A comment I posted a few days ago about the game got some interest, so I thought I would share it with the community.
The project started with a group of strangers meeting at a global gamejam event in 2012. The first prototype was super buggy, but our idea about sacrificing your character to solve puzzles and make progress was well received, so the four of us decided to keep working on the project as an evenings and weekends thing.
Sharing early prototypes with online communities provided a lot of feedback and encouragement. As the project progressed, more of the group started to focus on the game full time, working up to the release this month. The Steam page for the game is here:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/250050/
If anyone has any questions about the process, or the game, I'd be happy to answer them.
The game is really amazing. I for one will actually get a copy and support you. Keep it good work!
I have a question - this game seems to be possible to easily port to mobiles (it looks like it would run smoothly on tablets and newer mobiles) - do you guys have plan for that?
Thanks for the comment and the support, I hope you like the game!
The game is built with Unity, so on that side of things, a mobile port is pretty straightforward. There are some challenges though.
- Performance: The game uses physics simulation pretty heavily, with the ragdolls, ice cubes, and that sort of thing, which might take some rethinking to hit a mobile CPU budget. And while our graphics aren't that intense, they weren't built with a mobile GPU in mind, and would also likely take some work.
- Controls: Life Goes On doesn't require very much precision platforming, but the levels are designed for a player at a keyboard, or with a controller. We don't know how well this would transition to touch controls.
- Market: The biggest challenge for a game on mobile is finding an audience, and standing out from the crowd. Though if we can build enough fans on the PC, then we might have this hurdle overcome.
We haven't figured out our plan yet, but we've found it very helpful when teams have shared their data, and I'd like to contribute back to the community.
The two things that really stand out for me are the graphics and the mood. In addition to having a polished look, the game has an evocative soundtrack. The tagline "Death is not a setback..." got my imagination going and drew me into the world of Life Goes On.
If you have a moment and others haven't already asked the same question, I'd like to know which technologies (i.e. Unity?) you used to build the game and a bit about how you learned game development.
The game is indeed built with Unity. 3D models and animations were created in 3DS Max.
Game development was a hobby for me for a long time, with most of my experience coming from participating in 48 hour game jams, like the LD48. (http://www.ludumdare.com/) It's been an interesting journey transitioning a hobby project into a commercial release.
An interesting challenge that our team faced was that we all came from a programming background, so through the project we have had to find ways to fill all of the other requirements for the game.
That's interesting! I'll have to check out those game jams as a way to motivate myself. As a developer, I've always wanted to break into making games.
And I think your team has handled the artistic aspects of the game very well, especially considering that you have programming backgrounds that might not have included visual design training.
Anyhow, thanks for sharing and best of luck with your title in the future.
I would definietly recommend game jams / weekend hackathons as a way to try out game development. I always found the goal of finishing something small very quickly to be great for motivation.
Our team was very fortunate to have someone with some 3D art experience, even though his primary background and education is in programming. I sometimes joke about the "programmer art" of our game. Here is an imgur album that looks at the art a bit, and gives a glimpse of how it has evolved.
3d art can take more overhead to produce, but it gives a very different aesthetic than 2d art. We were really lucky to have someone on our team with 3d art experience.
At one point we did play around a little with having the camera turn and fly around when the knight grabs the cup at the end of a level, but the levels are really only build to look good from one perspective, and it would have been hard to make it work well.
Wow, I really like the idea of the small changes the multiple prior attempts caused to the level being integral to completion. This is jus the kind of game that looks interesting to me. I'll be sure to grab a copy.
Out of curiosity, are you on any other markets, such as gog.com?
I'd love to know how you started to develop a game for Steam. I thought yo had to be "Green Light". I have a few ios games and WiiU game I'd like to take more mainstream..Can you share how to get started?
For most indie games, getting voted on by the community in the green light process is the most straightforward way to get on steam. If you have a project that has the right mass appeal, it seems that this can go very quickly. But it seems that most games need to build up a fan base and a following that can deliver votes and push them through the process.
Yes, Valve did open up access to their SDK. I don't know if it's worth investing much effort into until you have actually been accepted on to steam though.
This looks great! I am definitely going to buy a copy and help support you. Looks like a lot of effort and thought has gone into this game, definitely my favourite type of game. Interesting underlying game mechanic as well.
Congratulations! This game looks amazing and kudos for the 2 years of hard work and perseverance! It must be really hard to keep motivated as a team for such a long time.
The art and game play looks really good and your composer did a very good job!
The trailer video cuts too quickly between scenes. It's difficult to see whats going on. The fact there was a sacrifice going on wasn't as obvious as it could be.
Congratulations, great idea and (it looks like) great execution!
Now you need to enter the game into festivals, drum up PR, conduct interviews. By publishing to a Steam first, you will also have a hard time getting on XBLA, if you were interested in that--a shame, because this game looks like a perfect fit. Maybe PSN?
This looks quite fantastic! It also reminds me a bit of a game called 'Humans' I used to play as a kid back in the 90s (at least, that's what I recall it being called, but I can't seem to find a link for it anywhere). Great job on this.
Any insights during the development? What worked? What didn't? How big was your team? How did you split the work? How long did it take from inception to release? Would love to hear your thoughts.
One lesson was that we should have invested more in our tools upfront. We largely depended on Unity's built in editor to create our content. If we had built level editor tools, and an art workflow based around that, content creation would have gone much faster. And we might have gotten to the point where we could have offered a level editor to players.
Our team was four core members, with a composer and a GUI / 2d artist helping out on contract. We also had help on the business side. With the game starting as a hobby project, we didn't have much structure, and the work got divided simply by people taking on the jobs that they had the time, interest, and skills for. On that front, we are fortunate that things worked out as well as they did. The project started at a Global Game Jam in January 2012, so we were a little over two years from start to release.
The project started with a group of strangers meeting at a global gamejam event in 2012. The first prototype was super buggy, but our idea about sacrificing your character to solve puzzles and make progress was well received, so the four of us decided to keep working on the project as an evenings and weekends thing.
Sharing early prototypes with online communities provided a lot of feedback and encouragement. As the project progressed, more of the group started to focus on the game full time, working up to the release this month. The Steam page for the game is here: http://store.steampowered.com/app/250050/
If anyone has any questions about the process, or the game, I'd be happy to answer them.