Announcing "Giraffe Town"

A NEW GAME!?! YES!

Check out the official Steam page here:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/941480/Giraffe_Town/

     Hello everyone! I'm back! It's me! Your friendly neighborhood "Samer-Man" (nobody calls me that) aka snowconesolid aka the greatest indie game developer of all time and space! (Everybody calls me that.)

I know. I know. I have been away for a very long time. Away from the indie game dev scene, away from Twitter, away from this blog, away from existence and so on. I just suddenly vanished one day and I am sure many of you thought that I gave up on making games, or I died from a coffee overdose or I died from mountain climbing or I died from all the other possible ways of dying. And I am sure everyone missed me and people would say stuff like: "Man, I wonder whatever happened to that one game developer?" and then your friends would say: "Who are you talking about? What game developer?" and then you would say: "You know, that one awesome game developer. The one who makes all those awesome games." and then your friend would say: "I'm not sure I really follow. Who exactly are you talking about?" and then you would say: "I'm talking about Samer Khatib! Aka Snowconesolid! Aka the greatest game developer of all time and space!" And then your friend would say: "I still have no idea who that is. But I love that guy and his games so much!" and then you would all laugh and feel nostalgic and it would be a good time. I'm sure this has happened. I was missed. My presence was missed. Then out of nowhere... Wait! Who is that mysterious figure walking out from the shadows!? Could it be!? IT'S SAMER! HE'S BACK! I suddenly show up. And I say: "It's okay. No more tears. I have a new game!" Then, a burst of loud cheering of happiness and excitement begins to echo around the world as everyone anticipates the launch of a new Samer Khatib game!

This post is just supposed to be me briefly announcing my new game... I think I went a bit off the rails there. Anyway, yes. Today is a very special day. I am back and I am super excited to be announcing my newest game... *Drum roll*

Giraffe Town

"A giraffe born with slippery feet sets out to find love..."

Coming soon to Steam.

Please visit the official Steam page to see the trailer, screenshots, and more information about the game here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/941480/Giraffe_Town/

Don't forget to add the game to your wishlist, follow it and tell all your friends and family about it! More information about the game will follow later on in future posts. So be sure to check back here, or the official Steam page and follow me on Twitter here for more updates about my new game.

     Once again, I am extremely excited to finally reveal, share and announce my newest game today. It is a project that I have been working on in silence for nearly 2 years. It is also my next game release since Potato Thriller which, was also originally released about 2 years ago as of this writing. This project also marks my second ever game release on Steam which is a huge milestone and accomplishment for me personally. I am very proud of my work and I can't wait to see what you guys think of it. 

Thank you, everyone, so much for stopping by, checking out the Steam page and for your support which has kept me motivated throughout the years! 

I look forward to releasing Giraffe Town very soon as well as continue making games for many many years to come!

Potato Thriller (P.T.) Trailer

   

     Introducing P.T - "Potato Thriller". Here is the trailer for my upcoming Silent Hills P.T inspired horror game that I will be releasing sometime this month. The game is almost finished and I am really excited to get it out soon. The trailer shows almost nothing from the game. I don't want to ruin the surprises.

I will post updates in this post later on. Currently working on getting the game setup over at gamejolt.com and indiedb.com. More updates soon!

UPDATE: Game page added to IndieDB and GameJolt. 

LINKS:
GameJolt.com - Potato Thriller Page

IndieDB.com - Potato Thriller Page
 Check back soon for more updates :D

Surprise game very soon (P.T. Remake?) and 2016 plans.

     Just wanted to post a quick update about this secret horror game project I have been putting together over the past couple weeks in my free time.  In a previous blog post I said that I was pretty much working on P.T. Or at least my very own version of P.T. Like I said earlier, I have been a huge fan of the Silent Hills project ever since the P.T. demo came out and was really bummed when I heard that it got canceled. The P.T. demo was even removed from the PS store as many of you probably know. It has been some time since all of this has happened. By now i'm sure that a lot of people in the gaming world have probably even forgotton about the whole Silent Hills thing. P.T was such an impressive demo because it was something that really stood out from other modern day horror games. What I mean by that is, it was actually scary. I love horror games, but I haven't actually felt frightened by a horror game in a while. P.T was different. The atmosphere and everything was just so well done. The jump-scare got me more than once and it was just an actual awesome experience overall. I will talk more about this later on.

Staying on topic. I had so much inspiration from the P.T. demo. It was a simple first person game but so perfectly executed. I have been working on my own P.T. since October. It's kind of like a remake but definitely in my own way. It's also different in a lot of ways. But yes, this game I have been working on (on and off whenever I had a chance too) is very much influenced and inspired by the P.T demo. I am making this game in honor of the Silent Hills P.T demo.

 I have gone through so many revisions for my own version of P.T (which I want to discuss later on maybe in a video?) But  I am finally at a point in the games development where I feel satisfied with it, the game feels right, plays right and feels like P.T. This is also definitely an interesting game for me to make and different from the other games I created. I just wanted to say in todays blog post that I am almost finished and plan on releasing my new game very very soon. Probably within the next few days or so. :)

Other things...
Anyway, I wanna wrap things up for today. I will have more updates real soon. I said a while back in another post that I wanted to start doing video updates. Maybe I will get to this tomorrow. But I want to have a video up soon kind of discussing more about my P.T game, where this blog is going, where I am going with my indie games career (well hobby I guess, not really a career). I also want to start to get more into youtube. I don't just want to make indie games anymore. I want to expand. I kind of want to give this blog and my games a face, a more human side. I want to interact more through youtube and the blog. I want to update on a more daily basis. As I said, I plan on doing video updates over some stuff i'm working on, maybe do some tutorials for unity and blender3d, answer questions and even do a couple of my own lets play videos. Cover some other indie games other small time devs like me have made. I want to help out the indie scene more and be more active.

A lot of new things planned going into 2016. I'm very excited as always. Again I will cover this more in depth later on. I might have my first "real" youtube video out covering my P.T game and the future of all of this "Snowconesolid Productions" stuff. I want to thank all the readers and players out there who visit my blog and check out my stuff. It means a lot to me. As always, stay tuned. More updates coming real soon. Happy holidays everybody. Peace.

Super Rubber Duck Coming to Android

     So I have been working on new small game over the past couple days. Actually, as I mentioned in the previous post, I started working on this after submitting my entry for the zelda themed game jam over at gamejolt.com

My next game will be called "Super Rubber Duck". It will be a simple endless mobile game for Android devices. You play as a rubber duck with a red cape and must avoid hitting spiky soap enemies in a bathroom environment.

I created this game fairly quickly. It's already pretty much done at this point but I want to spend a couple more days doing polish work before releasing it to the app store. I am very excited about this one and look forward to releasing it for everyone to play very soon. I plan on releasing it either this Sunday or Monday.

Thanks for reading everyone!

Screenshots from Development: (Not from final game)

Something random, coming soon...

     Put together this really small teaser web demo for a really random game idea I am currently working on staring my "Bag Face" character.

Try it HERE

I am looking forward to showing more about this project in upcoming posts. As I just mentioned, its just a game I am randomly putting together.

Stay tuned for more updates soon!

"Hide-n-Seek Winter" Coming Soon!

 
So, here is what I have been working on since mid November 2013:

As you see by the above title and teaser trailer, I would like to announce "Hide-n-Seek Winter". A toon game project I have been creating for a good period of time. Also known as the "secret game" I kept posting screenshots of on the unity forums and on my twitter.

I have been wanting to reveal this project for a while now and today I finally will. So lets get into the details of "Hide-n-Seek Winter"!

Story: Choco and his little sister Frosty are playing outside in the snow when suddenly an approaching car looses control of its breaks and crashes into the two kids. After being run over by the speeding vehicle, Choco suddenly finds himself standing in front of his house. Choco then receives a letter from his little sister Frosty. The letter asks Choco to search for his little sister because they are now playing "Hide and Seek", Frosty's favorite game.

This will be a short game that tells the story about a brother and his sister. 

Genre: Action/Adventure/Puzzle/Platformer
(with a mystery)

Style: Toon/Cel-shaded

Characters:

Choco: Main character of the game. Frosty's big brother.

Frosty: Choco's younger sister. Hide and seek is her favorite game to play.

In-game Screenshots:

 

  

 

Platforms: Windows, Mac, and Linux. (I might consider porting it to Android down the road, probably sometime after I originally release it on the mentioned platforms above.)

Dev:
As always, I am working on this game solo. I am making it with the Unity game engine, Unity Playmaker, and Blender3d just like all my previous projects. (my favorite tools of course).

So there you go. "Hide-n-Seek Winter" is my next game release coming real soon. It will be my first release of 2014.  I'll admit I have been working on it on and off. However, I am very motivated to finish it. Im very close to finishing it. As you could tell, I worked on it a lot before even revealing it. I plan on finishing and releasing it sometime in early February (which is sometime during this coming month. We are already near the end of January!)

My goal when I first started this project was to create an appealing "toon" graphic styled game. So far I think I have done a great job (of course I am biased towards my own work but hey, what indie dev isn't? :). Also, I am trying to tell a unique story through this game with very little dialog from the beginning of the game to the end. So that is another goal I am trying to achieve with this project.

As always, this will be another major step up in my games compared to my previous projects. I am working hard on this project and definitely working on it with a more serious approach, a more planned out approach then my past projects. I am aiming to deliver a well polished and good quality game. I am really excited about this one and hope you are too. I look forward to finishing it and releasing it and adding it to my list of completed game projects.

Stay tuned because more updates are coming down the road!

SideNote: I will probably start my own dev thread in the work in progress section of the unity forums real soon where I will post smaller updates more frequently than here on my blog. So you will also be able to check out my progress over there.

Thanks for reading. 

Almond-Hill on hold, new Halloween project announcement

     It feels like it has been a long time since I posted any updates here on the blog. Days just fly by. Anyway, as the title says, I am going to put the game project I have been working on since summer break "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" on hold during the month of October. Do not worry, I am not canceling it and I did not loose interest in finishing it. It is nothing like that at all. This is something I have been planning on doing for some time now actually. I have been hard at work on that project working on it a little bit each day. I know I did not post much updates on my blog here but if you have been following my work in progress thread over at the unity forums you will see how much progress as well as new changes I have made since I last posted here.  So I have been making great progress on that project and I will not let all that work go to waste. I will resume working on Almond-Hill after October. Almond-Hill Silent Meow is a much larger project, it will need a lot more time to complete.

Why stop working on it during October you ask? Well, I love October. Everything about it. The weather, the colorful leaves, etc. Most importantly Halloween, my personal favorite holiday. Anyway, last year was the first time I created and released a quick short horror game for Halloween (The original Almond-Hill game I made). I had a lot of fun working on a project like that and ever since, I have decided to make it a personal tradition of mine to create a short horror game every year and have it finished and released around Halloween. So today, I am announcing a new short horror game project that I will work on and challenge myself to have complete by the end of the month. Since it is October 1st I will start working on it real soon. In other words I really do not have anything to show at the moment. However, be sure to check back often as I will start making progress and posting updates on the project. 

Anyway, that is all the news I have for now. I hope you look forward to see what Halloween short I have planned out and once again I will continue working on Almond-Hill after this month. In the meantime check out my more recent updates for that project over here on unity's forums Almond-Hill Development thread

and enjoy this final in game screenshot I took from Almond-Hill before I stopped working on it.

My next game project and the expanded and improved blog

Hello everyone!

Finally I am back. (I never left) but I mean I am back to developing my games. After releasing my first Android game "Revolver Finger" back in February I took a while off from developing anymore games to spend more time improving my skills and learning so I can produce much better quality games. Its been almost three months and I have greatly improved in many areas (mainly my 3d art skills but a lot of other areas as well such as game design). I have learned a whole lot during the time I was gone improving my skills such as new techniques, the proper ways to do certain things, etc. While I am still no professional, I learned how to do things in a professional way. So from now on I have set standards for myself and I promise to release the best quality games that I can. I guarantee that all my next game releases will be a hundred times better than any of my previous game releases from now on. I have matured a lot as a developer since I first started two years ago and will take all my next game projects much more seriously because I want to have great releases.

So I am now ready to make more games once again. Since we are still on the topic of developing games, I want to announce my next game project today. My next game project will be a horror game. This is something I have been planning for a while and now I am finally working on it. I have really high expectations and goals for this new horror game of mine and believe it will be my best release yet. There is really not much to say or show about it at this moment because it is still early. Once I get a good amount of work done on this project I will start to reveal it in future blog post so stay tuned.

By the way, have you noticed anything different with my blog? I recently had my blog set to private for the past two days while I worked on renovating/expanding it. Its more organized now and I added in a lot of new sections such as a section for my 3d art work, game trailers, etc. Just look for your self above in the tabs.

One of the coolest new things I recently added to my blog is the new "Welcome" page. This is a welcome page like no other. I actually created a very small platforming game for this page just for my blog. You can play this game directly in the blog to, so no need to go to a different website or download anything. It is a very simple platforming game that is only about 2 - 5 minuets long and it welcomes visitors and introduces me, the developer to them and it gives visitors a better idea of what this blog is all about. If you want to check it out just click on the new "Welcome!" tab above.

That is all I have to say for now. It feels good to be back working a new game and I hope to share more updates on it soon.