Winter (Update) is Coming ...Right Now.
The one about the minute to minute gameplay experience.
I wrote this in the last devdiary entry: Right now, we’re working on a new, pretty challenging but super exciting milestone. We came up with the design for the core flow of the game (so it’s not about “30 seconds of fun”, but rather “30 minutes of fun”) and we’re prototyping that. Three months later, […]
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Witchfire Autumn 2020 Update – A Tale of Two Milestones
Ye olde trusted candid development report! With quotes! Okay, one quote.
Two important milestones behind us, one of which is a story of happiness, and the other a warning and a lesson. Going with the idea of altering between making systems and let’s have a new playable, after a few weeks of the former we’ve decided to make another internal demo. To be clear, it’s never […]
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Witchfire Development Update: Summer 2020
It's done when it's done but when is it done?
Playdead, a Danish game developer, released Limbo in 2010. It took them six years to make the next game, Inside. It’s been four years since then, and we still don’t even know the title of their next project. Frictional, a Swedish game developer, released Amnesia: Dark Descend in 2010. It took them five years to […]
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Damage Numbers and Health Bars ….Why?!
An in-depth look at the way damage numbers and health bars help with decision making.
Until we got this work-in-progress video out, I had no idea there’s a group of people who truly despise damage numbers and health bars. I kind of get it. These are external, non-diegetic elements of a game. They must ruin the immersion, right? But …so should, say, game music. It’s also external and non-diegetic. It’s […]
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Snapshot: January 2020
Monsters, weapons, animal skulls, mood pieces and mocap.
Updates have become irregular, meaning we’re busy making the game. So that’s a good thing, I guess. On the other hand, we don’t want to work in a vacuum, so let me share some of the work we did in January. I mean “some”, because the rest is either nothing really that presentable – tools, […]
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The Controversy of Looter Shooters, and is Witchfire One?
A short talk on what's good and what's bad about the looters shooters, and addressing the elephant in the room.
I asked a few people how they define a looter shooter and each gave me a different answer. “A game about amassing loot”, “A power-up/levelling grind”, “a shooter with RPG elements”. They’re all right. You can find such a definition on Wikipedia: Loot shooters are shooter games where the player’s overarching goal is the accumulation […]
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Internal Demo 2
It's done. What's next?
Previously on „Witchfire Development Diaries”… Right now, some of us work on new features needed for “Demo 2” (e.g. we only had one melee and one spell ability in “Demo 1”), some work on bringing what we already have to final quality, and some work on the AI. It’s clear that “Demo 2” will take […]
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Stormball, or the lesson on original gameplay ideas...
What to do when your unique gameplay idea turns out not to be so fresh after all?
In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and someone else already working on that gameplay idea you thought was oh so original and fresh. Of course, there’s always the story of Knight Lore… It was a 1984 game for ZX Spectrum that was actually made in 1983 and sit […]
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Breaking Out of the Development Lull: The Results
We did it. Let's talk what we've learned.
A month ago, I said we’re in a “development lull” hell: despite everyone putting in the hours, we didn’t feel like the game was progressing. Our proposed solution was: Instead of keeping on building the game, we’re dedicating August to building a demo. An internal one, focused on the flow of action, and the minute-to-minute, […]
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