Hauntibles

A new Hauntibles trailer has launched! This short film took a long while to make as it involved sourcing and dressing the set with antiques, lighting them to simulate the glow of vintage Edison bulbs, using my home-made dolly to get smooth shots, and then editing the footage down to roughly a minute. Phew! I'm very happy with how it turned out, and feel it better reflects the vintage mood of the game. Thanks to @papersofthepast for lending me the scrapbooks and @orchestralis for their perfectly ethereal music.

Trailers are probably the most important way indie developers can introduce their games. They're extremely vital, which is why I came out with one so early. But looking back, I think the messaging in this first video wasn't as clear as it could have been. Good trailers highlight, they don't summarize. They show you why the game is fun and worthy of your time. My first trailer focused too much on the game's origins, and not enough on what makes the game interesting. I also think it relied too heavily on motion graphics, which went against the real-world vintage textures found in the game. So, I'm filming another trailer. This one requires a lot more production, and I've spent the last few days assembling a collection of spooky props. These objects were sourced them from my neighbor's basement, Target, Ikea, and a few I've picked up at rummage sales. Props in the trailer relate to various elements of the game, highlighting all the coolest featur...

A vintage oscilloscope discovered at a huge white elephant sale. The controls remind me of a 1950's scifi spaceship. A few years ago, there was a shift in digital design away from 3D real-world textures to a more flat look. I think this simple aesthetic works for most user interfaces, as it doesn't distract from the content. But for HAUNTIBLES, I wanted to embrace what's known as Skeuomorphism.  Skeuomorphism skjuːə(ʊ)ˈmɔːfɪz(ə)m  A design concept that attempts to imitate the look of real-world objects (like this instagram logo.) Instead of a clean flat design, I aimed for a more gritty, cracked, faded and worn-out look. This aesthetic meshed a lot better with the old photographs that are at the heart of HAUNTIBLES. So, much like a sound designer who ventures into the field to collect sound effects, I needed to hunt for textures.  You never know what you'll see at an antique fair. This box of prosthetic peepers "caught my eye". ...

Antiquing with a spooky twist. Beware the haunted lobstah! So many of my favorite ghost stories, such as "The Monkey's Paw" by W.W. Jacob, start with someone obtaining a haunted antique. There's just something about these old relics that sparks the imagination.  HAUNTIBLES is chock full of these haunted collectibles or "hauntibles" as I'm calling them. They're mostly sourced from archival research I've done, and the game is designed in such a way that I can easily update it with new hauntibles as I discover them. Hauntibles have already been covered briefly under the Cabinet of Curiosities post, but I wanted to delve into a bit more detail 'cause I love them so much.  A batch of procedurally generated beetles! Here's where it gets a little technical. In order to use these objects in the game, I cycle them through a bit of code (which I'm calling the "pattern buffer" because I'm a Star Trek ner...

When I was growing up, my parents had a mysterious antique on the wall - a narrow drawer hung vertically, subdivided into dozens of little boxes. Each of these compartments held a different knickknack like a rock, shell, or tiny doll. This strange art piece sparked my imagination, and I wondered about the stories behind each object.      Typeset drawers were originally used to store printing blocks of various sizes. With the decline of block printing, many people recycled these drawers into curio cabinets to store family keepsakes. How does all this fit into my game HAUNTIBLES? Well, there's a typeset drawer at the heart of the game, and it's filled with haunted knickknacks! I found images for these objects during the course of my research through various archives, rare books, newspapers, and other ancient collections. Here's how it'll work in the game: each object in the drawer represents a haunted collection or "hauntible" of five or more re...