I could be characterized as a "big fan" of the Halloween season. While other Holidays are great for seeing family, eating, or planting tree's, Halloween is all about (to me) watching scary movies and looking ridiculous. And there's candy, which is a wonderful incentive to look ridiculous.
In honor of Halloween, here's a spooky creature drawing... As I sit here working on Incident at Long Rock Junction, I'm watching Halloween 2. I really should be watching John Carpenter's The Thing, because the similarity's between the plot of The Thing and Incident at Long Rock Junction are positively uncanny.

In Communicado!

Ah the joys of free wireless. I'm back in Illinois for a few days, where business owners are decent enough to provide free wireless if you're buying a cup of coffee. Unlike some places *cough* California *cough* where even Starbucks expects you to pay $8 for a one time connection. Seeing as how I'm online I'll drop a quick sneak peak on you.
This is the grimy kitchen in the mining facility called Long Rock Junction. As you can see, green ooze will be present in the game. This will actually play a major role in the story, being the perfect vehicle for all sorts of terrifying things, like terror, for one. More to come!

In Review...

The art for Voyage to the Unknown was officially completed on Sunday, September 23rd.

Admittedly I have returned to a few pieces and added elements since then, but as far as having done what's needed to navigate around the 2D environment, it's a wrap. Work continues on the written learning elements of the game, which will take the form of word problems (you get a block of text, and then questions based on that information). We'll be tying the learning content directly into the overall story, which works out better transition-wise (don't break the 4th wall).

Overall the experience has been a blast, though there are obviously places where I see room for improvement. The one thing that would have benefited everyone on the project is a much clearer picture of the finished product from the start. When initially discussed we thought we had enough to make a game on, but as it turns out we've had several "oh yeah!" moments throughout production. In order to alleviate that with our next title, I'm taking considerably longer to organize and plan the game itself. That starts with what the heck we want to teach next time, how the story will be structured around that subject, and finally how the art will follow the story. It gives me the creeps to not have jumped right into the art making, considering it is the most time consuming aspect of the project, but the early planning is a must. Additionally I feel that communication could be improved. This is something that should be easy to fix, however when you're dealing with two sets of people in different time zones, who have completely different schedules it can get away from you fast. If anything, we need to strengthen our ability to develop our different parts of the game independently. Naturally that takes more planning up front, which I believe I've taken into account for our next title.

I'll continue to update this Blog as our next adventure unfolds. Within a week or two we'll have links up to the actual playable version of Voyage to the Unknown. Stay tuned!