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Hey there! It's certainly been a while. By my records, the last time I made a post here, I'd announced I came down with COVID—which turned out to not be true, but I never made any additional post stating such, confirming anything, or even so much as saying I was okay.
Why was that statement incorrect, and why had I made it in the first place? Fact is, a coworker of mine DID come down with COVID; he's still recovering from it, about six months later. I happened to get sick at exactly the same time, so I simply assumed I'd gotten COVID as well, but when I went to test myself, as it turned out, what I had was not COVID. Unfortunately, where I work, we draw people from all over the world, and further, I commute on a weekly basis for school, so there are plenty of opportunities for any one of us to get sick at any given time; it just so happened, we got sick at the same time with two unrelated illnesses.
Fact is, this summer was a whirlwind, something I was hoping wouldn't happen. A few weeks after that last post here, one of my cats managed to escape, on the lam just outside the house for almost a full week. He narrowly missed encounters with bobcats—some instances of which were actually caught on camera—and managed to make in-roads with the small feral cat colony here, the matriarch of which has since learned—or perhaps she learned it from him—that the people here are not only kind, but more than willing to feed them.
My MS project continues even now; while the finish line is in sight, new developments in the last two weeks have nearly completely upended everything I've done so far. I've ultimately completely re-written a doctoral dissertation Python script three whole times at this point, including once more just yesterday. At this point, I'm pushing to get it done by January 12, expecting the bulk of the remaining work to take maybe another week, followed by extensive writing. This final paper is going to be LENGTHY.
Beginning in August, I officially returned to NMSU's Creative Media Institute, picking up work I'd left behind the year before in pursuit of a Bachelor of Creative Media in Animation and Visual Effects, 2D Studio pathway. This was on top of everything else, but also on top of continued work in an entrepreneurial incubation program intended to push CORAX studios forward, ending the week after classes began. I've made great strides in my own work, including learning 3D modeling well enough that I'm now confident I can create the kinds of games I wanted to from the beginning! Next semester's course-load is an introduction to 3D animation, and a course on digital illustration techniques. I'm looking forward to it!
So, what does all this mean for CORAX studios?
Our first game, That Abandoned House on Parkview Drive, is still under development. (You may have seen the announcement post here, or the slightly more detailed email announcement about it—oh yeah, are you on our mailing list? You should be!) A teaser trailer is anticipated shortly! This debut title features three individuals exploring an abandoned house—or at least, that's what they believe. Mild psychological horror combine with point-and-click puzzle solving in an attempt to recreate the magic of the MacVenture titles of old. While this title won't be released probably until the summer, I do anticipate it being released this year!
We do have a number of other projects also in the works. Our second title will be a short but intense atmosphere simulator, and from there any number of other titles could be next. From a collectible capsule monsters-style RPG to an action-oriented espionage game, we've got a lot of future material forthcoming. Look forward to it!
I do have another announcement to make regarding the future of CORAX studios, but I think that will wait until our first game is out. Let's just say, the inspiration has been flowing, and the ideas are plentiful. I may post again before then, but for sure, we'll see you in 2024! Keep enjoying the game!
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A bit of an unfortunate update on things at CORAX studios. If you've explored around on the website, you may have discovered that we're a "one-man wrecking crew". By merit of my living in rural New Mexico, I'd managed to avoid it, but this week I managed to catch COVID. While I am fully up-to-date on my vaccinations, I've still been taking it easy. Fact is, I have an underlying heart condition that COVID can complicate, so I'm trying not to do too much.
While I do hope this won't push back development on our debut title, officially announced two weeks ago, it's possible I may have to push the release date back to later Q3. This is, unfortunately, on top of still working on my Master of Science project (which won't be finished on-time), as well as an accelerated summer class. I am still working on it, and I do still intend to have something more, a stronger announcement (perhaps even a trailer???) by the end of this month. Keep an eye out for it!
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(Disclaimer: I originally wrote this post a year ago, but never shared it here.)
As a video game designer and producer myself, I sometimes have to take a step back and examine the state of the medium as a whole, ask questions of How, Who, and Why? And tonight I find myself focusing on a particular subset of the horror game genre, that of survival indie horror. And in particular, I find myself asking:
How do these games start off so beautifully well, sky-rocketing to not just inobscurity but almost household names, before suddenly and immediately plummeting to their own demise?
I'm talking about games like Hello Neighbor, We Happy Few, Bendy and the Ink Machine, and to a different extent but still meteoric fall, Five Nights at Freddy's, and Poppy's Playtime. Games that, when they were introduced, they were so hugely popular, such massive hits, that many of them even received toy deals, often before the game had even been completed. Games that seemed to capture the entire gaming community as a whole, before suddenly, irrevocably losing every millimeter of that standing.
And I think I have an answer, but it's not an answer indie game developers are going to like.
Each of these games has excellent character design, particularly for the "villains", the characters out to get you. Every single one of them. They're all memorable, even from a brief introduction; they all stand out, and make the player want to know more. What exactly is happening with Freddy Fazbear, that animatronic puppet character from a children's pizzaria? What happened to Bendy, a seemingly fully-living, possibly even fully-sapient creature made entirely of cartoonist's ink? Why is the neighbor, seemingly just a crotchety old man except his house is absolutely bonkers, obsessed to the point of killing the player character with keeping the inside of his house a secret? What's going on with the people in We Happy Few, seemingly twisted into terrifying mockeries of humanity by some sort of drug?
In each of these cases, we the community got a taste.
In some, that taste was ostensibly the game. Five Nights at Freddy's is itself a standalone, albeit extremely simple and rather short. Bendy and the Ink Machine released "Chapter One" as seemingly its own standalone piece, that would then tie in with more games later. Still others, that taste was an open beta, or even perhaps an open alpha. Hello Neighbor and We Happy Few fall into this category, with the latter even billing itself as something of a "playable teaser" for the full game. We got a taste of what the game was going to be, and that taste was really, REALLY good. We wanted more.
But then, the "more" came. Bendy Chapter Two came out. The full release of Hello Neighbor and We Happy Few came out. Five Nights at Freddy's 2, then 3, then 4, then Sister Location, then FNAF World, then— You get the idea.
Not invariably—in the case of Bendy and FNAF, it took several additional pieces—but as we got a bigger taste, the full concept wasn't very good. We Happy Few turned out to be a series of short, disjointed pieces taking place in this world, and each piece was frustratingly bad. Hello Neighbor introduced the story, and the backstory of the neighbor, and it was just... not that great. Bendy, as the games continued, they felt like they wore on; new characters were being added, but nothing new was being introduced. And FNAF, hoo boy, FNAF.
The problem is threefold:
- Either the game wasn't originally fully fleshed-out upon release of the first piece, or else it otherwise hadn't been given really good thought. With FNAF, this is slightly more understandable; the first game really was supposed to be it. The success of the first game is what drove Cawthon to make more, to come up with such a massive convoluted mess (that then culminates in one of the most broken games of modern times, FNAF: Security Breach). But, in every other case, the problem was, they had an idea for a villain, or they had a neat idea for a game even, they just didn't have a good idea for a narrative. Which brings us to point 2.
- The creator, in each case, wasn't a writer. If you've ever read Scott Cawthon's books, they're terrible. We Happy Few had some of the worst stories in modern gaming, both because there was no understanding of character AND no understanding of narrative. Hello Neighbor almost feels like it wasn't supposed to even HAVE a narrative, like one was thrust upon it to make it feel like a "full game", like you just shelled out $50 for a game that was free before, for a good reason. Bendy, it feels like they had a concept for that character, and they kinda spilled all the beans in the first part (even though it wasn't explicitly stated, it was still super-easy to figure out), so they had to keep "putting off" that reveal by extending the story, introducing more characters that befell the same fate—willingly or no. They showed their hand at the beginning and tried to "fix" it by hoping everyone would forget over time. (Spoiler alert: They forgot, all right.)
- Because each game was "teased", the end result that people expected and wanted could never have been what the end result was going to be. There were many and varied fan theories for each game, some of them absolutely wild! But, part of completing the narrative is necessarily ripping off the bandage; people can speculate, "Ooh, I bet it's nasty under there!" or "Oh gosh, did he get in a fight with the neighbor dog?" until it's revealed it was just a poison ivy rash. And for some, that's what they wanted, that's what they expected. But in each of these cases, the fan theories got so wildly out of control, and again, rarely did the creators have an actual endgame in mind.
Let's take a look at where something like that went exceptionally well: Steven Universe.
Steven Universe is ostensibly a silly kids show about the titular character and his "family", the Crystal Gems. As the series went on, many themes turned quite dark, and the fan theories again went WAY out there. BUT, the series creator had the whole thing mapped out from the start, literally months before it was even pitched to Cartoon Network. She knew what she was doing, and she did each reveal spectacularly well.
Was each reveal what people wanted, or even expected? No, of course not. But, in each case, it was understandable, because every last element of the reveal was present from the very beginning. The series didn't lose popularity as these reveals happened; it gained it! And even when the series was over, it was so wildly successful that they made a movie, AND a second series. (Even so, again, the creator knew what she was doing!)
So, what are my recommendations to aspiring indie horror game creators?
- Flesh out the entire concept BEFORE you produce one single line of code. Have the character designs down; know WHY they act the way they do. Know where the story's going to go, what's going to happen, both within that entry and perhaps in continuation, if that's what you want to do.
- If you don't know narrative, either take classes or hire a writer. Seriously. This is so dramatically important, I can't really stress that enough.
- I know this one's going to get a lot of hate, but: If you're going to tease your game, don't make it playable. Or, if you do, just be absolutely certain you've hit the first two recommendations. Even if you don't mean to, if the world is fully fleshed-out, your details will tell the player quite a bit, and keep everything consistent and possibly even within, if not expectations, then at least the realm of possibility.
You do these three things, I'm not going to guarantee you'll build gold, but you'll be far more likely.
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Some may have noticed my sudden disappearance on this platform. This is unfortunately because other life events have caught up with me, and frankly at this moment I don't have the time to be updating this site on a daily, or even semi-daily basis.
So, what's happening?
First, some of you may be aware, I'm working on my Master of Science in Physics, Concentration in Instrumentation. My goal is to graduate this semester, and as such, writing my thesis has become priority number one. All paperwork is due by April 15, so honestly I've got to get the thing done the week before. Hence, all my attention is on that right now.
Some of you may also know, I'm also a full-time employee of an observatory in southern New Mexico; in trying to get CORAX studios off the ground, I'm working around that constraint as well. Right now, we're working on a major install, a huge upgrade to one of our most notable telescope systems; this has taken up a significant amount of my time as well. It's an impressive project, and once it begins collecting science I can't wait to see the results! It's something I enjoy and am passionate about, so I don't regret this focus; however, it does, in conjunction with the aforementioned MS, create quite a time crunch, within which it's difficult to find the time for other projects.
Finally, in addition to both the above items, I'm also presently taking classes remotely at New Mexico State University, Grants campus. This is in conjunction with a program at the main Las Cruces campus, in pursuit of a Creative Media degree. While these classes are a distant third in priority, they're still important, and so what little "free" time remains in my schedule is going to those.
So, what does this mean for CORAX studios?
For the time being, these projects are being put on hold. Once April 15 rolls around, I should have plenty more time to begin working on this stuff again (which is good, because I'll be participating in a Thing that weekend!), and by then I believe I'll be able to make a couple new announcements. That's right, I've got a couple projects presently in the works! Hopefully, you'll be able to see some of that by the end of April, and it would be amazing if I could get the first one out there for folks to experience by the end of June. So, keep an eye out!
In the meantime, today I'll be writing a few posts--this is already the second--to try to bring the rest of the site up to speed, before retreating into my cocoon once again. Hopefully, in a month's time, you'll see me emerge as a frazzled but spectacular Master of Science butterfly.
So, stick around! Some exciting stuff coming in the near future!
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The more astute visitors to the website will have noticed several changes, and naturally several more are on the way. We're picking things back up, and part of that is an attempt to bring the website back up to date with all our various content outlets and whatnot.
As part of this, we now have a Discord server! The invite link is at the bottom of every page in the site map, but you can also join here! In addition to our newsletter (which will also be picking up again soon), we'll be making announcements about our future game releases on the Discord server as well. Come on by, meet like-minded individuals, and chat about games—or whatever else tickles your fancy! (We're only just starting this, so if you have any suggestions, we'd love to hear them!)
With all this new activity, we do indeed have a new game announcement on the way. Once we get to a good point, we'll share more about it. Look forward to it!