Here I am again. I know I haven't been updating the blog as much as I said would. I have not been as active on the unity community forums either. But i'm still here. It's 2015 and "Snowconesolid Productions" is still around. I am still here. Still developing games. Still creating whatever I imagine. Sharing ideas, artwork and interactive experiences through my creations. Still a huge fan of Blender3d and the Unity game engine.
"Snowconesolid Productions" is definitely no triple-A game development studio. Non of my games so far have received millions of downloads/plays and I am sure that not a lot of people have even heard of this development blog.
What is "Snowconesolid Productions" ? Snowconesolid Productions is a indie game studio run by a solo optimistic game developer who is passionate about creating not just games but experiences, artwork and memories. A indie developer who is not afraid of putting up his creations no matter what the feedback is. "Loved it", "hated it", "worst thing I ever played", etc. Comments/ critiques, etc. Any feedback is always welcome and accepted. A indie developer who loves to continue learning and improving his development and artwork skills. I am Snowconesolid. This is what I love doing. This is my true passion.
I still find it hard to believe how fast time fly's by. I started learning game development and the other areas of the pipeline such as 3d modeling, animation, etc back in 2010. It's 2015 now and I have learned so much throughout these years. I have come so far in my indie development journey. Looking back at my first couple games and my first 3d models and comparing them to what I can do now really shows that I love learning and improving my skills. My dedication to creating. There is a huge difference in the quality I can deliver now in both game design and art compared to what I could do when I first started.
For example, comparing two of my games:
"MoonLight Mountains : First Discovery" (A game I created and released in 2012. Something I made that was more experimental. A project I created when I was still learning game dev.)
with something like
"Hide-n-Seek Winter" (Created and released in 2014. One of my newer more polished games ever created.)
These two titles are night and day different from each other in every area. The game design, the gameplay mechanics, 3d models, animations, etc. There is a huge difference in quality that is clearly visible between the two games. And for both of these titles, I created everything from scratch on my own. Every art asset, all the logic behind the game and so on. If anyone compares the two they probably would not think the same developer created both of these.
That's what being a good developer is all about right? Learning from previous projects and experience, improving your skills, listening to what others have to say about your work, constantly training and improving your knowledge daily.
I love creating games. I love 3d modeling. I love animating, I love programming. I love creating storylines and characters, I love being a indie developer. It is 2015 and Snowconesolid productions is still going strong. My journey as a indie game developer will never cease as long as I can continue to create.
2015 Plans:
Now that I have the long "New Year" blog intro out of the way I can share my plans and goals for this year.
New Games!
This year I just have so many new original ideas planned out. Currently I am actively developing my next game. Actually, I have been developing my newest game for about two weeks now. It is still very early in development. Down below I have some screenshots to share and more info about my next game.
Old Games brought back to life!
Yup!. So also, I plan on rebooting some of my older games. Revisiting some of my first original game releases and re-creating them from scratch. Taking my original ideas for those games I made when I was still a beginner game maker learning how to make games and using my current skill set I have today to re-create them to be how I originally wanted to make them in the first place. This is something I am really looking forward to. I have been wanting to re-visit some of my older games for a while now and see how I would approach them differently now because I am a completely different developer today compared to when I first created these games years ago. It will be a really interesting challenge for me that will really test my skills.
The new games?
While I look forward to re-visiting my older game projects and giving them a reboot... this is something I plan on doing later on. I am not focused on rebooting my older titles at the moment. When the time comes I will talk more about re-creating my older games later on. For now I rather focus on creating my new game ideas. I want to deliver new experiences. And as I mentioned above, I have been working on my next game already for a while. I rather create something new first and then consider rebooting older titles.
So anyway, here is little early preview of my next game project. (Screen Shots not final):
Early preview of "James" in Blender3D. My newest original character who will star in my next game:
In unity. Setup. Early testing, etc:
Early preview screen of what the final game will look something like. Rendered in Unity. Actual in-game screen shot:
Once again these are still early development screenshots from my new game and nothing is final yet. I am sure I will be changing a lot down the road as I continue to develop this game. Also if you follow me on twitter you may have seen me post these screenshots earlier.
Game Info?
At the moment I don't have very much to explain about the game because I am still planning it out myself (especially the storyline) as I work through it but here is a general description for it:
"Jelly Space" project (Working title) will be a 3D immersive third person stylized level based puzzle/survival/adventure game. The game storyline follows "James" (our main character) as he journeys through a surreal space world, trying to find his way back home after an unexpected accident.
Lost in space and low on fuel, players will be placed in Jame's boots and must overcome unusual obsticals and strange encounters as they try to survive this harsh journey back home.
Platforms:
This game will be both for pc and mobile platforms.
I plan on releasing this game for Windows, Mac and Android platforms.
This will be my first game release of 2015 and I am very excited to continue sharing progress on the project down the road. I will have more info later on in upcoming blog posts.
Who is working on this project?
As always, I am going to be 100% responsible for this game project. Just like all my other games up until now, I will be developing this solo. I will be responsible for creating all of the 3d models/ art assets, game design, mechanics, storyline, etc from scratch. Whenever I work on my own game projects I like to take full responsibility for them. I like being able to say "I created everything in this game on my own" no matter how it turns out. It is a really rewarding feeling and achievement and a personal development style for myself.
What happened to Jelly Stack?
You might remember that in my last blog post (the last blog post I made in 2014) I mentioned that I was working on a quick short one week project called "Jelly Stack". I even said I would have it finished and released before the end of the 2014 year. Unfortunately this never happened. Plans have changed and as I thought about it I realized this is not the kind of game I want to create. Stacking a pile of randomly falling jelly blobs seemed like a boring idea to me later on. It seemed like something that has been done too many times before. I don't want to create clones of games like this. I want to create new and original games with more meaning and storytelling. Anyway one thing lead to another and then I ended up creating this character:
Jelly Guy:
Then this character ended up leading me to start creating my current game project I was just talking about above ("Jelly Space"). So actually, my upcoming game is all branched off my original simple idea for "Jelly Stack". It's amazing how one thing usually leads to something completely different. Who knows what else will change down the road as I continue creating "Jelly Space"? We will see...
2015 Conclusion?
My main focus this year and with all my upcoming game projects is about quality. This is something I will really stress as I develop my newest games. I want to prove that I can produce high quality games on my own with all the skills I have gained throughout my past experience. Lots of focus will be put into every area of the pipeline (great quality graphics, fun gameplay mechanics and so on)
2015 is going to be an awesome year. I have so many new games planned that I want to create this year. It might be a little soon to say this but I'm going to go ahead and say it anyway because of how confident I am.
Personally, I think that this year, 2015 will be my best year ever as a indie game developer. I strongly believe that I will create some of my best and most memorable game experiences ever this year and I am just so excited to get the ball rolling. This year will be my year to really prove and show just how far I have come in this indie game development journey of mine. Using all the knowledge and experience I gained throughout the years, 2015 will show the kind of quality games I can truly produce.
This is definitely an exciting time for me. For "Snowconesolid Productions". It will be my biggest year yet for sure and I plan on delivering top quality professionally polished game releases. I hope to create interactive experiences that everyone will enjoy playing. Experiences that will really be memorable.
Thanks for reading and once again I am extremely excited to start creating my newest game titles for the 2015 year. I am looking forward to sharing progress as I develop my new games here on the blog. So stay tuned for a lot more updates down the road!
