Honest post. I don't know what i'm doing... learning, progress...

     Happy 4th of July everyone! I'm a day late I know. Anyway, I always try to at least get 2-3 blog posts out a month (sometimes I only get one) so the blog doesn't have that abandoned feeling to it. There is nothing new with me. As usual, I am still working on my next game. Just grinding day by day. Some days I make really good progress and other days I make no progress at all or get stuck on something for a couple of days.

I mentioned this before but, "Potato Thriller" was the last game I published and then I started working on my next title (which is my current project). So it has been over a full year since I put anything new out there. Part of me is disappointed with myself because I am taking so long to make something new and at the same time I feel like this is better because I am making an overall better quality game with more polish. I have been doing a lot of research and learning over the year and improving myself as a game developer to deliver the best content I could because I really don't want to rush a project and put out something just for the sake of putting something out.

I have had ups and downs with the current project I am working on and throughout this year. It has been kind of a confusing journey so far because one second I would say I am working on a certain project and then the next second I would lose motivation and say I am working on a smaller project or something completely different then switch back to the other project and so on and just cause a bunch of confusion for myself and on the blog. It can be hard to stay motivated and attempt to be creative or create something everyday as a game developer and I am sure many other developers, artist, content creators, etc can relate. But, I always find myself eventually coming back and putting in the hours because of my passion for creation.

As I have been doing a lot of learning and improving over the year I have also been working on this very abstract game project originally named "Samer Hills" at the same time. This is the project that I was referring to that has been giving me ups and downs and causing me headaches. I feel like I have been saying something different about this project whenever I talk about it on the blog. I constantly change its name and say it's going to be this or that. So just to be completely honest, I sometimes have no idea what I am doing or what I want to do. Often I can't make up my mind about something and I lose motivation (I know I already said that) but it's such a common thing and I think we all have those days sometimes. Personally, something that I want to stop doing is coming up with release dates or setting deadlines for my own projects. I feel like this is something that contributes to making me lose motivation to finish something and it would just add in stress because I feel like I would need to keep my promise and meet that deadline. I know many people actually use this method of setting deadlines for themselves and it actually keeps them on track, but for me it just doesn't work. I hate when I say something like "I'm working on a new game and I will release it in a month from now" or "My new game comes out July 17th" and then I end up missing my deadline so I come back on here and say that I will have it out by [insert new promised date here]. It just doesn't work out for me. I've learned my lesson. And i'm not just specifically talking about my game projects but everything. YouTube for example, I make a "developer video update" after months of no activity and say that I will do daily video updates each week or each month and then I just kind of disappear from my YouTube channel for a long period of time. From now on I won't set dates or promise to have something out at a certain time. Whenever I finish something i'll simply just put it out. Or if i'm super close to finishing something and am really confident that I will have it out by a certain time then I will definitely set a deadline for myself because I know for sure that I would be able to reach it in time. Other than that, I just don't want to specify certain dates or make promises.

Anyway, sorry to get off topic. I know I am rambling on now but I just wanted to make an honest blog post and talk about some things I have had on my mind. As for the actual game project (formerly known as Samer Hills) I am still working on it. Slowly making progress. Constantly making changes and trying to decide how the game will play out in the end. I still have a lot to do but pretty much this next game will be my biggest game. I want to put in all my ideas into it and just make something really unique to put out there in the indie gaming scene. This next project will be my ultimate masterpiece! ...that is if I ever finish it of course.

I don't really have anything to show at the moment but for the past couple weeks I have mainly been working on building mechanics for the game such as Enemy ai's and weapons. I can confirm 2 things that will be in my next game. First, Nosey Nose enemies (from Potato Thriller) will be back and second, the toilet plunger will also be back as a usable weapon. Not only that, it will be the strongest weapon in the game and deals the most damage.

Here are a bunch of screenshots from prototype levels and development.

I'm going to end the blog post here for now. Thanks for reading. Bye!

Snowconesolid Games + Android, Plans for mobile platform!

     Hey everyone! Today I want to share some news and my future plans on where I am going next with my game making interests, although I am pretty sure that the title and the image above give off a little idea.

 Games and apps on mobile platforms have always been exciting and interesting to me. Last year around the beginning of 2013 I became a licensed android app developer and published my very first mobile game to the Google play Store.  That game was "Revolver Finger". It wasn't very good, controls were a mess, graphics were poor and the game was full of bugs. Although my first android app had many problems I was proud of it and happy that I completed the project on my own and published it on the app store. That game was more of a learning experience and starting point for me to dive into mobile game development instead of a serious attempt to create a mobile game app.

Since the release of Revolver Finger I have kind of shifted away from mobile development and began focusing on PC and web game projects.  During that time period I have created a number of much better quality games and released them for various platforms. I have greatly improved my skills in many areas of game development and now I am ready to come back to mobile platforms.

So now I am going to be shifting my focus back to mobile game/android app development. Does this mean that I will not be making any more Pc/web games? Of course not. This means that my games will now be available on one more extra platform and that they will be portable! I will still publish titles for as much platforms as I can. Using the unity game engine, its easy to make games cross platform. However, I can't guarantee that all my future games will be cross platform. Since I have picked up an interest for mobile app development I have come up with a number of small mobile game ideas I want to create that will most likely be exclusive to android. Most of my games will still be cross platform though.

Whats the next big Snowconesolid game plan?

   Before I get into any of my new game ideas I want to work on porting a couple of my older game projects to android. Doing so will give me a little bit more experience working with android and publishing and at the same time make some of my older PC/Web games available on the go!

Currently I have been working on porting my most recent game "Beach Ball Shooter" over to android.

I already have set up touch controls and created a test build of the first level from the game. I got it running on my Galaxy S3 and everything seems to be working nice and smoothly.

Here is a video of beachball shooter running on my S3:

I am almost finished porting Beach Ball Shooter over and I plan on making it available on the Google play store in the next day or two. So real soon.

Once I port and publish BeachBall shooter over to the Play store I will begin porting over another game which I will announce in a later blog post.

That is about it for now. I am very excited to develop for the android platform once again and I look forward to sharing my games/apps/ideas/creations with everyone!

Thanks for reading. More updates soon!

Onion Duck!

My most recent artwork and original character. "Onion Duck"

Created entierly in Blender. Rendered in cycles.

I'm planning on using my Onion Duck character and creating a simple android game from this idea I recently had.

I might show some progress on development in the next post or so.

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!

Bag Face

     So, I'm working on a new game idea I had. Its kind of random but I am working on making it a real thing. I will talk more about it later on. For now check out "Bag Face", my latest original character. Bag Face is a character who works in a grocery store and wears a paper bag over his head all year round.

Bag Face:

Just recently finished creating this guy in Blender3D. Low poly (6656 tris) game ready model. Fully rigged and currently created 3 animations for him (idle, walk, run). Already have him setup in the unity game engine.

I love creating a bunch of different characters from scratch. This guy in particular was a really fun character for me to create.

Before I modeled him in Blender and created a full 3d working game character model I decided to do a quick concept sketch on paper. (Originally I called him "Bagboy")

Don't mind the weird dancing apple robot on the far left. Also I had to cut out some other things on the picture because there was several other characters I drew on there but are for different game ideas I want to work on.

Going to model that little duck-like character standing next to bag face next. That duck will also be a character in my next game project.

More updates real soon!

Escape Ocean Zero Development

    

      Hey everyone. I apologize for the delay in updates. My intention was to post a new update sooner than this but then I got busy with other things. However, I am picking things up again and I have been working on my next game project, which I call "Escape Ocean Zero". I announced Escape Ocean Zero earlier this month (May 12th to be exact) but really have not given much info about it. So today I want to talk a little bit about it and where its going with its development.

First, I just want to say that I have actually been making really good progress on my new game. I already have created a whole bunch of different 3d game assets/props, I have already finished some playable levels, controls are working, ammo system is in, main character is ready, gameplay mechanics working, implemented sound effects, etc. So I have built up major parts of the game already in a pretty decent amount of time I would say.

One of my biggest goals with this specific project is to create a fun playable complete game in very little time. My initial intention was to have the entire game finished by the end of this month but then I got distracted by other non -game dev things and now I am a little behind. However, now I am back and am rapidly developing this game. My new goal is to have this game complete by the end of June or earlier. I strongly believe that I will have the project complete by the deadline I have set for myself.

In a future post I plan to get into more about the actual game, what its about, maybe have a playable demo, etc. For now though, I can't really explain it because just like all my game projects, I change a lot of things throughout the development cycle. I try an idea I originally thought of and then later when I actually put it in the game I decided that maybe I don't want to do this and so I end up making changes and so on. Its a common process to go through in game dev. So for now I am still kind of forming the game until I get it in the shape that I am satisfied with. For now I am just going show you a bunch of screenshots from the games development I took while creating it. If you follow me on twitter or seen me on the unity forums you might have already seen these screenshots but for those of you who haven't here you go!

Just keep in mind that these are not screenshots from the final game, they are only development screenshots. Anyway, that's all for now. I will go into further detail about the game later on in upcoming posts. Expect updates here on the blog soon because once again I am rapidly developing this one. I have a really good feeling about this project and am really enjoying creating it.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned. More is on the way.

In love with Unity's built in AI !!!

    Recently I started playing around with Unity's built in Navigation/ NavMesh tools so that I could learn a little bit more about AI behaviors such as pathfinding and so on. I must say, I am in love with the built in navigation the game engine provides. Its very smart, easy to use and opens up a ton of different possibilities for what the game engine could be used for.

For those of you who don't know what I am talking about check out the Unity website over here. Pretty much you can bring your characters, enemies, whatever you want in the game to life using Unity's AI.

In very little time I built my own playable prototype using the navigation tools to create an enemy gameobject that follows the player around while at the same time avoiding obstacles such as walls. Its a very simple basic AI behavior but its very effective and of course much more advanced AI behaviors could be created.

Check it out over here

So I am in love with this feature that the game engine provides. This is a very important feature for me and my games and probably most game developers out there. Creating good quality AI behaviors for my games characters and enemies has always been a bit of a challenge for me. AI in general is a subject of its own and could be very time consuming work. In my past games such as "Revolver Finger", "Forest Soup",  "Hide-n-Seek Winter" and other game projects I could never quite create good quality AI behaviors. I managed to create my own AI behaviors for enemies and such in the past but they were never really good AI behaviors. For example, the enemies in my forest soup game and revolver finger game would follow you around but also they wouldn't avoid obstacles, they would go through walls, they would not follow the player around accurately and sometimes even float above the ground when they aren't suppose to. The AI would even break sometimes and behave weird. Getting to the point, the AI behaviors I created for my past games were very poor quality and not professional.

However, now that I have the power of Unity's built-in navigation tools I can create much more believable AI behaviors, much more smarter AI behaviors and much much better and more professional quality AI behaviors. I am sure this will have a really positive impact on my future game projects. So I just really want to thank the devs behind the Unity game engine for making this feature available to everyone.

The AI/navigation tools use to only be a feature available to pro licensed users. However, a few recent builds of unity 4.xx ago this feature became available to users using the free version of unity and that is just awesome. Those of you who have been using unity might of already known about this feature for a while now and I did to, but I just recently started using it and am really impressed by what it could do.

Anyway that's about it. Once again a big thanks to the people behind the Unity game engine for giving users another pro feature for free. If you haven't played around with the Navigation tools yet I highly encourage you to it is a lot of fun.

I know this post isn't really about my next game project but I will have news on that down the road so stay tuned. Thanks for reading.

What I have been working on (Announcing my next game project!)

   

 Sorry for the lack of updates. I know it has been a couple weeks since my last post. Of course while I was away from the blog I have been working on something new. My next game project actually. If you follow my twitter you may have seen me post various screenshot over the past couple days.

I'm just going to get into it right away. I would like to announce "Escape Ocean Zero" 

Or at least that is what I call my new game project. Who knows I might change the name later down the road. Anyway the title is not important right now.

It is still very early in development so I won't get into too much details about the project right now (I don't have very much to show anyway) so I will save that for a later post.

I did however already create and animate the main character and even built a small simple prototype that you could play right now in your web browser (Its nothing fancy though.)

Play it here (Link)

So, in this game you run around and shoot stuff with your beach ball cannon. (A gun that shoots out beach balls) Off topic: I do believe that my game will be the first game ever to feature such a type of weapon.

The Beach Ball Cannon: A toy looking gun that fires beach balls...

You play as "Beach ball shooter", the main character of my next game. I actually created this guy a little over a week ago.

Anyway, going to leave off with this and keep the post short. I will have a lot more updates and info on my next project down the road. I am looking forward to showing off some of the actual levels and other characters, etc later on so stay tuned!

I do plan on rapidly developing this game and finishing it fast (maybe like a one month time frame or so). Of course I am also going to really polish it up as well. I already think this might be my best looking game so far (graphically)

Summer is coming up and I think my new project is perfect for it.

Hide-n-Seek winter changes + new character

Hey everyone.

So last week I posted an update here on the blog for my short upcoming toon game project "Hide-n-Seek Winter". I said that I was wrapping up the game and that was going to be the final week of development for it. Now here we are the week after and I am not finished like I planned I was going to be. Last week I was literally working on the final level of the game and I should of been done by now. So why it the game not finished you ask? Well, while working on the final level I had some new ideas pop up in my head for this game and I really liked them so I decided that I want to make changes to "Hide-n-Seek Winter". Im going with a different direction with the storyline, actually I have come up with an entirely new storyline for this project and I think it fits better with this game project and my game design style than the original storyline I had come up with. For my new storyline I needed to incorporate a third character. (Originally I only had two in the game)

My new original character that will be appearing in "Hide-n-Seek Winter", the "Hiding Demon"

Character info:
The hiding demon is a very toony, stylized demon type character with a lot of personality. He is known as the king of the game hide and seek because he cleverly hides in various areas when playing. He doesn't like fish because he had a bad childhood experience while on a fishing trip with his father. He can perform various tricks such as grow or shrink his body parts such as his head or hands.The hiding demon lives in the "Infinite snow world" (where the game takes place) and is the main villain of "Hide-n-Seek Winter".

As I was about to finish up developing the game there was something bothering me. I think it turned out great and everything and felt it was a major step up for me compared to my previous games but also I felt like the game was missing something. Something to make it feel more alive, something to give it personality. So I came up with the idea for this character "The hiding demon". I wanted to make a character that is a villain of the story but at the same time a villain that players will like and find enjoyable.To make this character feel really alive I wanted to make his face always have a very exaggerated silly expression on it. I also focused a lot on this characters body expressions and created a ton animations for him that express his personality which you will see in the final game.

I recently finished setting him up in the unity engine with playmaker. Here is how his FSM looks which acts like an animation graph for this character model.

I took a screenshot of this because of how crazy it looked when I finished it. Although it looks like a lot, messy and complex, this was actually very easy to set up with playmaker and is very organized. It is much simpler than it looks. All I am doing here is controlling his different animation states.

Storyline stuff:

I also felt like the original storyline I had come up with for this game project didn't really fit too well after I was about to finish up the game. Originally, Choco and Frosty (the characters of the game) where going to hit by a car. Choco then would wake up in this mysterious place and begin searching for his sister. That is what the storyline was going to be. Kind of dark with a little bit of mystery. Then I decided, since I am making a toon game, I want to make the storyline a little more light hearted and kind of more funny than serious. I wanted it to be kind of like how an episode of a cartoon show is like.

The new storyline of the game:
After playing a game of hide and seek, little sister Frosty compliments her big brother Choco by telling him that he is the greatest hide and seek player ever. After saying this, the "Hiding Demon" suddenly appears and refuses to believe that choco is the greatest hide and seek player ever. The hiding demon then kidnaps Choco's little sister and disappears. The hiding demon tells Choco to meet him at the frozen pond in the "Infinite Snow World", a strange alternate dimension world where it snows forever. In order for Choco to rescue his little sister, he must defeat the hiding demon in a game of hide and seek.

Its a silly game but I really like where I am going with it and the storyline and am having a lot of fun developing it. Although it needs a bit more time I am glad I decided to make changes to this game.

This is a short delay, I still plan on finishing and releasing this game before the end of Feburary (this month). I am looking forward to finishing it. Expect it to be out soon!

Thats all for now.
Be sure to also check out my work in progress thread over at the unity forums right here Unity community

Final week for "Hide-n-Seek Winter"

     Hey everyone. Just wanted to post a quick update for my upcoming game "Hide-n-Seek Winter". I just want to say that the game is almost finished and this is the final week of development for it. I mentioned a post or two back that this is a short game and I was planning on releasing it sometime early February.  So, the plan is to finish and release this game maybe around the end of this week. I'm looking forward to finishing it and sharing it with all you to play.

Frozen pond screenshot:

Sidenote: Check out the works in progress thread I have been posting on almost daily with small updates for this game on the unity forums here: Hide-n-Seek Winter WIP thread

2014 will be the next generation of "Snowconesolid Games", Maybe the best?

     Hey everyone. It's been weeks since the last blog post. I feel like I should post this update to talk about what I have been up to lately in indie game development, computer graphics and what I have planned for 2014. I have a lot of stuff I want to talk about so this is going to be a big blog post.

Current project:
I will first start  from where I left off. In the previous blog post I said I was working on a new "secret" game project. After that I have not really said much about the game. It is still early in development and I do not have very much to show at the moment but I have been working on it. If you have been following my twitter or seen me on the unity forums, I have been posting screenshots and stuff from the game project often. Here is some screens from development if you have missed them.

Here is the main character from my new game that you see in those screenshots. His name is "Choco". He rides a bike and wields a large frozen fish which is used to break frozen objects.

I have also put up an alpha build of the first level from the game for you to try out. I have made a lot of changes since this build and the level you see here is completely different now so this build is kind of outdated but still its interesting to try out if you want to see how the game was going to be like earlier on.

You can try it right here Level One Alpha build
It is also up in the "Prototype/Demonstration" projects section of the blog as well.

As you can see by some of the screenshots, this game is going to be a toon styled game. My goal is to create a unique visually appealing cartoony graphic style and achieve it with this game project. Going for kind of a gravity rush and skyward sword graphic style with my own touch.

So anyway, this is my current game project at the moment. I will talk more about it down the road in upcoming blog posts. This will be my first game release of 2014. I am planning on finishing it and releasing it early 2014. So far I think its turning into a great game project. It will be a step up from my other game projects and I look forward to sharing more news about soon.


Next Gen Snowconesolid:
Now I want to talk about other things I have planned. 2014 will be the "next generation" of my games (I like to say that). So, while working on my current toon game project I have also been working on something else on the side. I am always working on and practicing improving my art skills such as 3d character models and stuff to really create great quality game assets and artwork.

Here is my newest original character model I recently finished. I call him "Nxgen Alien"

I put in a lot of work in this character model and I think its a major step up compared to my other characters that is why I decided to name it "Nxgen Alien". While my previous character models have a more toony look, this one has more of a pseudo realistic look to it.  It also fully rigged, ready to be animated and is game ready.

Here is a screenshot of the characters rig in blender, rigged with riggify.

 So the reason I am showing off this character model right now is to kind of show off how much I have improved and what you can expect from my future game projects. This is a small preview of what "next gen snowconesolid games" will look like. Actually, I do have another game project planned which this character will be in but that is for another time. But after I finish my toon game I plan on working on a more graphically realistic game project.

Here is some screenshots of my "Nxgen Alien" character in the unity game engine. I just placed him in the scene I am working on for my toon game project.

In the second image you can see two versions of the "Nxgen Alien", the one on the left is the toon shaded version with a more cartoony look and the one on the right is a more realistic version of the model using the bumped specular shader and the normal map I created to let the details of the model pop out like the warts on his head, clothes wrinkles, etc. After comparing the two I really liked the more realistic shaded version more.

I have created a webplayer that has my "Nxgen Alien" character model in it so you can have a look at the model in the unity engine yourself. I encourage you to check it out.

try it here Nxgen Alien model viewer

 (This demo is also available in the "prototype/Demonstration" projects section of the blog)








In conclusion, it looks like 2014 is going to be a really good year for "Snowconesolid Productions". I think this might be my best year as an indie dev and a chance for me to really show off what I can do with blender and unity. I think I will have some of my greatest quality game releases this year. Already I have two projects planned, my current toon styled game project and then a more realistic styled game. I am the type of person who likes to change art styles often because I think it gives me as an artist more of a challenge to try something new instead of making one art style and sticking to it. I have a lot of  goals and things planned that I want to achieve in 2014. I think its going to be a really exciting year and I am really looking forward to it.

So I guess that is all for now. This will be my final blog post of 2013 so I will see you all next year.
Hope everyone has happy holidays and a good time.
Thanks for reading. :)

Silent Meow Demo released!

     Just as I promised yesterday, today I released the very first playable demo for "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow". My latest horror game project. This demo is actually the very beginning of the game which takes place in the Almond-Hill forest. You play as Leon Coffeebean who is equipped with only a flashlight and begin searching for your cat Almond. I do not want to say to much about the story because you will find out about it yourself as you play. The demo is pretty short but I hope you enjoy it and it keeps you wanting more after playing it. I created some pretty cool cinematics (I think they are cool at least) for this part of the game to tell the story in a much better way.

The menu screen you see below is just for the demo and the actual game menu will be much more polished for the final game which won't look anything like this.

Anyway, here is the first playable demo for Silent Meow. I hope you have fun. Also, any comments, thoughts/feedback about the game so far is welcome. Actually, your feedback can help me make it better.


Play Demo Here!


Keep in mind that this is only the opening of the game. After this part of the game, the gameplay will switch completely because the new main character Detective Pekoe will take lead role and the players will play as him from that point on. The Almond-Hill forest is only one location in the game so don't get the idea that the entire game will take place in a dark spooky foggy forest. There will be a variety of other locations in game.

Thats all for now. I can't wait to have more work done on the project and I look forward to posting more news and updates as I create it. So stay tuned!

New main character, First demo coming tomorrow

Hey there everyone!

For once here is an update that isn't weeks after the last one. As I said in my previous post and in my WIP thread on the unity forums, there is going to be a new main character for Almond-Hill Silent Meow. Today I was able to finish the new main character so its reveal time!

Here is the new main character for Almond-Hill : Silent Meow

This is Special detective Pekoe Tea Leaf. Detective Pekoe has been sent to the town of Almond-Hill to investigate a recent murder and the mysterious town itself. He might not be the best agent for this job but he has style and gets things done. The Agency did not give Detective pekoe a handgun because he has terrible aiming and failed the target shooting test. But all in all, he is a good at what he does. Also, he prefers tea over coffee.

And he has blue hair because I wanted to make a game where the main character has light blue cool blue hair.

I hope you are excited to play as detective Pekoe in the game.

Speaking of playing, I also want to say that I will be releasing the first demo of Almond-Hill : Silent Meow tomorrow. The demo I will be putting up is the beginning/opening of the game. In the beginning of the game you play as Leon Coffeebean so don't expect to play as detective Pekoe tomorrow. But don't worry, he comes into the game later on. He is the new main character after all.

Anyway, I am excited to have something playable out soon and hope to hear some feedback.
See ya tomorrow on the blog!

Whats the news on the next Almond-Hill? Daily-Updates

Hello everyone.

As you know, I have announced my next game project, "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow". That was about two weeks ago though and some might of noticed there hasn't been any updates since that time.

Well actually, that's not right. I have been posting updates very frequently about the game project. I just haven't been posting them here on the blog. I only post updates on the blog when they are big updates, or a trailer, release date info, etc. Just major updates. Also, I have been updating some sections in the blog such as the 3d art work section where you will find a couple new characters that will appear in game, and I put up an early prototype for controls in the prototype section a while back.

Anyway, I have been posting daily/frequent updates about the game right here on the unity forums in my WIP thread Unity Forums WIP Thread

So to stay up to date, check out my WIP thread at the unity forums. Of course also check out the blog but remember, I will only post major updates about the project here on my blog.

The project is coming along smoothly and I plan on having a short trailer sometime in the future when more progress is done.

Stay tuna! (ha, tuna)

Stay tuned for more info and updates and thanks for reading.

Missing Cat? A New Almond Hill Game!

Hi everyone.

It is finally time to show you what I have been working on. In my last blog post I mentioned I was working on my next game project. I also mentioned that it would be a horror game. Other than that I did not say much.

Today I am very excited to share a lot of info on my next game project. Since it is E3 week, I guess right now is the best time to finally let this info out. It might be the time for all the big companies to show off their newest games but who says the indies can't also show their new games?

Anyway, getting to the main point.

Everyone, get ready for: "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow"

First of all, yes that is the title of my new horror game and you will understand why later on. Secondly, yes. It is also a new Almond-Hill game. My short "Silent Hill : Shattered Memories" inspired horror game that I originally released back in October for Halloween is back!

Now, for those of you who have heard about or played my original "Almond-Hill" game might be asking "Why are you making another Almond-Hill game?"

There is a lot of reasons why actually. First of all, out of all the other game projects I created, I had the most fun creating "Almond-Hill". I loved experimenting around and putting a horror game together. Also, I might of been goofing off back then, but I really like the simple plot I came up with for the horror title and I want to carry that plot on again in a much more polished game. And last, its because of you (the people who played the first Almond-Hill game). It might not have a huge fan base, but it turns out that the original Almond-Hill game is the most popular game I have released yet. I have noticed that a few people have made youtube videos playing through my game, and I can see the stats here on blogger and most of the blog hits I get is because people come for Almond-Hill or search it. Everyday in my stats the most viewed thing is my Almond-Hill game. Some people liked the game, some people thought it was the worse thing they ever played (can't really blame them since I rushed the project for a Halloween release). Despite that, I believe that this game does have a fan base out there and that is what truly inspired me to create another one.

Anyway, now getting to the good stuff!

I have been using Unity for 2 years now and have a lot of experience with the engine. I released many titles up until now but none of them have been quality, polished or serious attempts at creating a great game. All of that ends. Starting with this new project "Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" and all my future projects I will be working hard and taking serious attempts to create great quality and polished games.

So about the new Almond-Hill?

This new Almond-Hill game is a complete reboot to my original game. Its not an Almond-Hill 2. The new Almond-Hill game will have a completely new town to explore, four new unique original characters, a slightly different story line (which I will get to), much more polished controls and graphics and animations. Everything about the new Almond-Hill game will be fresh and a hundred times better than the original. Also, (sorry to take a shot at Slenderman but) this is not a crappy slenderman game. I want to bring Slenderman up because whenever I see indie developers working on a new horror game, they always only want to make a Slenderman game. It has been done so many times, its just not original or fun. I am working on this project to also encourage developers to try and come up with something original and not Slenderman. If you are an indie developer and want to make horror games be as creative as you want and try something new. Don't get me wrong, if you want to make a Slenderman game that is perfectly fine, esp if its just an experimental project but I believe the indie scene is tired of Slenderman and wants to see something new.

Ok sorry for getting a bit off topic but I feel I had to bring that out for those of you reading.

"Almond-Hill : Silent Meow" Plot and Characters:

You play as Leon Coffeebean (character shown below)

Leon one day gets a phone call from his grandmother Grams Coffeebean (Character shown below)

Grams Coffeebean lives in a small town called "Almond-Hill". She calls her grandson Leon to come over to Almond-Hill so he can help her with a "special search". When Leon arrives at Almond-Hill, he learns that Grams's cat has gone missing. Grams then has Leon explore the town of Almond-Hill in search of her lost cat. Leon eventually finds out that the town of Almond-Hill is haunted and there is someone or something living in the Almond-Hills forest. Because Grams is an old woman, she never leaves her house and that is why she is unaware of the happenings of the town she is living in.

The name of Grams cat is Almond (character shown below)

Almond is the cat you are looking for. This cat is a very special cat as it can walk on two legs and is a loyal feline companion. It is unknown how, when or why Almond has gone missing.


Vehicles in Almond Hill Silent Meow:
The last thing I want to talk about in this project for today is vehicles. Almond-Hill is not going to be GTA or Red Dead Redemption huge obviously as I am a one man team and would never consider taking on a massive project like that, but it will be big enough to drive cars. So yeah you will be able to drive this time around.

For example, you will be able to drive at the very beginning of the game as Leon needs to travel to the town of Almond-Hill.

The first vehicle you will see in game is this "Snowconesolid Transport" Taxi.

And later on in the game you will be able to own your own car. Here is another one of the car models you can get in this new Almond hill game.

Although there wont be many, I am planning on having other vehicles in game as well as a car dealership where you can purchase different cars.

Driving will be a very important aspect of this new Almond-Hill game and I think it will be a really cool feature to make the game a much more unique experience.

Final thoughts: 
My goal for this project is to make a very unique horror game. Something that is different than your average horror game. I plan on creating a stylized horror game with a dark atmosphere and some comedy as well as a unique storyline.

That is all I have for now. I am excited about this project and cant wait to show more progress. Stay tuned to the blog as I post updates on how things are going. I will have more info soon!

Update: 6/12/ 2013
 I forgot to mention one very important thing. The platform this game will be on. I plan on releasing this for PC and Mac. After those releases I might consider going back and porting over to Android  for a mobile version. But for now the game will be for PC and Mac.