Genesis Noir is a cosmic adventure that takes place before, during, and after the Big Bang. To save your love, you must stop the expansion of the universe.
Play as No Man as he explores a jazz age city and learns how to improvise on his quest to destroy creation in our demo.
May Dev Update: Delay + Key Art
Hey y’all! We hope you’re staying safe and healthy in these times. Dang it’s nearly June already, weren’t we supposed to ship this thing in June?
I’ll get this out of the way at the start: Genesis Noir is now due to launch around early October, rather than June. Due to a few months of slower work due to working from home and such, and a few other things we’ll mention below, along with a really exciting thing we can’t talk about until August, we felt like we needed this additional time to avoid completely panicking and ending up with something unpolished and buggy. However, due to this delay, we’ll be doing the following things:
Professional QA / bug testing
Finishing interactions and bits that would have been cut entirely
Adding accessibility-minded control features (detailed below)
A lot more playtesting and polish
SECRET THING (shhhh we can’t tell you until August)
With that out of the way, we’ve written some stuff about what we’ve been up to lately, so check it out!
Jeremy’s Tech Tunnel
Hi, Jeremy here! A lot of my time over the past few months has been spent deep inside the inner workings of the game engine, making sure controllers and mice and keyboards play nice with all the menus and user interface bits of the game. A result of this is some great accessibility features like fully remappable controls, keyboard character movement, and seamless switching between any of these input methods at any point during the game. Yes, you can now use a controller in one hand and a mouse in the other at the same time; truly a back-of-the-box feature! I joke, but accessibility stuff is pretty important to pay attention to.
This work was kickstarted (heh) by the requirements of the Xbox certification process. Also called “lot check”, every game console manufacturer requires your game to pass a pretty tricky set of tests to ensure that if your game breaks, people will blame the game creator and not the console itself. It basically comes down to testing things related to the area where the console’s features sort of mesh into the game’s features. How many controllers are supported? Is there multiplayer? Do achievements work, and is your save data uploaded to the cloud correctly?
Part of the reason for the delay is the fact that the Xbox process was particularly difficult, mainly due to the fact that an Xbox Live Account is required to write save data for any game, and you can sign in and out of this account at any time while the game is running. Additionally, Xbox Live Accounts are attached to individual controllers. This leads to situations like the following:
Mid-game, the player disconnects their controller, then plugs in a second controller which is logged in to a different user than the one that was playing. This other player doesn’t have any Genesis Noir save data, they can’t be allowed to continue the game.
Mid-game, the player connects a second controller that is also logged in to the same account, but only one controller can be used at a time.
The player lost internet connection while their save data was uploading! Oh jeez that’s bad!
The main solution to the first two items is a really involved messaging system state machine thing, where the game basically follows a flowchart to determine what actions to take in what order, depending on what controllers are plugged in and what users are logged in and whether save data exists or not.
In the case of scenario 1, the game shows a message asking the player to plug a controller in and press the A button, followed by a message saying that the user profile changed, where pressing A will allow the previous user to sign back in, or pressing B will return to the main menu. In scenario 2, we just ignore input from the second controller entirely, and scenario 3 is solved by keeping a local copy of save data on the console which is used as a backup when online save data is unavailable.
All this together is a big amount of work that I never imagined we’d have to deal with. Most of the heavy lifting was handled by Plastic Fern Studios, who we’ve partnered with to do the bulk of the porting work, but I effectively had to rewrite the entire way the game handles inputs in order to ease their work on creating the messaging system. Overall, we’ve ended up with a stable console experience for the game, and with a pretty good suite of controller options and button remapping features on all platforms. I hope this allows even more people to play our game!
Evan’s Marketing Makings
I’ve been working on getting marketing materials pretty as we get closer to release. The two biggies are the key art (a term for the main image that gets used everywhere) and a new trailer.
Our current key art is one of the first pieces of concept art I made back in 2014 (gosh! time flies). I had a few drawings on my site and people would stumble on them and send me nice messages. A couple asked if they could tattoo this image on themselves. An author asked if she could use it for the cover of her book on Calvino. I figured there was something to the cosmic longing in this image that grabbed people.
This image has served us well in the world of big images on the web but on Steam and other digital store pages there are many places the key art needs to function. With the smaller images, our current art becomes really illegible. Outlined art disappears into grainy little pixels very quickly. Look at this. What is this? It’s so tiny.
I’ve been beefing up our logo and attempting to find an illustration that holds up at such small sizes. I’ve tried many iterations. Take a look at all my iterations! (This isn’t even all of ‘em)
We ended up with these two images.
The drama of the Big Bang rocketing towards Miss mass was a nice moment, but we found this illustration did not hold up at different aspect ratios and scales as well as the solo No Man illustration.
Here’s the illustration in portrait aspect ratio to prove it’s flexible.
I’ve also been working on a new trailer that’ll announce our release date. Fellow Traveler has got Good up North to help us put it together and we’re really excited by how it’s taking shape. I’m really looking forward to releasing it to the world. Here’s a little taste from the trailer WIP.
I had fun animating this little drinking spin for the trailer. We’ve also included some text in the trailer, so I’ve been adding typography directly into the game levels to capture in context. Gonna be neat I think :)
--
Hope you’re all well and thank you for your patience! We’re working hard and excited to bring you a well crafted cosmic adventure :)
E+J
We're live at LudoNarraCon! Begin your noir adventure now: play our demo!
LudoNarraCon is here! Explore exhibitor streams, play a demo (...or 20! 😍), learn something new with 14 hours of panels, or snag one of the 50+ games that's on sale. This free digital festival celebrates indie narrative games like our's: with over 40 exhibitors, there's something for everyone.
We're so excited for LudoNarraCon: we've got a packed livestream schedule for our fans to watch during the event. Come wherever and whenever: streams will be looped throughout the weekend. We're streaming a look at our art direction, gameplay with developer commentary, a Q&A session, and more!
Start the next chapter of your next favorite game. There are over 20 demos for you to download and play during LudoNarraCon, including our's! Begin your noir adventure and search for a way to destroy creation at LudoNarraCon by playing our demo. It will be available for download throughout the event.
Tune into fun narrative panels on the LudoNarraCon page. They're streaming throughout the weekend, so no sweat if you miss the debut time. Members of the team are participating in one of the panels! 👇
Panelists: Brendon Chung, Laura E. Hall, Evan Anthony, Jeremy Abel
Some things are better left unsaid. Learn how to tell a story without dialogue from these four developers.
We’re excited to exhibit at LudoNarraCon: check out our livestream schedule
LudoNarraCon is a free digital festival running April 24 - 27 here on Steam that celebrates narrative games like our’s! Tune in to see behind-the-scenes streams from over 40 narrative games, download and play over 20 demos, and watch live panels from narrative developers. We hope you’ll visit our Steam page during the event: we’re excited to livestream 3-4 hours of behind the scenes content for you. It’ll replay on a loop for the duration of the event, so come anywhere and anytime starting April 24th until the 27th.
We're excited to announce a demo of the game will be available during the event! As part of LudoNarraCon, nearly half of the exhibitors will be offering free demos... Enjoy a taste of these games from the comfort of your home on your schedule.
Developers and publishers will stream live on their games' Steam store pages with behind-the-scenes content, couch chats, and demo gameplay. We’ll be streaming behind the scenes looks at our art direction, developer gameplay, and our music sesssions with Skillbard.
A main theatre stream will feature 12 hours of live panels with game developers, writers, journalists, and other industry influencers. Panels will cover everything from narrative design, game localization, how to create player empathy, and much more.
The LudoNarraCon Sale launches on Steam during the event, with more than 50 story-rich games participating.
All live streaming content will replay on a loop for the rest of the event, making it easy to check out everything from the comfort of your own home on your schedule!
Excited and don't want to miss out? Visit this Steam page to set a calendar reminder.
Thank you for Attending LudoNarraCon!
THANK YOU for coming the to first #LudoNarraCon! 💖😍
This was a great experience for our team, and we were thrilled to share it with you. We hope you enjoyed it -- we did! And if you didn't get to see any of the panels from the main stage, you can now view them all on YouTube!
Games as Storytelling 🎮 Patrick Ewing (creative director of Chance Agency)
🎮 Cassandra Khaw (scriptwriter at Ubisoft Montreal)
🎮 Whitney “Strix” Beltran (narrative director at Hidden Path Entertainment)
Romance in Games ❤️ Tanya X. Short (Captain of Kitfox Games)
❤️ Kate Gray (narrative designer at KO_OP)
❤️ Nina Freeman (game designer at Fullbright)
Writing for Short Games ✏️ Ben Wander (founder of A Wandering Band)
✏️ Bruno Dias (writer and narrative designer)
✏️ Ryan Green (developer, co-founder of Numinous Games)
✏️ Amy Green (writer, co-founder of Numinous Games)
Death in Games 💀 Lottie Bevan (co-founder & COO of Weather Factory)
💀 Alexis Kennedy (co-founder of Weather Factory)
💀 Coyan Cardenas (director of Lambic Studios)
💀 Will O'Neill (founder of WZO Games)
and more!
Tune in when the fun starts, at 10am PDT on Friday May 10!
⭐✨ Join us for LudoNarraCon this weekend! ✨⭐
We’ll be attending LudoNarraCon this weekend, a digital convention for narrative games hosted right here on Steam from 10 - 13 May.
We will be ‘exhibiting’ at the event and streaming right here on the Genesis Noir Steam store page. It’s being put on by indie games label, Fellow Traveller, and we’re really excited to be taking part alongside so many great games like in Other Waters, Where the Waters Tastes Like Wine and Objects in Space!
We’d be thrilled if you can join us this weekend, and be sure to check out the rest of the event for more behind-the-scenes content, demos and really cool panels. More info here: LudoNarraCon
6 More Games Announced for LudoNarraCon!
A whole bunch more games are exhibiting during LudoNarraCon!
Check out the full, updated list of games you can see behind-the-scenes content for during LNC, on ludonarracon.com 💖
16 Games Announced for LudoNarraCon
Fellow Traveller presents #LudoNarraCon, hosted right here on Steam on May 10-13. Come celebrate narrative video games from around the world with us!
We’ve announced 16 of the exhibiting games to be featured: Neo Cab, Boyfriend Dungeon, Mutazione, Heaven’s Vault, The Church in the Darkness, Sunless Skies, Where the Water Tastes Like Wine, Beholder, Genesis Noir, and more! Check out the full lineup on ludonarracon.com.
An initiative of indie label Fellow Traveller, LudoNarraCon is digital convention that aims to create a platform to showcase and celebrate interesting and innovative narrative games, replicating as many of the aspects and benefits of the physical convention experience as possible within a digital format.
Learn more at ludonarracon.com!
ANNOUNCING ⭐✨LudoNarraCon✨⭐
We are beyond thrilled to announce 📢 ⭐✨LudoNarraCon✨⭐
a new online-only convention coming this May, right here on Steam, celebrating
🎮narrative video games🎮 the people who make them, and the folks who love them. Join us for panels and other fun content with your favorite developers and influencers from the industry, as well as downloadable game demos that will be available ONLY during LudoNarraCon.
Want to come? IT’S FREE. Visit ludonarracon.com to sign up and let us know if you’ll attend, and to get updates on who’s gonna be there & what games you can play!
