Even our shadow puppet style was born out of compromise

Case in point: rival clan leaders. Back in February we did a lot of exploration on how “story bouts” were going to play and look. These mini encounters represent your clan and a rival tribe swapping stories in order to share your histories and to potentially make an alliance. Although the concepts were promising, we had major concerns about communicating feedback to the player about how the “bout” was going. We mocked up some rough stuff using the shadow puppets from our “story events”, but although we could certainly convey someone shaking a stick in the air, it was difficult to describe an emotion that way. Was he shaking a stick out of anger? Excitement? Because his arm fell asleep? The player just wasn’t getting good feedback about how their choices were being interpreted by the game.

Rough concept for story bouts

Meanwhile, we had another problem on the back-burner. One of our backer rewards for Kickstarter was the opportunity for them to get their face in the game as one of our shadow puppets. This seemed a natural addition since we needed as much variety as we could get. However, it was important to us that this not be something that seemed weird or out of place. We wanted to use the backer’s face in the actual game (not just as a vanity addition for the person that made the pledge), but putting human faces on our puppets wasn’t working out. As we progressed it turned out that keeping the story event puppets abstract-looking had the best visual impact, and our attempts to put our own tiny faces on the puppets ended up looking silly.

This last month an epiphany produced the solution to both our backer issue and the story bout problem. We decided that our rival clan leaders should have their own unique look, and that they should be focused on conveying emotion to the player. This meant that they would be a single giant face (with a tiny dangling body). This also meant that our backers’ faces were going to be the tribal leaders, and that we now had this great big space to exaggerate features and make things gel with the world as a whole.

First the caricature…

Then add the fantasy!

Interestingly, another compromise here led to some interesting visual dynamics. We first approached the leader faces completely in silhouette (like the puppets in our story events), but we struggled with recreating likeness, conveying emotion, and rigging and animating a face with the necessary moving parts to work as a shadow puppet. We had to articulate huge sections of the face to make sure light would “shine through” in the right spots, and things were getting out of hand. However, once again the history of Balinese shadow theater came to our rescue with some needed inspiration. Balinese shadow puppets, despite being seen in silhouette, are also hand painted and intricately tooled, meaning they tell a different story when on the shadow stage and when viewed in “real life”.

An “off stage” Balinese shadow puppet

That gave us the idea that we’re currently going with: allow the clan leaders to be hand painted, paper puppets, but allow them to nominally function as shadow puppets for dramatic effect.

A dramatically different effect.

Unwritten Passage is full of anecdotes like this, and retelling them helps remind us about what is so great to be doing something like this. As always we are hugely grateful to the support of our families and crowdfunding backers. And remember that you can continue to support the development of our weird game.

Roxlou Games

Big strides were made in programming and art direction, and a major part of that success was our collaboration with art director Kim Passey.

Kim’s a fantastic artist in his own right, but for Unwritten Passage his more than 20 years of experience really helped us bring cohesion and focus to the killer ideas that Lee (our principle artist) brought to the table. Kim’s influence was also instrumental in exploring the themes we already had. For example, in one case he was able to take our original environment concept piece from the Kickstarter (supplied by Waking Mars artist Amanda Williams) and illustrate with a rough color shift how we could make a barren environment still seem alive.

Before:

After:

Tools and technology continue to progress, with much of our foundation work coming to a close. Thanks in large part to the smooth progress of the art direction, Joe was also able to make early strides in other areas, including a cloth simulation for the ribbons and banners we see playing a big role in the look of the game.

Moving forward the team’s big focus is on our “vertical slice” and a proper gameplay trailer to coincide with a Steam Greenlight campaign. As long as we keep having months like April, this will be happening toward the end of June and will put us well on the way to our first beta.

As always we’re strengthened by the continued support of family, friends, and our many crowdfunding backers. Independent game development is not always easy, but it’s a tremendous privilege that we’re all intensely grateful for.

More to follow!

Roxlou Games

But probably the most rewarding moment of the month came when we were able to hold the printed posters and screen prints in our hands and get them packaged up for our Kickstarter backers.

We did all our printing locally, so Austin’s massive SXSW festival delayed getting our prints until the very end of the month. However, we feel the wait was worth it. The prints turned out stellar across the board, and as we were getting everything signed, tubed, and ready to ship, we were extremely proud.

Although working on Unwritten Passage is rewarding in and of itself, this is the first time on this project that we get to see the cycle of creation through to the end. We had a concept, we iterated to create print designs, we made commitments to our backers, and we are now delivering them as a product. It’s a special feeling, and even though some of us have been doing this kind of thing for years, that feeling doesn’t really wear off.

For those that are getting a physical reward like a poster or screen print, we’ll be dropping those in the mail in the coming week after the Easter rush. “Digital Poster” downloads will be going out by email before the weekend is out, and everyone that got a physical poster will also be getting a digital copy of the poster art. Note that as the screen prints are a limited run there will be no digital file for those.

If you had a digital poster (either as an add-on or as part of your printed reward) be sure to contact us if you haven’t gotten your email by Monday, April 1st. “April Fools Day” jokes are punishable by death.

A huge thanks to all our backers and to our families for their continued support. More to follow!

Roxlou Games

P.S. Missed out on the Kickstarter? You can still get copies of the “digital posters” by becoming a backer through our website.

We’re coming to the end of our first week of full production, and it feels great! We’ll keep you updated as we get stuff that’s worth showing, but in the meantime we have a few bits of project news and business.

Reward Surveys

If you’re a backer be sure to respond to the survey Kickstarter sent to you. We’ve gotten many responses, but there are also hundreds left untouched. The quicker we get all your information, the quicker you can get your rewards!

That Which is now “Unwritten Passage”

So the game is now called Unwritten Passage: That Which Happened.

A big thanks to all our backers and new friends that helped make a stressful situation (the renaming of the game due to a trademark conflict) into a fun affair. Voting and discussion was lively, and we feel the new title is a good compromise. And special thanks goes to wonderboy2402 (as he or possibly she is known on our website) for first suggesting the title that eventually won.

Poster/Screen Print Progress

Once the naming issue was finally sorted, we were finally free to update the poster designs with the new title and get started on printing.

Printers now have the files and we’re expecting to get prints back within the next two weeks, at which point we’ll be signing, shipping, and most likely drinking. Stay tuned for pictures then, but in the meantime… shipping tubes!

Roxlou Games

Following the success of our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve enjoyed a bit of added exposure. One unexpected side effect of this is that this has also drawn the attention of the “Eye of Sauron”, i.e. the scrutiny of large companies and their faithful legal staff. DC Comics has contacted us and is claiming a common law trademark conflict with our game Unwritten: That Which Happened, and their comic series The Unwritten.

For our part we’d never heard of this comic series before, and our trademark research on “Unwritten” didn’t turn it up originally, although this may have been because we were focused specifically on video games. While a name conflict here still wouldn’t necessarily be a legal issue, DC is claiming that our game uses a “similar art style” and “similar story-telling method”, which would cause consumers to mistakenly believe that our game is actually based on their comic. We leave it to our backers and readers to decide the merit of such a claim for themselves.

This should get you started.

That all said, it looks like we need to change the name of the game slightly to keep everyone happy (especially those of us that have whole legal teams on retainer). We’ve narrowed it down to a few choices, but we need your help to make the final call. Vote in the poll below and help us choose the new name for Unwritten!

Not only is this a chance to get in on many of the backer rewards and “add-ons”, but this is also your opportunity to get access to backers-only email updates and the backers-only forums. We rely on our backers for feedback in developing the game, so come be a part of our process!

Check it out!

But most likely you’ve heard us cheering about it non-stop for hours. So why not hear Rock, Paper, Shotgun weigh in instead?

You Couldn’t Write It: Unwritten Kickstarter Succeeds

Thanks everybody for their support! Expect to hear more as development ramps up in earnest.

But the campaign isn’t over yet! Click here to hear about how you can contribute for the next 5 hours.

The Kickstarter for our first game, Unwritten: That Which Happened, is about to enter its final 24 hours. At the time of writing this we are at just over 81% of our goal, thanks to a phenomenal day of funding. It’s time for the final push, and frankly the whole team is half manic and half maniac (no, we didn’t write it twice).

In an effort to answer some questions about the game, get the word out, and maybe even have a bit of fun, the whole team is going to spend the last 12-14 hours playing indie games and live tweeting our thoughts and impressions. We’ll be playing hip games, obscure games, games we love, and games we might actually hate. But mostly we’re going to be playing games chosen by YOU.

WHERE: On Twitter, specifically @RoxlouGames (click now and follow us)
WHEN: Tuesday, February 12th, 10:00 am U.S. Central Time to Midnight (the end of our campaign)

To participate, just follow us, read our tweets, and tweet us your questions. Easy peasy!

Here are the games that have been suggested by our backers and well-wishers so far (along with the Twitter handles we’ve found for them):

• Under the Garden – @FarmerGnome
• Overgrowth – @Wolfire
• Capsized – @AlientrapGames
• FTL
• Waking Mars – @TigerStyleGames
• Enviro-Bear 2010 – @manbearcar
• Octodad – @octodadgame
• Minecraft – @notch
• Protect Me Knight – @AncientGames_EN
• Flatland: Fallen Angle – @SeeThruStudios
• King of Dragon Pass
• Dungeons of Fayte
• Little Inferno
• Dominus (Abandonware from the 90s)
• Games from the IGF Finalists List (some are already listed here — others will be investigated as time permits)

To make your own recommendation tweet us your suggestion, leave a comment here, email us, throw a carrier pigeon through our window, whatever. Just let us know. Due to system constraints we can only play PC, Xbox Live Indie Games, and iOS games (iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch). We’ll give preference to games that we already own or ones that have free demos (we’re broke ass indie developers remember), although if you can legally send us a copy of a game (most likely because you’re one of the creators) we’ll give you whatever exposure we can command. Otherwise there are no restrictions on content. We’ll play anything.

Unwritten is almost funded and we’re ecstatic at the thought of joining the ranks of indie developers anywhere! Help us celebrate!

Don’t stop now, let’s carry on to the finish line!

Click here to read the whole update

3 days to go and 61% Funded! This is an important milestone… now upward and onward!

Check it out!

Check it out!

UPDATE: Looks like Reddit changed the time when they added us to the schedule. It’s now at 12 pm, eastern time.

By popular request, Joe will be doing an “Ask Me Anything” on Reddit tomorrow (February 7th) at 12pm EST.

For those that are new to the project, Joe Houston is Roxlou Games‘ founder and is the programmer and designer for Unwritten. He’s best known as a former core member of the critically acclaimed game Dishonored, and for his published articles on Indie Gaming and Video Game Violence.

Joe has also worked for Bioware and Midway and has worked on games of all genres and platforms.

For those new to Reddit and the concept of an “AMA”, it is an opportunity to put a person in the “hot seat” and ask them any kind of question at all. Reddit works on a system of “upvotes” and “downvotes” to help people find the best stuff, so when you come be sure to click the up arrow to “upvote” us!

We hope to see everyone and their questions there. We will post again just before it gets underway.

We’re looking into doing a Reddit AMA, and this is my proof and stuff.

But don’t take our word for it, read for yourself. You could also just grab them here, but where is the fun in that?

It’s a sillier, happier theme than the first batch of icons, which matches our mood today. We have one week to go, and we had a strong day of funding to kick it off. Help us get the word out and keep this momentum going!

RPS is one of our favorite sites, so this is a real pleasure. There is a lot of info here that hasn’t been discussed in prior interviews, so be sure to give it a look!

Check it out here!

Check it out here.

We’ve been told to expect a few more interviews and podcasts from other sources coming later this week. If you like what you read (or hear) be sure to show your appreciation by sharing these links around!