I guess I’m a game developer now?

It’s been a crazy few weeks.

I wrote back in August that I had applied for a funding grant on a game concept proposal. I won’t lie, I chose to put a lot of effort into that application and it ended up being a lot of work. Welp, I guess it was worth it, because for the past few weeks I’ve been keeping quiet about my application being successful. The funding program CODE have just publicly announced the recipients so I can talk about it, it’s very cool to be among a group of other great NZ indie devs.

I’m still shocked to be honest. My game pitch sounded like the babbling of a lunatic and something so niche only I could enjoy. I couldn’t believe that a panel of people looked at the proposal and thought that it had merit. It’s nice to know that complete outsiders believe in the project and see potential, but it’s also kind of scary when something that up until now has just been a jumble of ideas banging around in my head is now going to be a reality.

This is going to be the next year for me: developing the game, turning those ideas into something playable like a vertical slice. I say “I’m a game developer now?”, even though I’ve been working as an artist in games for 10 years (and I do truly believe anyone working in games in any capacity is a game developer), but it’s very different when you’re now holding the reins and getting to do your own thing.

I’m still not going to announce anything anytime soon, don’t expect to see gameplay until next year, but I can at least tell you that it will be black comedy adventure game with a late 90s crunchy 3D aesthetic.

Here’s one of my experiments in trying to achieve a 90s looking 3D environment. I’ve been getting proficient in Blender, and would you believe it’s actually really hard to make things look old and shitty when the renderer is just too good? I’ve been doing my best to gimp Cycles, but results are still not perfect for me. Though I don’t think they necessarily have to be. I was listening to an interview a while back with Tom and Adam Vian, developers of the excellent Crow Country, and they acknowledge that no, the game doesn’t actually look like an authentic PS1 game, but it does look exactly like how we remember PS1 games looking. I think that’s a great distinction and I’ll be using that as my guideline moving forward.

Anyway, I have lots to get on with now and forever, so bye.