Hollow Bliss
Close Your Eyes game releasing next month ; Greenlight Page tomorrow
"Close Your Eyes: Intermission" is not Close Your Eyes 2, but not completely separated from it. It'll cost $0.99, and again release in less than a month from now. I'll post when it's Greenlight Page is up tomorrow, but hope you guys look forward to it!
COMMUNITY GAME PROJECT - Home Invasion Horror with Volunteer Collaboration
Anyway, I was planning to make a Home Invasion Horror Game in-between other stuff this year anyways, and thought it might be fun to turn that into a community project with volunteer work I can put together for a game titled, "HYSTERICO: Cryptic Grounds."
More information in this link, though right now doing some base conceptualization. Some may only pop in for that, but I'd appreciate those who are interested who might help out a little.
Topic which will be the central hub for this projects discussion/development until it (hopefully) gets its own Steam Page here: http://steamcommunity.com/app/428860/discussions/0/135509472110960447/
Noiseless Signal, Future Updates to Red Haze, & Yai Gameworks Updates
Hey everyone, this is Dusk Golem aka AestheticGamer, or you can just call me Ryan. In the act of transparency, I thought I'd talk about future plans for the next year or so for Yai Gameworks.
Firstly, I'll tackle Red Haze updates as this can be kept a bit brief. I'll continue working on updates for Red Haze quite frequently for the next few weeks as I fix things people find, finish the Trafficking Dungeon and add in the Lighthouse Upper Floors and Final Door Area when you get all 26 endings. You'll see updates pretty regularly, might have noticed some have already hit recently, and the Trafficking Dungeon will be finished within the next couple days. If you find any bugs or typos, please post them in this thread (any ideas or discussion can be had in the discussion forum): http://steamcommunity.com/app/428860/discussions/0/135508833655990580/
Now, something I have to be honest about is I'm poor as dirt. I love making games, but in some ways I wish I was more talented. I can sort of do art and program, but if I'll be honest my skills are limited in those areas (I have been practicing and improving), and so I often struggle with the idea already if I can pursue my passions, if I have the right to, those kind of things. But I believe a life worth living is a life chasing dreams, so that's what I'm going to do until I can't no more. Red Haze I already knew wasn't going to change my money problems. At the time of writing, the earnings from Red Haze are almost enough to pay off half of my medical expenses from an emergency room visit I made last July.
In about a month or so, I'm going to launch a Kickstarter for a project named Noiseless Signal. You may have noticed its name among others in the credits for Red Haze. The reason for the Kickstarter is mostly to pay for the future of Yai Gameworks, so while the Kickstarter is for Noiseless Signal it's more specifically for funding the next year of game development for me, Rincs, and other people who help out in small ways on my projects. I also hope you guys find Noiseless Signal interesting, I'm just now starting real development, so it'll be rapid development between other things to get a demonstration of what that project has in store.
The reason for this rush is due to the recent Steam Direct announcement. If you haven't heard, Valve will be replacing its Steam Greenlight system with a new system where users can just post their games to Steam once approved as a developer, but the added thing is that each game will have a fee which is undecided right now (Valve says a fee for submitting a game could end up being anywhere between $100-5000 USD). The reason given is to stop shovelware, but there's a big issue with this for me as someone who is poor as dirt and how I make games. I don't have money, I certainly don't try to make shovelware and instead make game experiences I hope people will enjoy and I work on multiple things at once and try to make shorter but worthwhile experiences I release a bit more rapidly than the average indie developer but at a cheaper price point (as well as I like to release free things every once in a while)...
Basically, this system is extremely threatening to me, but I'm going to try to approach and work through it. But before that gets implemented, I want to get one more game through Steam Greenlight in Noiseless Signal, to make one less title I don't have to make a fee for. More so, I think you guys may like Noiseless Signal a lot once you learn more about it, it's goal is to have a dream-like desolate atmosphere. I'll have a lot more on it soon (obviously if I'm having a Kickstarter/Greenlight thing in a month), but also want to use it as an opportunity to secure other games coming to Steam through the fee and allow me to work on them, like Close Your Eyes 2 and the remake of Blank Slate.
Back in 2013, I did a crowdfunding thing on Indiegogo for a game named Complete Isolation that raised a little over $2000. That hasn't released yet, and I've been releasing every game I've made since then to the people who helped fund that until I release the game, but I want Complete Isolation to be something special. The money earned from that was 100% for music for Complete Isolation, but since then I've been using the funds from that to make the music I've made in all my projects so far. I thought I should mention this as while the funding campaign will be going through Kickstarter, four years ago I did do a crowdfunding thing for a game that hasn't released yet, but the reasoning isn't because the game was abandoned, it helped fund the tools, samples, and ability for me to do music for my projects in every project since then and Complete Isolation I want to practice to have the skill to fully make one day.
This campaign in comparison is for Noiseless Signal (a game that will be releasing sooner than later), but also more so for Yai Gameworks as a whole to allow us to continue releasing games on Steam despite being poor and to allow me to continue pursuing my passions. I hope it does well, and I hope I can continue to bring my little games to you guys if you enjoy them.
I'll be posting a lot more about all of this and Noiseless Signal to you guy's soon, but I thought I should mention this now as opposed to later to give you an idea of what's to come.
Thank you for your time.
Red Haze Now Released!
Out now, costs $1.99 USD and has a 5% discount for the first weak. Won't go any cheaper anytime soon.
I hope you guys enjoy it!
Red Haze: Finalized Release & Thoughts
Red Haze is in active crunch right now, and will be releasing February 6th - 8th. 6th is the goal, 8th is the deadline to allow two days if something comes up last minute. This is finalized, It's basically going to be non-stop work for me, except to break on the 24th & 25th as I'll be playing Resident Evil 7.
Red Haze will be releasing for $1.99 USD, and have a 5% discount on release for the first week, so will be $1.89 for the first week. It won't go on sale for a while after that, until the Summer Sale, which will be discounted the exact same amount, 5% off, $1.89. I also promise it won't be bundled. I like to reward early buyers, its a big policy for me whenever I do releases. I think there is value both to myself and to fans and early adopters to allow a wide window of time before going deeper into discounting. And to be frank, it's not very hard to come by a couple dollars.
Game will also have Steam achievements on Windows PC, cloud saves, & Steam Trading Cards. Unfortunately there will be no achievements on Mac for the time being due to a technical limitation, there is by chance a work around but my efforts thus far have caused issues with the Mac version. Playability over achievements is what I decided.
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So, some thoughts here before I send the game out as a product. In some ways Red Haze has turned out to be a much better game than I thought it'd be, and in others it hasn't quite lived up to what I wanted it to be. It has been a fantastic learning experience for myself, and I think my future endeavors will benefit from having made Red Haze. I've in earnest learned far more about game design, RPG Maker, myself, spriting, music making, and more during its process I think will help me with future projects.
I don't know how Red Haze will do. I don't think I can know. Before I released Close Your Eyes, for example, I thought people weren't going to like it. I knew all of its flaws, I knew how it could've been better, and I was thinking its purposely cryptic story was going to frustrate people. It turned out doing a lot better than I anticipated, turns out the things I liked about it shined above the flaws for most. Even Take the Dream IX did better than I anticipated, I think it's the shittiest game I've ever made and I finished it out of sheer will to show I could finish it.
So when it comes to Red Haze, it's hard for me to place how people may receive it. I'm expecting some "ow the edge," and some people to find elements of it cringey, and that's fine. The subject matter kind of naturally aligns itself to that, and I don't think all will like my voice acting choices I made for Red Haze. And if I'll be honest, I think the element of Red Haze that most didn't live up to what I wanted it to be was its narrative. There's a story, and in some ways I think I managed to make some interesting story scenes and developments, but it didn't quite come together like I wanted it to in its earlier stages. Characters were cut, scenes were as well, and thus entire plot elements dropped.
On the other hand, I'm anticipating how people receive the game. I sent out some keys to random people who don't know me, I don't know them, and I think it's telling I got the same feedback from everyone: A bit of a slow start, but they slowly get more and more into it and start getting more engrossed in its strange world. Which is good, that was my singular biggest goal with Red Haze, to make a branching game that's not to be experienced in but a single playthrough, but several, with lots of secrets to uncover, endings to obtain, deeper areas to discover, and oddities to figure out. It uses a very unorthodox gameplay design I won't go fully into detail to here, but I think while some things didn't come together how I would've hoped, I think (and hope) it'll be a game that will be very much worth people's $2.
I think it won't be my magnum opus, but I hope you all enjoy it. It's taken a lot longer than I would've liked due to life, motivation, one hell of a year in 2016, working on other things at the same time, breaks, and adding more and taking away at the same time at Red Haze as time has gone on.
I'm kind of expecting some initial negative reviews by people who only experience the tip of the iceberg and never get to see what lurks deeper in the game, and the voice actress for Rockette is worried because she voiced in another RPG Maker Horror game in the past (Uri's Boogie Man, as it were), and has trolls who stalk her and she predicts they'll try trolling the review page for this game when it releases since they resurfaced again for her recently getting word she was voicing in this game. She tried apologizing to me about it, but to be honest I'm not too worried. Even if people not trolling dislike the game, I think there's a lot I can learn from that.
2017 is a big year for me since I either make or break this game making thing for me, but I have a lot of things slated for this year. My plans have changed since my last update on 2017 plans, which I'll try to share in the future. I decided to not go for as strict deadlines, for one, and re-arranged projects a bit more. That'll be for another day, however.
For those helping with testing, there will be a pretty huge update hitting tomorrow, and a second big update hitting at the end of January. I appreciate everyone who's been helping test the game and spotting things I may have otherwise missed.
A late welcome to 2017, and I look forward to seeing y'all play Red Haze. I hope it lives up to your guy's anticipation & expectations, and surprise you in some ways. I will say this though, it by design is a very different game than Close Your Eyes. It was highly experimental for me, and while I learned a lot from it, it's to be seen what y'all think of it. I hope it's enjoyable.
2017 Floor Plan for Yai Gameworks [Goal to Release 8 Games]
http://store.steampowered.com/app/428860/
Red Haze - January 13th
Red Haze will finally release for $1.99 with a 10% discount for the first week of launch (there won't be another sale on the game until the summer, I like to be transparent with this stuff, and the sale in the summer won't be any steeper). Join Rockette in a shanty apartment seeking out her dealer, Aunti G, to hook her up with the goods. With 27 endings & various aspects of the game that change as you do more in different playthroughs, I hope the wait will have been worth it.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/545450/
Hollow Bliss - February 17th
Hollow Bliss will release for $4.99 with a 10% discount for the first week (similarly to Red Haze, it won't have another sale until Summer and not be any further discounted at that time, like to support early buyers). All in all, Chris Lansan lived his life in the uttermost normalcy he could muster. A routine is a comfortable thing, and if you do as you're expected things will usually fall in line. But one day Chris awakens staring at an unknown and strange ceiling, and finds himself in an abandoned hut in a misty valley... Someone or something has violated Chris's cycle, and now only through misery after misery and clinging to an uncertain hope may he possibly make it through and find catharsis. But are the dreams we think we have what we truly want, or is it nothing more than a Hollow Bliss?
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Now, those two have obviously been in the production line for a while. The rest of the projects will need to go through Steam Greenlight, and I don't especially looking forward to greenlighting 6 projects all around the same time, but we do as we must. If everything goes smoothly, these dates will remain. My goal is to not delay too much if at all possible, being a two-person team there are some things that sometimes come up in life and all that, but will try our hardest to try and meet our goals for 2017.
Without further ado, we debated which of our projects to prioritize for 2017 (we have a lot that we want to work on and get started in background and that we conceptualize, work on, and sometimes put away for a time and come back to later), I'll just give a basic description of each right now, but will be many more details in the near future. Here's what we decided to go with:
A Girl Is Eating From My Garbage - April 14th
A young man is becoming paranoid as a creepy woman comes to the garbage bin along the side of his house every night and eats from it. He gathers up the courage to confront her...
Blank Slate - May 26th
A remake of the first game I had ever released publicly online. A nameless protagonist wakes up and heads out to a barren land full of puzzles known as the White Zone. Seaming with oddness, and with an abstract flow, what is it that our protagonist continues onward for?
Close Your Eyes 2 (tentative title) - August 25th
Two years after the release of the Final Expansion of the original Close Your Eyes, we are releasing a sequel. Taking place immediately after the events of the original game, we join a pent-up individual who lashes out at the world, a copycat killer inspired by the original Judith Manor Murders. Meanwhile, a poor unfortunate Little Marshmallow has faced the past, but now realizes the present may be far worse...
Noiseless Signal - October 13th
Humans use signals in many aspects of their life to transfer information, sometimes vocally, sometimes with body gestures, sometimes with wireless connections... Almost all information shared is done via a large variety of signals. What happens if those signals are distorted, twisted? Something comes between the signal and its delivery? Is something wrong with the receiver, the sender, or something in-between?
Nostalgica: An Old World Passes - November 17th
Once upon a time, there was a beautiful princess who went by the name of Valerie. However, despite her splendor, the princess was very sad. The princess was in love with a prince. But, their love was forbidden. She fought for him with all her might, but was locked away in an impossibly high tower by her own father, the King. Still, her spirit was not broken. She knew she would break free of her imprisonment, and see her love again someday...
Simon was a lowly man who grew up in the slums of a big city. However, through a stroke of pure luck, Daniel gets his own golden ticket of opportunity after against all odds, he wins the lottery. Life is looking up, he is finally able to move away from the city and into a fantastical house deep in the forest... However, his luck is cut short when he finds himself trapped within his own home, becoming more and more intertwined in a terrifying local legend. Now Simon's only hope of escape is to crack a mystery that's been buried for years...
Suspended Ascent - December 18th
Inspired to try and fill the void of not too many very good Silent Hill inspired games out there, this is our own personal take on such a game. Much more word on it later, just know it stars a woman in the Philippines and I'll post that early piece of concept art which was our first little piece for it from last year.
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I hope you guys look forward to next year and our planned titles for the year!
Hollow Bliss, Red Haze, & Close Your Eyes Updates!
How is everyone doing? There is a lot to talk about, so let me jump straight into this.
Firstly, Hollow Bliss will be delayed a bit until January 13th. There is three big reasons for this:
01.) Allows me more time to develop & polish it.
02.) It means I'm not releasing it sandwiched between two big Steam sales.
03.) It allows me to give it some time in the oven for testers to help polish (testing begins with people I'll select at a later date on December 3rd), and for me to try to advertise and see if I can get some sites and/or Youtubers to tackle it (I don't expect much turn out, but I've gotta try!). The game will be releasing for $4.99 USD with a 10% discount on launch ($4.49 USD), and it won't go any lower than that for quite a while (I like to treat early buyers well).
I hope it does well, and I'll talk more about why in the next bit, which is important so please listen up.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/428860/
Red Haze I've delayed a little bit, I decided to make Red Haze the game I release sandwiched between two Steam Sales. It will be releasing on December 2nd, and this decision was made partially since the VA's needed a little more time and it allows me to be able to have more time as well, especially as I now tackle on Steam Cards and achievements for Red Haze.
Within the last few days, due to a fairly long story involving my family and an oil company, I had gone to the emergency room last July and it should of been insured, but it wasn't, and now I have a $2.700 medical bill to pay off, and so I have to start being financially conscious. As Red Haze was already a pretty ambitious freeware project and I am now literally thousands of dollars in medical debt, I am working a bit harder to add some more oomph to Red Haze, and will be releasing Red Haze for either $0.99 or $1.99 w/a launch discount. Deciding which price currently due to some back and forth factors, but I hope this decisions is understandable and I hope you all enjoy Red Haze as its release approaches.
http://store.steampowered.com/app/377330/
Finally, on my road to put achievements into Red Haze, Close Your Eyes was my test dummy. So now Close Your Eyes has achievements, which I hope you all enjoy. Also adjusted the credits a small bit and organized the files a bit more, but not much else outside of that for now. I hope those who decide to go get them and those who play CYE for the first time enjoy them!
I'm going to go take a nap now as I have been doing nothing but achievement images and trying to code them in both Red Haze & Close Your Eyes for several hours straight, but I hope you all enjoy and thank you for reading!
Red Haze & Hollow Bliss Release Date Updates & New Information
http://store.steampowered.com/app/545450/
I'm going to be doing something a bit crazy. I got word from Valve there may be a good reason to want to wait a little to release Hollow Bliss, so the release date has been moved to December 21st, and I will work hard to make that date or even release a few days earlier.
This said, due to the delay and some thoughts I've been having, I've decided to first focus my attention on Red Haze. I am going to work super hard on it during the next few weeks, and going to try hard to release it on November 21st. If any complications come up I might delay it slightly, but that is my current goal.
Thought I'd give you guys a heads-up, and beta testers I will really need your guy's cooperation to make this release date as polished as possible. Starting tomorrow there will be near daily updates for Red Haze, I will push them out quickly to get feedback and very much appreciate those that work with me. People who joined the beta process will also be receiving a beta key for Hollow Bliss next week or the week after sometime and receive Hollow Bliss for free. Thank you for your time, and for dealing with my release date juggle. But I'm working hard!