Coven of the Chicken Foot

Coven of the Chicken Foot on Steam

After the dungeons have been plundered and the monsters all killed, an elderly witch quietly gets to work. In this emotionally-rich, stylized, single-player adventure - Gert will need to build a bond with a peculiar creature if she’s to fulfill a coven’s oath.

STEAM

In the trailer you see a little grandma going on an adventure with the help of a forest creature. Mechanically, the game reminded me a lot of The Last Guardian. The studio director, Bruce Straley, mentions that the idea was to explore how they could innovate on the concept of “companions” in a game, making them more reactive to the player’s actions.

Bruce Straley spent 18 years working at Naughty Dog, where he directed Uncharted 2: Among Thieves and The Last of Us (alongside Neil Druckmann). In both games there are NPCs that accompany the player, so it’s interesting to see how that experience is reflected in this new project. I highly recommend this Polygon interview if you want to read more about the game’s background.

What caught my attention the most was the visual style, the character design, and the mechanics shown in the trailer. Bruce describes it as a “character-driven puzzle game,” and I think that’s exactly the kind of game that attracts me the most.

Bradley the Badger

Bradley the Badger on Steam

Bradley, the beloved platforming icon, finds himself lost in strange new lands... and decides to fight back! Shape unfinished worlds with your game developer powers, explore a genre-bending story, and save your home in this unique action-adventure. Wishlist now and join Bradley’s journey!

STEAM

An “action platformer” that turns into a bit of a “satire” of other video game genres, with mechanics that break the fourth wall. The trailer looks really fun, and the gameplay proposal — platforming, puzzles, combat, and “genre switching” — looks great.

Who’s making this game? A new studio called Day 4 Night, founded by the Lead Designer of Red Dead Redemption, Christian Cantamessa, and the creative director of Mario + Rabbids, Davide Soliani. The studio started on October 3rd, 2024, just about a year ago; I think that, for such a short amount of time, what they have looks very promising.

Some thoughts about these games and The Game Awards

It’s interesting to see who’s behind the trailers that caught my attention and to learn that the developers are veterans who have worked on some of the most well-known franchises. As an indie developer, I’ve gotten used to games made by people who are “just starting out” or working on their first game. But the “best” games are usually the result of many years of experience.

The second thing I think about The Game Awards is that they should probably change the name of the event to something more like Game Trailers. I don’t want to add much more to the criticism of the event; I think Geoff Keighley is truly passionate about video games, and the event he puts together every year gives us a chance to get excited, much like E3 used to. But for an event called The Game Awards, 90% of the time is spent on new game trailers, some award categories are announced in lightning rounds, and the winners don’t even receive their awards on camera or give a speech.

Again, I think the event itself is good and serves a purpose, but it could be more honest about what it really is. A Trailerathon?

Initial Conclusions: Creating a GOOD 3D controller:

• It's difficult: Creating a good controller takes time and requires a willingness to work hard.
• Research references: Look for games that have controls similar to what you want to make, and compare videos of your controller with videos of your references. This is the best way to see how close (or far) you are from your goal.
• Iterate and playtest a lot: You need to make several iterations and playtest a lot until you get the desired result. It's best to start each iteration from scratch.
• Learn vector mathematics and some physics formulas: What is a vector? How do you add, subtract, multiply them? What is the dot product? How do you calculate velocity? Reviewing these four points closely is a great start. Let's now look at some supporting links and videos:

Unity 3D Game Kit

Unity Learn | 3D Game Kit | Tutorials | Unity Asset Store

Use Unity Learn | 3D Game Kit from Unity Technologies to elevate your next project. Find this & more Tutorials and templates on the Unity Asset Store.

Unity Asset StoreUnity Technologies

This Unity project is free on the Asset Store and lets you observe a 3D action-adventure game with several mechanics already implemented. If you are starting in game creation, it is a good starting point.

• It has a title screen and pause menus
• It has a basic melee combat system
• It has a configured controller with its animator. The project uses Root Motion to move the character, which means that the movement is handled by animations. This can work for certain types of games. But if you want to make a really precise controller, look at other options.

Unity Movement Tutorial by Cat-like Coding:

Unity Movement Tutorials

A series about controlling the movement of a character.

Catlike CodingJasper Flick

This series of tutorials covers creating a movement controller from scratch in Unity. I consider them advanced content due to the complexity of the calculations they perform, but if you want a complete understanding of generating movement in Unity, this is the best tutorial I have found.

Game Makers Tool Kit Game Essay

Platformer Toolkit by Game Maker’s Toolkit

From Game Maker’s Toolkit

itch.ioExacrate

This project, half video game and half essay, is a great explanation of the concepts that need to be considered to generate movement in Unity. With an interactive explanation, the best part is that the project code and how it achieved its character's movement are available to everyone and explained on its own blog: Platformer Toolkit

Kinematic Character Controller:

Kinematic Character Controller | Physics | Unity Asset Store

Get the Kinematic Character Controller package from Philippe St-Amand and speed up your game development process. Find this & other Physics options on the Unity Asset Store.

Unity Asset StorePhilippe St-Amand

This asset used to be paid and cost about 90 USD, but its creator made it free. It is a kinematic "character controller" package that deals with collision detection, moving platforms, and many other edge cases. In short, it is a better version of the character controller that comes with Unity.

It is not a complete solution. You need to write your own controller functionality on top of this package, such as receiving player input and calculating movement speed, so it is also advanced.

State Machines:

The last part of my research has to do with managing the player's "state" and the movement executed at each moment. What I found about this are State Machines for Characters. On YouTube, there are several explanations on how to build and use them. For example, this video:

The keywords to find this type of content are "state machine character controllers."

This is the summary of my current research. I hope it has been helpful!

By teach I mean information or skills that are not part of the endogenous value of the game. For example, in an adventure game it is pretty easy to teach the player that the "B" button is for swinging their sword. And that swinging the sword will kill monsters. But when you have a concept or process you want to teach someone and try to make that into a game, the results are normally dull trivia games that could just be flash cards or games that are more akin to an interactive slideshow than a meaningful gameplay experience.

I recently had a client hire me to lead development and design for a small game with the objective of teaching excel shortcuts to the players, as the client runs a website dedicated to content about excel and databases https://www.excelshortcut.com/

The game created with this client is Data Defender a grid based shooter with some tower defense mechanics that is controlled using the same buttons you would use to navigate in excel. You will be able to play it here next august when it launches, here I will go over some of the design decisions that I made to make this game fun while teaching something new to people, an objective that all play-testers have told us (me and the client) was definitely achieved.

Defining a clear educational goal

First we had a talk about what the objective of the game is, what did we wanted people to learn once they are done playing. at the end we decided for the more commons shortcuts for navigating a spreadsheet, arrow keys, shift and tabulation for different kinds of selection and so on.

Excel is a pretty complex program and there is a lot to it. A first draft of the design included the ability to use Formulas inside the game, but it was obvious that would be to complex for the game playtime we expected from people and the time to develop the game so early on we decided to only teach Navigation shortcuts this resulted on a set of constraints that inform the rest of the design.

So for your educational game, don´t try to teach everything regarding your theme, somethings are better teach with traditional multimedia information and not in an interactive space. that said, there are a lot of themes that can take advantage of interactive simulations (physics and math come to mind) a great example on this regard would be the work of brilliant and https://ncase.me/ as they are able to go over some pretty abstract concepts with very cool simulations

So you have a clear and specific goal of what you want people to teach, next step.

Choosing mechanics and aesthetics that support that goal

The take away point is, don't start thinking about making a platformer or a puzzle game and them figure out how to put your educational theme on it, seek out what mechanics naturally emerge from your theme, and develop on that.

We thought about the kind of ideas that our theme (excel) brought out. One of them was the idea of a data grid and that's what we used as a starting point. we turned the cursor on the protagonist and them give it reasons to have to move along the grid. And the buttons to move? the same ones you would use to move in excel.

This makes for a very odd controlled game when compared to other action or shooter games, but in the context of teaching excel navigation shortcuts the game allows players to develop muscle memory on moving from one part from the grid to other, as they would on a spreadsheet.

To shoot an enemy on the game you have to type the number 1 and press enter, akin to how you input new data in a cell, the backspace button was turned into a combo movement along selection,. To balance the game and prevent players from exploiting the backspace button we implemented it as a powerup you have to pickup first, the pickup function is made with the space key, the same way you would clear a value from a cell.

As you see, we choose a mechanic (moving and shooting enemies) that allowed us to exploit the action we wanted to teach, the players move in the game as they would move in excel, and the game space, a grid is just a more entertaining version of the spreadsheet.

Scoping to succeed

Finally, scoping a game to be developed on time and on budget is a problem general to all game development really, but for educational games specifically I would advise against try to include a heavy stories, cutscenes or other "gamey" features as they will only take away time and resources from actually making a compelling learning experience.

We did add a leaderboard to Data Defender and a points system as it was easy to do and created indigenous value on the game to be re-played. But that´s something you should do only if it makes sense for your own game.

It is way better to fine tune your teaching mechanics than to include a cutscene in your game, focus on the education part.

Some final thoughts

Making Data Defender tough me a lot about making games to teach, If there is something I am not quite happy with is the tutorial part, I wish I could have make something more dynamic when first introducing the controls, something I will have in account for my next educational game is to put more time in the "how to play" section to make for an even more entertaining experience.

You can Check out the game in the https://www.excelshortcut.com/ in the "Play Game" link, If you happen to play it please let me know what you think about it on twitter and also subscribe to the excel shortcut newsletter, those are some solid excel tips and everyone should really learn to use excel.

Aaaaannd I am still working on URA! my new rhythm adventure game where you use music to save the world!

Ura is new take on the rhythm adventure game formula, where you will explore, play different instruments and do magic to save the world. It is early on development but plays so much fun already I can´t wait for you to be able to play it!

Next post will be the URA devlog #1 so keep a eye out for that one!

I know, I know I broke the streak, but turns out coming up with a good post every week is kind of hard. So while I will keep trying to do so, there will be weeks in wich I problably don't have anything to say. See you next week! (or maybe the week after)

Ten years ago Jamin Warren from Killscreen wrote about games being too damn long, and his desire (or preference) for shorter games that respected more the time of players which after all were getting older and acquiring more responsibilities. He was not alone in this feeling, Adrian Chmielarz developer of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter called for shorter games with sounding business reasons, as did Ben Kuchera in Kotaku a year after as well.

So after all this years, is the era of the shorter games finally upon us? let's dive in:

A quick look at the top selling games on steam shows us the usual 2020 suspects, Biomutant, Days Gone, The Witcher 3, Mass effect legendary Edition and so on.. The "shorter" game in this list, lasts around 9 hours, "It takes Two" from EA. the rest of games on the list are multiplayer online games or sandbox games wich rather than shorter, can have players commit hundred of hours into them.

what about awards? what are the best games for 2021?

Game Awards game of the year 2020 The last of Us 2

Game Awards best indie game Hades

Independent Games Festival Main Award A short hyke

It would seem that not much has changed, the AAA industry keeps producing 15+ hours games, a lot of the best selling or more profitable games are online service based games were players spend hundreds of hours, if anything during the last ten years, the rise of the unique situation generators games has emerge over all other genres.

And them we have A short hyke, by Adam Robinson-yu this little game takes 2 hours to play and is a wonderful experience that leaves you feeling cozy, while a short hike found a wider audience, the last decade has seen a stream of constant and ever growing in quality shorter games. The platformer Gris, What remain of edith finch, Minit a game where your character dies every 60 second and that can be beat in a couple of hours. Firewatch had a 4 hour campaing and also found success. Even on the AAA side of things, did you now Titanfalls 2 excellent campaign lasts about 6 hours? I wish tthey would just sell a version of that game that was just the campaign.

Ten years ago the context was different, the third party engines weren't free (as they are now) and making and distributing games was hard. short games did not make total sense business wise. Today anyone can download unity, make a game and sell it in Itch.io it probable won't make it's creator rich, but it can definitely find a market. As the bundle of shorter games with worst graphics proved.

Sure, the numbers on those games, both players and revenue numbers aren´t high. But that´s a leisure shorter games can afford to have. So while the mainstream media, the marketplaces and the awards might still be pointing in the direction of the 30+ hour games as the standard. Game Historians in the future might mark the 2020s as the time when the shorter games took over.

Even thought as the roman before us, we will not realize the empire has fallen, and a new Era of shorter games is upon us.

Hey! I am also launching a shorter game very soon, this is Ura:

Ura is new take on the rhythm adventure game formula, where you will explore, play different instruments and do magic to save the world. It is early on development but plays so much fun already I can´t wait for you to be able to play it!

So I will be starting a URA devlogs with more in-depth content about the makings, in and outs from the game. So please do check out the game site for more details:
https://orla.games/ura

We made it to three posts in a row! who would believe it, not me to be honest. thank you for reading, remember to share this post please, I wish you a great day!

Storytelling.

To become a better storyteller I researched for books on the matter, in doing so I have start a journey on the ways stories shape or lives and how to create and tell my own. While I started this journey to write b etter content online, storytelling can help anyone achieve anything. For real! it sounds like malarkey maybe, but a good story could change the world, I asure you.

Humans are creatures of story, so story touches nearly every aspect of our lives,

The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human,
Jonathan Gottschall

In this book you will find a clear overview of the way human beings are affected by stories, there is so much of our live from childhood to adulthood that gets determined by the kind of stories we learn along life. the things that we value, the morals that we have, the daily desitions that we make, all affected by stories. And we don't even realized.

Reading this book allowed me to become aware of how stories affect me and those around me. Might it allow you to wake up to that fact as well.

a writer feels that writing is the best thing that ever happened to him, or could ever happen to him, because as far as he is concerned, writing is the best possible way of life.

Letters to a young novelist,
Vargas Llosa

Vargas llosa is a peruvian writer, he is 2010's literatury nobel prize and in the 90s he wrote a series of letters to his younger self, the letters are about how to write longform novels, while writing for the internet is a fast way of writing. The book is a mix of teorichal and practical views on how to write novels.

The way Vargas Llosa aproachs the elements of the novel, the elements of writing for me. And how to construct what he calls the persuation power of the novel result on a base of knowledge that anyone looking into telling better stories should have.

Eliminate anything that's not mission-critical and keep the narrative driving ever forward.

Unleash the power of Storytelling,
Rob Biesenbach

while the first two books are more on the teohrical side of storytelling, my final recommendation is almost a pocket handbook for writing stories in the real world for real use. Rob Biesenbach is a fantastic storyteller that has help fortune 500 companies to reach their audiences.

His book is full of actionable advice on how to construct stories from looking for stories to tell, to how to structure them, focus on the essentials and deliver them in different ocassions.

I know my personal journey on becoming a better story teller is varely begining, and there are literal tons more of books yet to be discovered. But I hope that these three can be a good start for you. As they have pointed me on the right direction.

This is my second weekly post in a row! who would have thought huh!? will I make it to three posts in a row? you will have to subscribe and see i guess.

To give you a quote a game maker will try to guess how much time and resources it will take them to make your game, including art, sound, programming, design, testing, and deployment.

Answering this next questions will help you give them the information they need

The most important question is what do you want to achieve with this game?

while you might have an idea of the game you want to make a game designer is more interested on the objective you have for the game. is it an educational game, are you advertising a product, is it entertainment, is it a game you intend to sell on a store. What do you want to do with the game is an important question that gives me as a developer a clear picture of your needs.

What's your general Idea, as specific as possible

You are likely to have at least a genre of game in mind and some themes to put around this genre, but you can be more specific, whats the style of the game, if you are thinking "I want a platformer game" or "i want a racing game" who is the protagonist, were is this taking place? what are the obstacles, the most likely think to hapen is that I would not make exactly what you have in mind. My job being a game maker consists on taking what you want to do with your game (the most important question) and translate that into an experience that achieves that objective with the players.

But knowing your general idea and its specifics will reveal other objectives and things you want get out of your game, things that you might not even realize. After all a good game maker will ask you questions that will make you realize things you did not know before.

How does this game look in your mind?

Is this a 2d game or a 3d game, Is it a realistic aesthethic or a stylized one. The pipelines and costs to produce art assets can vary greatly, if you have a low budget one might consider using assets from the stores and only make original content for the very specific things. But if your general idea is something that can't be easily achieve with pre-existing assets you will have to invest on all original content. Greatly increasing the cost of your game.

As a general rule 2d assets tend to be less expensive than 3d assets, but there are exeptions.

Do you have any references? are ther games out there that kind of look like what you see in your mind, they don't even have to be games they can be illustrations, animations, paintings, whatever that exists that visually resembles what you want. The art style of a game can make or break your budget, so having specifics about this will help your quote be more exact from the begining.

How long is your game?

This comes back to your objective with the game, an advertisement game might only be played by less than a couple minutes, and educational game will probable take longer. You might envision an arcade experience that can be replayed again and again chasing a highscore or you might have an history or concept that requires different levels or mechanics to be explained, the bottom line is:

Playtime normally equals more content or mechanics, and this equals more development time.

The longer you want players to play the game, the more resources it will probably take. There are ways to be economical about the amount of content and mechanics that you have while keeping a long playtime without watering down your game. But that would be another discussion and post.

Just try to come up with a number of minutes or hours you expect players to play your game.

Where is your game gonna be played?

This is another crucial aspect, a game that runs on your website requires different technology that a game on a phone or a console, and if you want your game to work on many platforms that's an budget increasing factor as well.

There are no standards as to what platform is cheaper than others, I would personally argue that a simple webgame might be normally cheaper than a simple unity game. But thats anecdotical.

Decide where your game will be played, (web, mobile, consoles, etc..) and have that information at hand.

What's your monetary and time budget?

I hear you, the reason you are requesting a quote is because you want to find out how much a game costs to make, but in reality a game can be made with very little time of development and money, resulting on a simple game. or with a lot of hours and team members put into it, resulting on a more robust end product.

how much are you willing to spend, as a ballbark number will help me as a game maker decide if this is a one man project with assets bought from stores or a multiple team members with all original art and music. The more you are willing to spend, the better quality you can get for your money.

as for your Time budget, when do you need this game to be ready? do you have a hard deadline that cannot be missed? some games take years to be completed, and that really depends on kind of game, amount of content and art style you want. As a general rule if you are thinking of a turn around of less than a month, your game should be really small and focused to achieve a good quality.

And with that we are done, here is a summary:

what do you want to achieve with this game?What's your general Idea, as specific as possible How does this game look in your mind? How long is your game? Where is your game gonna be played? What's your monetary and time budget?

Having a brief that answers this questions, should help any game maker give you a good quote. For example you can have this template as a starting point:

I want a game to advertise this new product I am launching, my objective is to have player subscribe to my mailing list and learn about X subject. I am thinking about making this a racer game, like a very simple version of mario kart for the nes. I would like to have 2.5d graphics and for it to have three levels, the game should take about 10 minutes to be played, and it is very important for me to have a signup to my newsletter link at the end.

it would be on a page of my wordpress site. I have a $10,000 usd budget for this and would like to have the game ready in a couple of monts.

your brief should be longer than this! but you get the point.

Do you like games? I am writing weekly about life, games and how to make them subscribe and get my next post right to your inbox.

I have read many times that the games we tend to like the most are those that have something familiar with something new. If like me, you are a long time fan of the legend of Zelda, this five games are sure to give you a good ride.

maybe you can play them while we wait for breath of the wild two to release, or a launch date announcement at least 😩

In the mean time, here are Five games with that zelda vibe and some cool twist on its mechanics that you can play right now:

1# Minit

A zelda-like adventure, exploration game where after claiming a cool sword on a beach you start dying every 60 seconds, the game even has a dedicated button to “die”.

with less than two hours runtime, excellent history telling and that cool 60 second loop mechanic. Minit is in high position on my zelda-like top games.

You can buy the game Now on Phones, Tablets, Nintendo Switch, PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One minitgame.com

If you bought the Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality you already have it!

2# Moonligther

You might have hear of this game and decided to past on it based on that it is more of a rogue-like. but its art, story telling, combat mechanics and the innovative money making mechanic of administrating a store really hit home for me as a Zelda fan.

It’s difficulty curve and the upgrade systems are really well balanced. And they just published mobile versions that are not just simple ports. But truthfully re-worked the game to make it a first class mobile experience. Why don’t give it a shot!?

This game is also available for every major console and mobiles: moonlighterthegame.com

If you happen to have xbox Gamepass you already have it!

3# Anodyne

I will be the first to admit this game did not strike me visually and it was a very long time before I finally played. Anodyne has a strong zelda-like gameplay base, explorations, items, and a little more RPG systems. and while it’s story starts more or less like another Zelda game. It quickly evolves into something very interesting.

It is not a game for the taste of everyone, but when you like it, you really like it.

The game is available on steam, switch, ps4, xbox and mobiles.

4# Lenna’s Inception
This might be the less known game of the bunch, and that’s a shame really, while starting out very similar to the gb zelda games, Lenna’s inception turns into a interesting game with probably the most out-there mechanics, breaking the fourth wall and turning in a meta-game. It can be a little slow to start. But I asure you it is worth the trip.

if you bough that itch.io bundle for racial justice, you already have it! why don’t give it a go. If not you can buy the game on steam and itch.

5# A short hike
I thought everyone new about this game! but apparently not that many people do. while it doesn’t really have dungeons, or comples items to be used. It has a lot of charm, a simple history and the feeling of free exploration. Like if you took breath of the wild exploration espirit and condense it into the tiniest package.

The game is available on PC, switch and i think? I saw it on gamepass? not sure.

ashorthike.com

That’s it! I hope you found something new in this list. I have had a lot of fun playing this games, and hopefully the release for breath of the wild two will happen soonish!

Next week I will be writing about some awesome Tools to make your own zelda games and levels If you want to know about that.

I know i am not alone in this feeling. I have been dreaming about opening a indie game studio for the last four years, losing weight, learning how to play the piano, becoming a better illustrator, post content online and so much more. And have felt that I am not as close to those goals as I would like despite it being the same goals every year, for the last five years or more.

So this year I am going public with my goals, I am sharing what I aim to do so that it hangs over my head. And my peers or strangers on the internet can hold me accountable.

#In2021IamGoingTo

• Read 12 books minimum (one per month)
• Run 400km total
• Reach my ideal weight goal (around 75kg, currently at 90kg)
• Spend One hundred hours playing the piano
• spend One hundred hours drawing
• publish 3 commercially available short-games.
• Achieve winnings for 100,000usd or more.
• publish at least 48 “things” online (posts, videos, illustrations, etc..)
• Reach an audience of 10,000 people.
• Be incredibly happy with my wife, and create hundreds of new happy memories.
• Become a full time game designer and developer
  

None of this are really new goals to me, but in 2021 I will kill my old goals, to accomplish that backlog of things and propel myself forward to new unknown limits.


As Shia Labeouf told us in its infamous 2015 meme/video

”Don’t let your dreams be dreams”

Do you have goals you want to achieve this year? what are they? tell me on twitter!