"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. 

Heres an update!

  
     Well everyone, I know its a bit late but here it is. My first blog post of 2014! This isn't going to be a really big blog post or anything but I just feel like I should post an update because it feels like I have been away for a while. So in case anyone was thinking that I abandoned this place, I am still here. I do apologize for the lack of updates though.

Anyway, in the last blog post I made in 2013 I was talking about my plans for this year (2014) and so on. I said that this year, I hope to release some of my greatest most polished games yet. It pretty much became my new years resolution and that is what I am sticking to doing. I mentioned that I planned on working on two different graphically styled games. A toon/cel shaded game and then a more realistic style game. I don't want to get into too much details and make this a really long winded blog post so for now I want to just give an update on the game project I have been working on since November 2013 and that is my toon game project.

I keep calling this my "secret game project" and I often post screenshots from development on the unity forums or on my twitter and that's pretty much it. I announced it in November and really did not give out much details or anything about it since other than a couple of screenshots and whatnot. I was actually planning on finally revealing details about the project sometime during last week but then somethings came up and I really haven't worked on it as much as I liked to.

However, I have been working on it little by little and its coming together really nicely. I do plan on finally revealing it sometime during this week and I will even try to get up a little short trailer or something. The reason I have been holding back so long to reveal the game is because I really wanted to complete working on a good portion of the game before showing anything, at least like half of it. And I am a solo developer so it's a lot of work but like I said, its coming together. In the end it just makes more sense to create a good portion of the game before officially announcing it because you never know your plans down the road. I say this from previous experiences.

So anyway, stay tuned because I do plan on finally revealing the game sometime this week. For now here is some development screenshots I posted earlier on my twitter and on the unity forums. You might have seen them already but here they are again in case you missed them. More soon!

Thanks for reading and see you later!

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. :)

New seceret game project in the works.

     Im back again!   
The title says it all folks. I am working on a new game project. I have been for the past two weeks actually. Of course, the game is still in its very very early development stages and there is not really much to show at the moment. However, I did already create a couple of important game assets for my new project such as the main character which I will be revealing in time of course.

For now, my new game project will remain a secret until I have more of it finished. Well, it's not really a secret anymore because now you know I am working on something new. If you have seen me on the unity forums or follow my tweets on twitter you might have also noticed a bunch of screenshots I posted of very early development images from my new project.  Such as this one,

and many more. What you see in the above screenshot is from one of the prototype levels I created. So nothing in it is final. I hope it gives you a good idea of what to expect though. I'll be aiming for fresh gameplay and a nice art style with this new project as it will be one of my most polished games ever.

I can't wait to reveal details about my new project and show off some screenshots from the levels in the final game. I might even have a teaser trailer out later on. Very excited about my new game project and I'm looking forward to revealing it in the future.

Stay tuned!