A Big Week

As the late-October daylight hours become increasingly shorter, it seems that the frequency of my blog posts have an opposite effect. The school/work year at University of Wisconsin-Stout is now in full gear, and my chances to set aside time to post – or even contribute to Tombeaux – have become rarer and rarer.

But last week was a very busy week for both me and the game! In the period of about five days, I launched the Tombeaux website, released a teaser trailer, and gave a presentation to the IGDA Chapter in the Twin Cities.

For the actual website of the game, I’ve been working closely with my former student, Keith Catalano. Keith is a talented 3D artist in his own right, but also works full time as a interactive designer at Clockwork Media. I hired him to help with the development of Tombeaux’s site, as well as aid a bit on the identity of the title treatment and logo in the game.

Main Page of Tombeaux Site, with title treatment

Working over the past few months, Keith has done a fantastic job in designing a site that feels fresh, informative and simple. I’m extremely happy with the result of the site, and the type treatment and logo hits the exact amount of subtle yet unique balance I was looking for in the game’s identity. I invite you to jump over to www.tombeauxgame.com at some point soon, to see the great job he’s done.

Screenshots of Tombeaux’s Website

Before I could make the site live, I wanted to have a teaser trailer ready for viewers to discover nested on the page. I was going for a very simple and short experience that incorporate a glimpse of the river scene at night (as experienced by the player at the beginning of the game) and a few shots of the cabin interior. After recording the gameplay with the awesome, open-source software that is OBS, I brought it into Adobe Premiere. I then overlaid the video with a snippet of the score being composed by Joseph Fear and a selection of narration by the main character in the game (voiced by Steve Alm, who is reciting one of my favorite passages by Thoreau, from Walden). I’m happy with how the teaser ended up, and plan to release a few more teasers in the next few months.

First Teaser Trailer for Tombeaux

Finally, I had an opportunity to present the progress and research I’ve made on the game thus far to my local IGDA Chapter last Wednesday. The IGDA Twin Cities Chapter meets on the 2nd Wednesday of every month at The Nerdery, a software design and development company located in Bloomington, MN. It was a great experience to be able to talk about the project to such a large group of peers in the game development industry, and received some great feedback on the game as well. I look forward to continuing to participate in future meet-ups for playtest opportunities and conversations.

IGDA Twin Cities Logo

Overall, it was quite a busy week for Tombeaux and myself, which resulted in more than one late or all-nighter to get things done on time! It’s now again time to hunker down and model more assets, so that I can perhaps have another new teaser to share with you at some point in the coming month or two!