Preparing for Steam Greenlight - Part 1

Hello! :)

I've been a bit busy for the last couple of days so the progress has been a bit slower than usually. But I'm back now!

So, I'm planning on going to Steam Greenlight in around a month and to do so I need to finish with a playable demo for the press and some Youtube LP's. No point going without a small hype as most of the votes you get comes soon after you have listed your game!
For those who might not be familiar with Greenlight, it is where Steam users can vote which games gets released on Steam. So to get the permission to release your game you need to get your game greenlit.

Alright! So my demo is almost ready, there are some things and polishing I need to do. However my biggest trouble at the moment is the voice acting. I have decided to have the voice acting in The Human Gallery as it can and will take the experience in a whole new level. But to do so I need quality voice actors, right?

So, I have a few possible paths here but I really don't know which one to take.

1. Hire voice actors. As simple as that, however not cheap. Even though I've released a commercial game before (Silence of the Sleep) it does not mean I'm rolling in cash. Actually at the moment it's just enough to pay the rent and to develop my next project. I'm not sure I can afford that, at least at the moment.
2. Get a publisher that could invest a little money so I could hire voice actors. This is something I could consider, however I have not worked with a publishers before so I'm not sure what to expect. At the same time it is a tempting but terrifying idea.
3. Find volunteers. Maybe people that are tying to get into gaming industry that are willing to work for free. This could be a perfect way to get into scene. However, it will take a lots of time to create The Human Gallery, so if I were to find volunteers they would need to stick with the project for 1 - 1½ year! It would be a pain in the ass to cast someone now only to find out that they are not interested later on. I would need to re-cast and that would again take a lots of time and trouble.
4. Do the voice acting myself. NOT! :D

But yeah, as you might see it's a tricky situation! I'd love to have the voice acting for the press demo, but it's hard as I've no idea where to go from here! I'm secretly hoping that this blog will find the right people and maybe that would set the path to take, who knows! 

If you read this and figured you have an idea you can find my email here.

Oh, and everybody please let me know what do you think, what option would you prefer? Just drop a comment, I'm sure to read every one of them!

Thank you for reading! :)

Painting The Human Gallery

Hello! :)

I was looking at my old sketch book and found the very first concept of The Human Gallery. Luckily I also have early builds from the game so I thought I could share you a small image of it's evolution.

So yeah, this is the first one. I remember lying on the sofa watching TV and sketching this while at it. Below you can see the sketch, the first tech-demo and the last image is how it turned out.

I'm very happy how it turned out!

But yeah, basically the character is made of pieces: Head, torso, shoulder, arm, hand, bag, oil lamp etc. Those are separate images. I'm not much of a coder so it took me a little while to make everything work smoothly! You use mouse to control the arm and the oil lamp, so everything needs to move and rotate fluently.

Also the background, you can see couch, some sort of newspaper, curtains etc. They are separate objects and not baked in the background. This allowed me to build a shadows system that looks great, especially in the game when everything is moving. It looks very lively! :)

As I mentioned, I'm very, very happy how the game is looking. I'd like to think it looks very unique and I hope people can appreciate the effort! It would have been A LOT easier/quicker to do pixel graphics. This is not a dig to pixel games as I think well made pixel graphics can look amazing and immersive! Just want people to appreciate the effort! :)

I could go on and on with the subject... Maybe next time I'll write about audio work. Or maybe music and composing! I don't know yet, but stay tuned! :)

Here it all begins!

Hello! :)

Alright, this is my first blog. I'm not very familiar with blogs so forgive me if I'm a bit lost every now and then!

What is the reason of this blog you may ask, or you may not. Well, my name is Jesse Makkonen, indie game developer from Finland. I'm working with my second game called The Human Gallery, and I thought I'll start a blog where I can give updates about the development and how it is like.

My first game is called Silence of the Sleep which I released on Steam some months ago, in case you were wondering.

The Human Gallery is a psychological horror game for PC which I aim to release on Steam 2016, so a long way ahead of us. Here is hoping it will be a pleasant one. :)

Right, I'm trying to keep my posts short and easily readable. It is extremely time consuming to create video games, especially for one man band, but I'll do my best to write here every now and then.

You can expect updates about my development methods, like audio work, composing music, producing graphics etc. I'll try to post some images as well to give a better idea how things are going. I'm still considering doing a small "Making of" Youtube series, but I'll see how that goes later. As I said, I have only so much time.

What else... I'm about to announce The Human Gallery any moment now, my checklist is as long as winters in Finland. I've been working with announcement teaser, homepage, creating Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Gmail, this blog, writing descriptions about the game, taking screenshots, writing for the press... etc. All at once, no wonder I need checklist! O_O

I guess that sums it up, hopefully someone catches my blog and finds it fun to read or maybe even useful.

Oh yeah feel free to comment or ask about stuff and I'll do my best to answer asap!

Cheers!

Jesse