show, but I'm starting to fill in the gaps. This time, there are no upgrades, no inventory, no complex entity behaviors or movesets. It's more of a pure action game, considerably shorter than Burden of Proof, but the price figure will likely reflect that.
Hopefully you'll take my word for it when I say I've been trying so much the past year to improve the quality of my work. So with this new game I'm really aiming to push quality over quantity. I really want a new project out there for everyone to enjoy, so if everything goes to plan it'll be done in just a few months. Bear with me as I figure everything out and flesh out the game. In the meantime, you can always check my progress on Twitter. Thanks again to everyone who follows my work. Stay tuned for more details on this new game, I hope to be back soon with news of release :) -Matt

[ 2019-08-26 18:52:54 CET ] [ Original post ]