Game Worlds Weekly #3
Hello, and welcome to Game Worlds Weekly issue 3! I have tweaked the format slightly, after reader feedback - less games, but more specific questions. Let’s get straight to it -
Home: A Story of Light
Developer: Think Picture Studios
Instagram: home.astoryoflight
Steam: store.steampowered.com/app/2409920/Home_A_Story_of_Light/
Hi, tell me about Think Picture Studios!
I’m Ben, the one writing this. But we’re a three-person team, primarily: Luke (animator), Ben (writer) and Thomas (composer).
We’ve been mates for a long time – decades added up between us – and games have always a bonding agent. Most of our core memories as friends are built around them. So when Luke and Thomas started to take the idea of making a game seriously, I wanted in too. Although, we didn't put our foot to the pedal straight away. We waited until we felt that each of our individual skillsets were properly honed, so that we could be confident in making something worthy enough to put in front of other people.
Anyway, here we are – Think Picture Studios!
Give us a one sentence project overview…
Home: A Story of Light is an adventure game about Grayson, the son of a great inventor, as he makes his way through the perilous north-east of Victorian England, alongside his pet mouse, to find his way back home and reunite with his father.
What have you done in the last week?
We’ve all taken small breaks while we gear up for more conventions, so we can get ever-valuable player feedback in person. We’ve confirmed a space for PLAY Expo Blackpool for the weekend of October 4th and we will be turning up at more events in the near future. For updates on that, follow our socials and sign up to our newsletter!
What’s the plan for the coming week?
This week we’re meeting up to discuss our plan for Kickstarter, and to work on ideas for the full game. We try to hop on Discord as much as possible to keep the ball rolling (and to clarify any points made throughout the week on our Whatsapp chat).
I'm interested to know what tech you're using and how much coding you're doing yourselves...
We use the Visionaire engine for everything. It’s a great tool that has a very intuitive interface that allows you to build the majority of the game without coding required. Luke, our animator, is doing most of the heavy lifting, and we hire additional support for scripting as and when needed. Visionaire has a great discord community, full of devs helping each other problem-solve, as well as direct communication and advice from the main developer, and other programmers who have a deep knowledge of the engine. There are frequent updates that add new features, including some that are suggested by the community, which is another reason we chose to use Visionaire.
Kickstarter sounds like a good idea. I think confidence in Kickstarter games is returning a little bit. Presumably, you were impressed by the recent success of Heir of the Dog?
Kickstarter is essential, for us. We're a brand new team and trying to build traction from players - hopefully people are gaining faith in what we’re capable of off the back of our demo on Steam.
But we're doing this project for the love of doing it in our free time at the moment (all three of us work full time jobs unrelated to the games industry). For us to carry on with Home at any realistic pace, we need the funding to make that happen, the animation alone is a huge job and with Luke doing this on his own we need him on this more full time and Kickstarter feels like the most logical place to begin! And yes, it's massively encouraging seeing how successful Tom has been, (it definitely gives us hope) congrats to him!
Yeah, it was great to see. Any favourite adventure games that particularly inspired you?
Well, this one is embarrassing, Tony :-) ...nah, of course we have to point out that Broken Sword 1 & 2 have been touchstone points of inspiration. We're all big fans of the tangibility of their hand drawn animation. The logical but satisfying puzzle designs in those games are the kind we enjoy the most within the genre too, so we've taken that design ethos and tried to see what else we can add to it - how we can make it our own. Having the mouse be playable and entwined within certain aspects of our puzzles and user interface has been fairly paramount in giving it our own spin. But there are less obvious adventure titles (when looking at our game) that have inspired us in some way, games like Machinarium, Norco, Indiana Jones and The Fate of Atlantis, Hob's Barrow, etc.
Yeah, I’m a Hob’s Barrow super-fan, myself!
Any plans for mobile platforms, or even consoles?
When it comes to full release of the game (lord willing) we want to get the game on all available consoles and on mobile platforms, absolutely. We've tried to build the interface with mobile/tablet in mind from the beginning, so hopefully it won't need too much significant adjustment to make the transition. We also plan to launch the demo on IOS tablet too in the not too distant future, so watch this space! :)
Cheers, Ben! So, finally, where are you and how’s the weather?
Everyone’s been away! Personally, I’ve been travelling around the Norfolk coastline, beach to beach, enjoying the (relative to England) warm waters of the North Sea under the broiling Anglian sun. It’s been lovely! Great weather for barbeques; cumbia, dub and calypso spinning on the decks. Proper lush.
