Beasts of Burden
I've started doing daily development streams!
https://www.twitch.tv/studiodread
be sure to follow to be notified when I come online if you want to chat with me or see how my games are coming along!
We have a Discord! + road ahead discussion
I'm done apologizing for the radio silence, you all know my excuses and I'm tired of making them. That said, I have not been idle when it comes to Beasts of Burden! Actual development was delayed because of some personal events in our pixel-artist's life causing him to be unable to redo the old art for several months, however, while that was happening I was busy behind the scenes completely revamping the studio!
Studio Dread LLC now has it's own Discord server, social media, and two new community managers to make up for my total lack of social media capabilities. Huge shoutout to my friends who have volunteered their time to make this all of this possible. If you'd like to join the community on our Discord please follow the link below.
https://discord.gg/ju9Uuy7qJr
What to expect now:
As always my development of this game will be inconsistent because it's not currently making any money and the harsh reality of adulthood is that bills are a thing and I cannot simply spend my life making games for the joy of it no matter how badly I want to. That said, nearly all of the foundation and assets are laid out so all I have to do is put my nose to the grindstone and turn this into the game it always deserved to be. I plan to be more transparent about progress and you can expect to see development livestreams on the studio's YouTube channel possibly as early as today. Also expect regular content on other social media platforms and more frequent devlogs. As always thank you all for your support and I hope I can bring you the game you deserve in the near future.
Major good news for the future of BoB!!!
So for the past several months I've been struggling really badly mentally and financially (the stress of the latter largely impacting the former), and it's made Beasts of Burden go very far on the back burner. I was struggling to pay my rent on time and barely scraping by on freelance work that was taking up every ounce of my time. But an amazing positive change has occured in my life, I was just given a good paying temp job by a very good friend of mine working on an idle game rogue-like hybrid. This means two things: 1. I actually have free time every week to work on Beasts of Burden, 2. I have the $30 I needed to buy a better shadow plugin (the one I made was not enough for my game despite my best efforts).
Now the latter may not seem like a lot but it was the last thing holding me back from making everything look beautiful and actually building the game itself. I really want to take the time to do it right this time so I won't make any promises on how long it will take but here are some things I can promise, the full release of the remake will include:
- A fully functional code structure
- Improved Menuing
- Custom UI Art
- Multiple attacks
- Ability to lose the fights
- More choices on your path
- More easter eggs
- Save slots
- Ability to name your character
- Ability to go into houses (by popular request)
- Semi randomized runs
- More lore (some delivered by dialogue in the houses)
- More gameplay (still the looping style at least in the beginning but more interesting things to happen)
- Better world building (the NPCs will all have names and backstories that tie into the main lore)
- More secrets ;)
- More endings
- Drumroll..... 3 acts with only the first act being the starting area loop from the original version
- And last but not least... The same free price tag because I really just want to build a community with this game and show you guys how much I appreciate you beleiving in me (not to ge too sappy)
I will be posting progress on my YouTube and other social media as usual but I'm pretty terribly at it so expect long silences followed by big updates (if anyone is willing to be my marketing/social media manager and doesn't mind doing it for free then definitely contact me), and as always if you would like exclusive access to early development builds and some other awesome perks feel free to subscribe to my patreon at any tier: https://www.patreon.com/KeirdanJenson but if not, your presense in my community is enough and I can't wait for you all to see this game come fully to fruition!
Beasts of Burden Remake DevLog #1 - Fixing Unity2D Shadows, Improved White Room
Hello, this is my first DevLog for the remake of my first game Beasts of Burden, an indie horror game based on the false advertisement Evertale ads. In light of a recent surge of attention, I have decided to completely remake the game from the ground up as I have become much more skilled as a developer and the original game was an absolute dumpster fire from a code standpoint.
In this DevLog, I show off the new shadows which have a more realistic height and gradient effect (if you've worked with Unity2D shadows then you know how much of an achievement that is), and the new white room which loops endlessly instead of just having invisible walls, much cleaner and in line with what I originally wanted to do with the game.
If you would like more updates on this game and my other games, in addition to game development and audio engineering-related tutorials, please consider subscribing to my YouTube.
If you would like to support me as a developer and get exclusive access to development builds as soon as they're created, please consider supporting my Patreon. As little as $ 3 USD per month will get you exclusive access to behind-the-scenes content and development builds:
https://www.patreon.com/KeirdanJenson
for other updates and content please consider following my social media:
https://twitter.com/audio_dread
https://www.instagram.com/audiodread/
for business inquiries or to check out other projects I've worked on please visit my website:
https://www.keirdan.com/
Full remake in the works but for now here's how to fix the most common bugs
Massive thank you to The Game Theorists and updates coming soon
This is going to be long winded and might get a little emotional so I aplogize. Today, and I'm not even exagerating, I had the most amazing moment in my career as an indie game developer. A YouTube channel which has been a significant part of my life for over 8 years shouted out my game. I own the merch, I watch the live shows, and the Game Theory community was a big part if not the biggest part of what inspired me to make this game.
Beasts of Burden was my first official release and it has the roughness of a first game, there are many things I don't like about it. A little over a year ago I first started encountering Evertale ads and was sucked in by the promise of a deep Pokemon inspired psychological horror game with lore and layers to unpack, and like many others I was dissapointed to find that the promise was a lie. I took to the Game Theory subreddit to see if others had encountered it and if there was any truth to the game or even the lore of the ads and that post got over 700 Upvotes and 4 awards and in a moment that, without exageration, would change my life forever I decided to take the plunge and though I had tried and failed to learn Unity in the past I would put everything I had into making the vision of this game a reality.
With the help of a friend I made on the subreddit, Angry HotDog who aided with marketing, and my good friend Ram99 who aided with music and pixel art I began to design my own version of the Evertale promise. I focused on the Pokemon inspired aspects and attempted to create a GameBoy Advance inspired horror game based on my own childhood. I used the looping and repeating nature of the ads to shape the repeating level PT style of gameplay. I used my own love of The Game Theorists to craft deep lore hidden within an ARG that can be found in the game if you look hard enough and have a flayer for solving difficult puzzles. What I got? A broken, imperfect, first attempt at a game but a game nonetheless. I gave it my all and as you can see the response was... Mixed. But nevertheless I was happy.
The biggest thing I learned from my first attempt at Beasts of Burden had nothing to do with game development, and everything to do with achievement and creation. I have struggled my whole life with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and a whole host of other mental issues and struggles that would be too long to write about here. So many times I had started projects and abandoned them, too scared or lacking motivation to see anything through, and for the first time ever I truly put in the work. I came home from work and spent another 8 hours every night working on Beasts of Burden. I was utterly determined to make it a reality no matter how difficult. Was it good? Was it polished? Did people love it? No to all of the above but it was a game that I had finished, a working game that I was unbelievably proud of and finishing that game gave me the true sense of purpose I had been seeking.
So I made more games, I learned more, and I pursued a career as a fulltime developer. I came back to Beasts of Burden and gave it a massive update which added lighting and fixed many of the bugs but it was, and is, still an imperfect game. There are many bugs, visual glitches, and gramatical errors throughout and the looping nature doesn't do enough to keep itself interesting. These are issues I was aware of and planned to fix in time, but the game had not gained any traction and in my pursuit of fulltime game development I found that I had little time to work on my own games as I wanted to, instead spending most of my time doing freelance work for others.
I met someone here on Steam who kindly offered to help me form a plan to polish the game more, but once again it had faced such a lack of success I could not justify taking time away from paid work to work on a game that wouldn't further my overall goals. And then something incredible happend.
My game was mentioned and shouted out in the first 2 minutes of a Game Theory video and I am suddenly left with the justification I need to begin updating this game again. As a loyal Theorist the ARG and lore aspects I added were all inspired by The Game Theorists and it remained a pipe dream that it may one day end up in a Game Theory video but with how much time passed and how little attention it ultimately got I truly didn't believe this day would come.
I want to give the deepest and most humble thanks to MatPat, the entire GT crew, and the entire GT community for this amazing opportunity and make the most sincere promise that I will do everything I can to live up to chance I have been given. So let's talk about THE FUTURE:
My current plans revolve around fixing the gramar, and rebuilding the game from the ground up with polished visuals, improved Unity systems, and completely optimizing the code. I also would love to add more lore and secrets, maybe spice up the gameplay a bit. Or possibly this should serve as a demo and a full scale game is in order, let me know what you all think. I will read any and all comments to this anouncement or on any of my social media so please make your suggestions heard.
I would like to once again thank everyone involved for this amazing chance at publicity, it truly means the world and I will do everything I can to live up to it. Lastly, if you would like to see future versions of Beasts of Burden played on GTLive, or the lore of the game covered on a Game Theory, mak your voices heard because I know I would.
Love you all, and let's make this game into something I never thought it could be!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xM8J_AUHo
New Skip Battle Feature
In light of recent feedback I have added a new feature to the game; a "Skip Fight" button can now be found within the items menu of some of the more tedious fights, allowing you to skip the needlessly long and mundane battles.