Hope you are staying safe! Another month has passed so it’s time for a development update!
More Animals
As mentioned in the last update I’m still busy bringing more and more life into the world of Omno. Today I wanted to give you a first look at a small friend that you will cross paths with in the swamp area...
First look at digital gamescom booth
Omno is going to be playable during the first-ever online edition of the gaming convention gamescom! The “show” takes place on the 27th to 30 August and Indie Arena provided a digital booth editor beforehand and I'm having a good time putting it together. Below you can get a first look at it - all work in progress of course.
July was a great month for the development of Omno as the world is really getting more lively by the day.
I look forward to showing you more in the next update!
Take care and stay safe!
June Kickstarter Update
Steam Summer Festival
Minus a few technical glitches at the start, the event went great! We had a load of demo downloads, a bunch of new wishlists and soooo much feedback from players old and new which was really helpful and incredibly humbling.
It was amazing to talk to you all as part of the AMA on Discord and its something I am now very much considering doing again as we get closer to launch. So a MASSIVE thank you to everyone who helped make the festival a success.
Creature Comforts
I’ve been putting a focus on bringing the world of Omno to life, and this means lots of new plants and, more importantly, creatures! I want to save the surprises for when you encounter all these things for the first time in the actual game, but I thought I’d show you one of the little critters I’ve just added this week, as they really make me smile for some reason :)
You can read the full update over on Kickstarter here which includes more news, full HQ version of the above little critters and more.
See you next month!
Omno is part of the Steam Summer Festival!
Hey everyone!
Omno is part of the Steam Summer Festival and that means you can try a short demo of Omno right now, that will only be available until the 14th June.
For all Kickstarter backers: This is a slightly updated version of the demo used during the campaign. Same content but uses the tech from Omno’s current build so demo veterans might find some new details here too.
I hope you all enjoy the demo and look forward to your feedback here on the Steam Discussion boards or in the Omno Discord community.
Have fun!
Summer Festival - Ask Me Anything (Update)
As you've all likely seen, the Steam Summer Festival has been postponed by one week. I'll now be doing the AMA on the Omno Discord on Friday 19th June between 4pm and 6pm CEST, where I’ll sit down for 2 hours and blast through as many of your questions as I can get through!
If you’ve got a burning question you’ve always wanted to ask me, now’s the time! There are some great questions already posted in advance, and I'll do my best to get round to them all on the day. If you’ve not joined the Discord, you can do so here - full details about the AMA are in the new Steam Summer Festival “AMA-Questions” channel!
See you there!
[previewyoutube="Ii2J2JYceLs;full"]
May Kickstarter Update + Steam Summer Festival 🎉
Summer is now in full swing, and May’s been a good month for development, with lots of progress made! I’ve been finishing off some new additions to the game that I’m quite excited about. They’re not quite ready to share yet (there are some surprises I don’t want to spoil too early!) but I think these latest additions to the game are going to put smiles on all of your faces when you see them ːsteamhappyː
Steam Summer Festival
I’m very excited to reveal that Omno will be part of the Steam Summer Festival (9th to 14th June)! It’s looking to be a really cool event, with demos available for a whole bunch of exciting in-development games.
There will be an updated Kickstarter demo available to download during the duration of the festival. It’s essentially got the same content as the Kickstarter demo but uses the current systems and backbones of Omno. So whilst it should still feel good to play, it won’t feature all the latest and greatest content I’ve been adding to the game in the year and a half since the Kickstarter campaign.
As part of the Summer Festival, I’ll also be doing an AMA session on the Omno Discord, where I’ll sit down for 2 hours and blast through as many of your questions as I can get through (if there are any haha)! If you’ve got a burning question you’ve always wanted to ask me, now’s the time! If you’ve not joined the Discord, you can do so here - full details about the AMA are in the new Steam Summer Festival “AMA-Questions” channel!
You can read the full May Kickstarter Update here including more info on the upcoming Steam Demo plus The 8 Best Solo Developer Games in Development!
April Kickstarter Update
April is now behind us, and it’s been a strange month, with everything happening in the world around the COVID-19 pandemic, and much of the world in lockdown. Hopefully, you’re all managing to stay safe and healthy, both physically and mentally, and finding ways to keep your brains busy and curious. Trying to look for the positives in all this, if you’ve got more time on your hands than usual, it could be the perfect time to try something you’ve always wanted to do - learning a language, writing that novel...making a game, even?
For this month’s backer update, I wanted to do something a little different, since it’s been a pretty reflective time for me lately. Instead of focusing on the progress I’ve made this month, I’d like to talk about something that I stumbled over while cleaning up my project folders…
I often get asked where my inspirations come from, and honestly, I often don't know myself. I draw inspiration and influences from all kinds of sources - games like Mario, Journey, FF7, even WoW (which I never really even played) have all been influential in some of my thought processes and design decisions for Omno, but I think I draw inspiration equally from art, movies, books etc too.
At the very beginning with Omno, I just had this feeling and an idea of a lonely character in this vast world, being on a journey. So very early on in the process, even before prototyping, I did some vague landscape tests (also to learn the technical aspects, since so much of this was completely new to me). Some of those landscape tests already felt right, while others seem completely ridiculous now! Some of the other landscapes I made looked cool and I would have loved to let Omno players experience those, but they just didn’t fit the context of the game as it’s developed.
[previewyoutube="Y9UG2D5fcj0;full"]
Those very early "mood" tests definitely shaped the way the game will look and feel, but whilst there’s ideas and settings that are still present in the Omno of today, they’ve changed beyond recognition from those original landscape ideas.
There are also dozens of puzzle prototype maps for Omno and mechanics that never made it into the game, which I’d definitely like to show you more of at another time. It’s a similar situation to the landscape tests, really: some of them work great, but just didn’t feel quite right for what the game has become as it’s evolved over time.
Looking back on these prototypes and tests now is rather painful in a way, as I really like so many of them, but for various reasons I know I have to "let them go" in order to make Omno the best overall experience. I guess that everything - all products/designs/creations - that look good and work well have so many iterations and failed attempts behind them, which most people will never see. Even skills work that way. You cannot draw all of a sudden, it takes hundreds of bad drawings until the first good ones appear. Even the very best skateboard professionals have had many broken bones…
I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe this unprecedented time we’re living in right now has the potential to give people the time to just get past some of those failed attempts, in whatever they want to achieve, and get closer to the place they always wanted to be. Also, I think it’s important to realise that you should be proud about those “failed” attempts. Every single one of them gets you a step closer to where you want to be, so in a lot of ways, you owe to them whatever it is that you ultimately achieve.
Take care of yourselves and your families, call your loved ones, and if you have the time, go make some mistakes :)
-Jonas
To keep up to date on Omno development and discuss updates with the community, you can join the official Omno Discord here.
March Kickstarter Update
Another month has passed us by, so here is a short update on what has been happening in March.
Coronavirus pandemic
With everything going in the world right now there’s not really anything bigger or more important than the COVID-19 outbreak. It’s been so sad hearing just how many people are suffering from this awful disease already, directly and indirectly, and knowing it’s going to keep getting worse for a while. I’m still making progress whenever I can on development, but obviously looking after my family (also with elderly potential high-risk family members who we look after) has to take priority over everything else right now. This disease is going to affect so many of us, so my heart really goes out to everyone who has lost loved ones and friends, to those still fighting it and those who fight for their jobs.
New HUD (interface)
I’ve been thinking a lot about how the players will interact with the world. For Omno I’ve always wanted to keep the on-screen information as light and clean as possible, but this needs to be balanced with making sure that players know what to do in different situations. I’ve designed a ‘floating’ HUD and replaced it with the old screen interface placeholder. It’s a much more minimal style, without bombarding players with unnecessary text or info that will break immersion. See what you think:
To keep up to date on Omno development and discuss updates with the community, you can join the official Omno Discord here.
February Kickstarter Update
Hey Steam,
The long February is behind us, so it’s time for another Kickstarter update!
GDC Cancellation
Unfortunately with all of the COVID-19 (coronavirus) troubles happening all around the world right now, the show was cancelled last Friday. Obviously, for Omno it’s a real shame not to be able to attend such a cool event, but ultimately the organisers didn’t really have a choice, and safety has to come first.
Stone on stone!
The world of Omno is going to be full of ruins and relics from a lost civilisation, and one thing I’ve spent a lot of time on this month is modelling ALL of the temple assets that will be found throughout the game!
Hey good lookin’
This “ivy” style creeper plant is just one of the things I’ve added in recently and will be found on many of the structures throughout the swamp biome.
To keep up to date on Omno development and discuss updates with the community, you can join the official Omno Discord here.
January Kickstarter Update
Hi Steam!
Hope you all had a good start into 2020!
Since January is already over, time for another update from the world of Omno over on Kickstarter - including a look at the updated trees (see gif below), an interview about Omno in a print magazine (wow!) and more!
2020’s just getting started, and I’ll have lots more to share through the year as everything ramps up towards launch. Thanks as always for joining me on the journey - I hope you’ll enjoy the ride!
-Jonas
December Kickstarter Update
Hi Steam!
I’m sitting here looking at the calendar and I still can’t believe 2019 is nearly at an end already - this year seems to have just flown by! This month also marks one year since the Kickstarter campaign ended, which just seems crazy to me. The first thing to say is of course “HAPPY HOLIDAYS!” I hope you’ll all have a bit of a break to spend some time with your loved ones - even I plan to take a few days off of development to relax with my family!
Looking ahead to 2020, I felt now was a good time to give you a big update on development over on KickStarter.
Happy holidays, and big love to all of you folks - I couldn’t do any of this without you, and as ever words can’t express how much your ongoing support mean to me <3
