His name is "PonyTail"

     Today I wan't to talk a little bit more about the main character of my next game "Samer Hills" and reveal some more information on the game. This is a character I created a while back and even posted a "making of" section here on the blog which you could find here: "Making of PonyTail"

     His name is Ponytail. Why? because he has a ponytail. (I am very good at naming my characters) 

The information that follows in the rest of this post are considered minor spoilers for my own game. But knowing me, I am terrible at keeping quiet about my work and just can't keep things secret. Also, I really enjoy sharing each step of the development process here on the blog.

      So anyway Ponytail is the main character in "Samer Hills" - a chubby, mustached pink wearing stylized comical character who sports a ponytail hair style. I have always enjoyed games that are closely connected with their characters and show how their characters evolve throughout the game as the player advances deeper into the story. This is what I want to achieve with "Samer Hills". The game itself will really be focused around this character. 

    A couple days ago I posted this picture on my twitter saying "brothers or same person?" And right now is the time where I begin to give away minor spoilers for the game. So the bearded man is actually the same character as the original pink wearing Ponytail character. As I was just saying, this game will focus on the main character and his evolution throughout. At the start of the game you are this worn down big bearded crazy looking guy who looks like he has had a pretty tough life. As you progress more and more you get see how he changes. 

     Eventually Ponytail looses the beard, gets a cleaner look and begins wearing this pink uniform (which will also be explained more in the game) The character himself is going to be a very strange and questionable character. If he is good, bad, crazy, sad, etc is really going to be left up to the player to decide. 

     This game is all about character building. I think that Ponytail is going to be a really unique complex character to play as and will make the game an interesting experience. I am working my best to deliver this experience as it will be the first time where I make a game that focuses on building who that character is instead of focusing on the game world and its enemies. Of course the game world and other characters will contribute to the main character as well. As always, it will turn out to be a really weird game but I am really excited to share it with everyone once its done and then maybe what I am saying now will make a little bit more sense once people have actually got to play it. 

More updates coming soon!

Punished Ponytail...

     So I posted this "box art" for my new upcoming game "Samer Hills" on my twitter about a day ago. Does it look familiar to anyone? This boxart shows "Punished Ponytail".... "Woooooahhh hooooooooo!!!! Wooaaaah hooooooo-oooooooo words that kill!!!"

     In case you haven't figured it out yet, clearly this is a reference to Metal Gear Solid V. I have stated this before on the blog many times, but I am a huge MGS fan and a huge fan of Hideo Kojima and his work. He is one of my favorite game designers of all time. 

     As you can see, I shamelessly copied used inspiration from the Metal Gear Solid V box art to make mine. I originally did this as a joke but then I really liked how my box art actually turned out. So there it is. A harmless parody box art of the original MGSV box. Hideo Kojima is actually a huge role model for me as a game designer and one of the reasons I am so into game development. I often use inspirations from his works in my own work and that can be seen in my projects. My previous game "Potato Thriller" was heavily inspired by his Silent Hills/PT demo. Actually, Potato Thriller was essentially a parody game of PT but at the same time didn't really have anything to do with PT and stood out as its own game if that makes any sense. 

     With all that said however, I would just like to clear a couple things up for "Samer Hills". Just because I made a parody box art of the MGSV box art does not mean that the game itself will be a parody of Metal Gear Solid V. Again, this box art was just done jokingly and for fun. "Samer Hills" will be nothing like MGSV and it will not be a parody game of MGSV. I am trying to create a very "Samer Khatib" original horror game experience. 

     This game is going to be very different than any other game I have ever made so far. This time I am extremely focused on the overall quality of the entire game. Every area such as graphics, mechanics, etc will be a huge step up for me. Polish is very important because I want to really deliver a good quality game and I am very excited to hopefully share the game with everyone soon in the future. More updates coming soon. 

It is no longer "Hamar Hills" - Game re-named to "Samer Hills"

     Hello everyone. Just as the title says, I have decided to re-name my newest upcoming game to "Samer Hills" (originally "Hamar Hills") . I have decided to rename the game for a few reasons actually and all of them are perfectly valid. So today I want to take a moment and talk about the new name and explain why it has changed. 

     First of all, the game was originally called "Hamar Hills" so right from the start it sounds confusing to many people. What the heck is a "Hamar" or what does it even mean? Why was this even considered to be the name of the game originally anyway? These are all good points and I agree that it was a very silly and stupid name for a game actually but the reason why I did want to originally name it this is because "Hamar" is an arabic word which means "Donkey". So essentially the game "Hamar Hills" translates to "Donkey Hills". You are probably thinking now: "wow, this is still a really dumb name even after hearing the translation. Why would you call the game "Donkey Hills"? 

     I originally came up with the name "Hamar Hills" or "Donkey Hills" because the main enemies of the game were going to be this group of donkeys that you encounter throughout the game. The game was originally planned to be a game about a character who wonders off into the town of "Hamar Hills" only to later find out that the town is abandoned and is being run by this evil donkey gang - hence the original name of the game "Hamar Hills". This all still must sound very silly as a game idea and writing it down makes me realize that it is. But you really need to be in my head to see how I was originally imagining it to play out and I don't think I could really describe it. But anyway that is not the point right now. 

     The game is taking a different direction, its not just about donkeys. The more and more I develop the game, the more ideas I get and want to add in. So its really not just focused on one thing anymore. It is going to still be a pretty weird and silly game though. So, because the change of focus, I have renamed the game to "Samer Hills". This name makes more sense. A lot more sense actually. The game is about many strange and random ideas that I just picture in my head. My real name is Samer, so essentially in "Samer Hills" you are just entering this world of ideas that spawned from my head instead of just a silly game about evil donkeys. It is kind of hard to explain, but I think it will make a lot more sense once the game is finished and people can play it. Also, the game is somewhat inspired by "Silent Hills". It won't really be anything like "Silent Hill" or a parody of it or anything, but renaming the game to use the same initials feels nicer than what was used before. 

     Another major reason I changed the name (and this one is seriously important) is because after doing some research I found out that the word "Hamar" isn't just an arabic word. Okay so it means donkey in arabic but it might translate to something else in different languages and I don't want this headache. I don't want to possibly bring up any problems because of naming a game a certain name. Also I found out that "Hamar" is the name of some kind of cultural tribe or whatever in some parts of the world and I don't want to confuse people with the name and make them think that it is a game about this real life tribe or anything. The game has nothing to do with this tribe, it has nothing to do with anything in real life. Whenever I make a game, I always just make up my own fictional worlds, characters, story lines, etc that are not connected to or related to anything in our real world. The original name for my game "Hamar Hills" was implying the translation from arabic to mean "Donkey" as I stated above. It was a coincidence that I found out that the word "Hamar" is used differently in other cultures and languages and was not intentionally trying to be anything other than being translated as "Donkey" from arabic. It is a very good thing that I did my research and caught that before continuing to go with the original name. Moral of the story, be careful when trying to pick a name for your game. Do some research on that name. See if it is used differently other than the ways you originally thought. 

     Anyway, I am really glad I changed the name. I am very happy with the new name I decided to go with and it does make more sense overall for what the game will be about. So bottom line, yes. I did just name my next game after myself... 

More updates soon!

Playing with fire

Not really a blog post. Just sharing more screenshots from development. Enjoy! 

^^^ looks like he's farting while running.