PRIMlog

Finding the Right Words

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Tue, 18 Aug 2020 20:03:24 GMT

The Localization Process of the PRIM Demo
Or: The Story of One Skeleton Arm

Hey Reapers!

Releasing a game that’s been translated into a lot of languages is great, especially for players who come from countries where English is not as widely taught as in other parts of the world. However, localization can go horribly wrong. In her article “Puns are the worst, and other harsh lessons in game localisation”, Laura Cress puts it like this:

“As with many nuanced jobs, if the localiser does their job well, you probably won’t even realise the game has one. Get it wrong and games can become laughably absurd. Consider a translator losing the context when localising RPG Grandia 2 into German, and so translating the word ‘MISS!’ – in the sense of not hitting the mark – into the German word ‘FRÄULEIN!’, meaning a ‘miss’ of the unmarried woman variety.” ( https://www.pcgamesn.com/game-localisation )

I found out how hard it really is to find the right words when I sat down in my garden, my computer on my lap, and started to translate the script for the demo from English into German, which is my first language. Let’s have a look at an example: Next to Prim’s door, our heroine encounters a skeleton arm that she uses as a backscratcher. When she picks it up, she says “That might come in (pause) HANDY.” Even though the word “handlich” exists in German, the pun just didn’t work. After hours of contemplating, what I came up with was “Da wird mir ganz (Pause) ARM ums Herz.”, which is “Well, that makes me feel ARM all over” in English. An entirely different joke, and, admittedly, not the best one, which is why told Friedel, the voice actress playing Prim in the German version, to say the line as if she knew exactly how bad the joke was. And, voilà, it worked. Due to Friedel’s performance, it even became one of my favorite lines.

So, after experiencing the struggle of localizing properly first hand, I was determined to find the right people for PRIM’s localization into Spanish, French, Italian, Russian and Brazilian Portuguese. Luckily, I met Michael from the Warlocs ( https://warlocs.com/ ) last summer at the Adventure Treff Gamescom party in Cologne. (He happens to also be the adventure game magazine’s editor in chief.) What can I say? These guys are amazing. They’re not only super friendly, they’re also well-organized, experienced, professional, precise and quick. The first thing that made me believe I had put my baby into the right hands was that, apart from the script itself, they asked me to send them detailed character descriptions so they were able to find the right tone. But there’s more. Let me give you an example once again: After I had first read the Spanish translations, I asked Concha (Prim’s Spanish localizer) why she changed the name of Limby the skeleton arm into “bracito”. Here’s what she answered: “Names are generally not localised, except for when they carry a meaning. […] For Limby, I used 'brazo' (arm), but with the suffix of endearment -ito ('bracito'), and left it as a common name because it feels more natural for a Spanish person to sometimes refer to things in that way (we use these diminutives a lot).”

To go full circle in this Primlog entry, Concha’s answer perfectly highlights what Laura Cress wrote in her article:

“Game localisation, the art of not just translating a game’s text into a new language but shaping it so that the words also make cultural sense.”

On that note, I would like to send much love to Concha, Alex (a big “thank you” for the Cyrillic font!), Chris, Carlo and Rômulo – thank you for telling my story in your words!

Read you next week, guys! Stay healthy!
Jonas

Games for Everyone

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 05:50:52 GMT

A few thoughts on accessibility

It’s been a few years since I got interested in the topic of making games accessible for everyone for the first time. If you follow this devlog regularly, you know that I started making games by participating in game jams. Right after releasing my first game within the context of Adventure Jam 2016, I came across another competition called “Audio Game Jam” ( http://jams.gamejolt.io/audiogamejam3 ).

Until then, I had never heard of the term “audio game”, but what I found when I was browsing through the jam’s resources section was more than impressive: There are tons of games out there that have no graphics at all and are playable solely with the help of audio feedback for the player. Furthermore, there are many games that include features that make them accessible to visually impaired players as well. I “watched” a couple of let’s play videos and was amazed, not only by the players’ skills, but also by their ability to process audible information much more quickly than I would ever be able to. (In some games, dialogue was sped up ridiculously, as can be seen in this video of the “Sightless Gamer”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqYrq4dWchc )

This was when I decided I wanted to make such a game as well. I came up with the idea to use the fairy tale “Rapunzel” as a backdrop for my game. Maybe you remember this: When the prince who wants to save Rapunzel from her evil adoptive mother falls off Rapunzel’s tower, he is blinded by the thorns he lands in and thus has to walk around blindly until he finally finds his loved one and is healed by her tears. So I decided to tell the story from his point of view. “How I Saved Rapunzel” was born and it should be playable completely without sight. Back then, I had basically no experience with game development, so I dived head over heels into a project that proved to be way too big and much too complicated for a programmer with the skills I had in 2016. Additionally, my “regular engine” Visionaire Studio seemed to be quite limited when it came to programming audio changes regarding volume and panning. This is why, ultimately, I stopped working on the project after a couple of frustrating months and put it on my “pile of shame”. (I’m Gemini and I was told having many unfinished project isn’t unusual for this zodiac sign :) ). Nevertheless, I am still proud of this gorgeous title artwork by Quentin Louis ( https://www.behance.net/louis_q ) and of the AMAZING voice recordings for the game done by the Voice Action Power Squad. (The whole session can be watched here: https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=1643781925950414 )

Let me tell you about one particular design decision I made for the Prim demo. Again, if you’ve been reading closely for the past 9 weeks, you know that I’m a teacher at a local high school. In recent years, the numbers of hearing-impaired students in my classroom has increased a lot, and I’ve learned much about what to consider when teaching them. This is way one aspect of the PRIM demo caught my interest: Without giving away too much: There is one puzzle that requires listening to the radio, which an aurally handicapped person isn’t necessarily able to do. So I decided to display text above the radio that tells the player what can be heard right now. Furthermore, I set this text as the default state of the game. None of our testers felt confused or disturbed by it, most of them played with subtitles on anyway. It was just a small thing to do, but because of it, the demo is completely accessible for people who can’t hear (well).

Of course, I’m aware that there are many more things to consider when it comes to making our game accessible, like brightness- and sound settings, choosing a dyslexia-friendly font type and –size, and much more, and we’re determined to make the game as accessible as possible. Our community on Twitter has given us some great tips and ideas here.

What is important to you guys when it comes to making games accessible? Do you know any games that did it particularly well?

Have a great week! Stay healthy!

Jonas

Books, books, books!

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 05 Aug 2020 09:32:10 GMT

or: What to write when you don't have the time to write.

Hey Reapers,

As the release of our demo is only a couple of weeks away, I noticed that I have less time for… well, everything, including writing walls of text in the Primlog.

When planning today’s entry, I decided to keep it really short, but it should still be of value for everyone who’s interested in game development. Here’s what I came up with:

As you might have already noticed, I like to read about game development a lot. Many of you probably do as well. This is why I’d like to present two books that have helped me a lot on my journey.

The first one is “The Indie Game Developer Handbook” by Richard Hill-Whitthall. Covering topics from development itself (engines, art resources etc.), via funding and (self-)publishing, to PR, it’s basically an allrounder for everyone who’s new to the business. What I like about it the most is its sheer endless amount of useful links and software tips. For instance, there is a chapter in which Whittall provides a detailed list of online game magazines that cover indie games.

“A Practical Guide to Indie Game Marketing” by Joel Dreskin is much more specific in its goal: teaching you how to make players play (and, of course, buy) your game. With the help of statistics and case studies, the author offers a glimpse at marketing fundamentals, developing your brand, audience- and community development, to mention a few of the actual contents. What probably helped me the most is the close look at marketing materials Dreskin takes, giving tips about what belongs in a proper press kit, how (not) to write pitch emails, what a good game logo should look like and much more.

So, guys, back to work. Still have a lot of bugs to fix, languages to implement aaaaaand we’re working on the intro cutscene right now. It’s only roughly animated, but I already love it to Death, which, in the context of our game, can be taken quite literally :)
Have a great week, stay healthy!
Jonas

Why Devolopers are Terrible Exterminators - Bug Fixing in PRIM

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 29 Jul 2020 09:21:18 GMT

or: The truth about how I am doing right now.

Hey Reapers,
I hope you‘re all doing well.
When I started writing this devlog, I asked my followers on twitter what they would like to read about in it. Here’s what Tom Hardwidge (@hardwidge) wrote:

So, taking his advice, today’s Primlog episode will mainly focus on the emotion I’ve been experiencing recently: frustration. Don’t get me wrong, I still immensely enjoy working on PRIM. It’s just this very phase of game development that, in the long run, tends to frustrate me. What phase, you ask? Well, boys and girls, take cover and hold on tight to a person from your own household, because this devlog issue is about… BUG FIXING!!!

Well, most naturally, playtesting and bug fixing (and again, and again, and again) are fundamental components of game development and the only way to having a stable and enjoyable game at the end of the process. Furthermore, I’m pretty lucky to know a lot of cool, interested, motivated and intelligent people who offered their help as playtesters. So why am I pissed?

I think the main reason is of psychological nature. When you play your own game, you tend to submit yourself to the illusion that what you’ve created is actually working quite nicely. Prim is my fourth game and I fall into that trap every time. In his book “Gamedev” (highly recommended!), Wlad Marhulets, the creator of Darq writes:

“As a developer, you’re the worst candidate to test your game. As you continue to work on your game, you develop your own playstyle and a tendency to do things the same way each time you play. […] However, adding new people to the mix will help you discover lots of bugs because everyone plays differently. […] Watching them trying to break you game can be a stress-inducing experience. […] Don’t worry – it’s normal.”

Each time a playtester discovers a game breaking bug I hadn’t noticed, I ask myself: How could I NOT see this? But, as stated above, this seems to be part of the process. So, being of unbreakably optimistic nature, how do I deal with my frustration? First of all, I really enjoy the talks with the playtesters. It’s amazing how they get involved with the game and start seeing themselves as part of the team. How much time they take to test every single feature and how much work they put in creating videos of their findings for me. They start to love the project and this is just great. Second, I try to view each discovered bug as a step in the right direction. Even though they sometimes might be hard to reproduce, when I manage to do it and to fix them eventually, I’m filled with the satisfaction of having improved the game a little bit, even if it was just a typo or a mouse cursor that didn’t look the way it should. Lastly, each fixed bug takes me closer to my ultimate goal: Releasing a game that you will like (maybe even love, just like my playtesters) soon!

What are your experiences with bug fixing, fellow gamedevs? And, dear players, what do you do when you discover bugs in games? Quit? Tell the developer? Scream at your screen?

Looking forward to reading your answers!
See you next week!
Jonas

PRIM's Sound Design Vol.1: The Music

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 22 Jul 2020 14:27:38 GMT

Composing the Dance of the Dead

Hey Reapers!

Have you read the very first Primlog episode? The one where I introduced myself? Well, there was something that I DIDN'T tell you about me. (Please imagine an evil laughter here.) I'm also a musician. To be more precise, I've been singing and playing the guitar in a rock band called INHUMAN for about 18 years.

Here's what we sound like these days:

So, naturally, when I started making games I thought "Of course I'll compose, arrange and record all the music myself"! Let me tell you how this worked out: NOT AT ALL.

My first jam game, The Diary of a Roadie (see Primlog episode 2), didn't have sound at all because there simply was no time left during the jam to implement it. Eventually, I was looking for a musician to help me with Sidekick High, my second jam game. And I still consider myself incredibly lucky to having found this guy:

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Bryan Atkinson, music composer extraordinaire from Mesa, AZ. He made the music for Sidekick High, door and you can also listen to his compositions while playing the PRIM demo in a few weeks.

But: What can you expect? Since our visuals are very Tim Burton-esque, I told Bryan I wanted to score to be kind of Danny Elfman-ish, Burton's "regular composer". Additionally, I loved some of Bryan's earlier work that had a female voice singing "ahs" and "oohs" in it. That's pretty much all I told him. Here's what he came up with: https://www.facebook.com/100001633904956/videos/2059828954081548/ (This is a link to Bryan's Facebook page showing you some behind the scenes footage from the recording progress with our talented singer Saydi Driggers.) The end result of PRIM's main theme sounds like this:

Right now, Bryan is working on the soundtrack for the AAA game Guild Wars 2. That's crazy!

Lastly, and to go full circle in the Primlog episode, there actually WILL be a piece of music in the PRIM demo that has been written, performed and recorded by yours truly. I'm pretty sure you'll recognize which one it is ;)

So far, so good, Reapers, looking forward to "seeing" all of you again next week!

Until then: stay healthy!

Jonas

Don't judge a game by its cover...

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Tue, 14 Jul 2020 13:33:46 GMT

...except for ours. (Yup, we're really proud of the way it looks ;) )

It’s always good to know what you’re good at and, even more so, what you’re terrible at. Myself, I’ve always enjoyed writing stories, creating worlds and designing puzzles. And, in the hope of not sounding too cocky, I mostly think I’m not too bad at all of these things.
When it comes to producing visual art, well, it was clear from the beginning that I needed help with that. In case you want some proof, here’s my very first scribble of what I imagined Prim to look like:

I might not have had any art skills, but still, I had some kind of a vision how my game was supposed to look. I’d always loved Tim Burton and his animated films. These big eyes that make every character look adorable AND slightly disturbed at the same time, these obscure face shapes, these crooked angles in his scene design… All in all, Burton’s inventive visuals offered the perfect mixture of gothic and family friendly, particularly when they were shown in black and white, as in his short film “Vincent” and in “Frankenweenie”.

In Oskar Alvarado, a renowned Mexican comic- and game artist, I quickly found an incredible artist who was able to make this vision become reality. His first sketches blew me away – Prim as you know her today was born. Of course, it’s a long way from a first sketch to a character rig that can be animated, but the in-game artists Michael and Lucas did a great job in bringing Prim to life. Here’s an image that I call “the evolution of one undead daughter”:

Finally, I needed someone to create Prim’s world. Luckily, Sascha, the artist I’ve already worked with in SIDEKICK HIGH, was so intrigued by the concept that he decided to join the team. One of the many things that I love about working with Sascha is that, when he draws a background, he comes up with a thousand ideas for Easter eggs and tiny little details to hide in a scene. Just have a look at this:

IAll in all, the way our game looks like is what most people that see it point out as its major strength. So here’s a promise, Reapers: We’ll do our best to make the rest of the experience (story, gameplay, puzzles, writing, music, sound) live up to it!

See you next week, guys!

Jonas

Preproduction: What to Do Before Actually Doing Anything

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 08 Jul 2020 10:44:22 GMT

In the Beginning was the Word

Please forgive me my notion to start blog posts with overdramatic Bible quotations. I just HAD to do it this time. Why? Cause it's true, at least in our case.

Before the first line of code was programmed, even before the first rough sketch of Prim was drawn, I'd spent my time writing. A lot.

What's the underworld like? Who lives there? Which character traits does Prim have? What's her motivation? Within this framework of setting and characters, what's a story (or rather: what are stories) worth telling?

Countless questions needed to be answered, so, call me old-fashioned, I picked up pen and paper and started scribbling, erasing, changing and rewriting again (for an ancient wisdom I remember from my English studies says: "The art of writing is rewriting").

In the end, I filled an entire exercise book with mind maps, notes and charts:

After I had found a story I wanted to tell, next came the juicy part of every adventure game: the puzzles!

For everyone among you, dear readers, who intends to create an own adventure game, I highly recommend to dive, at least a little bit, into puzzle theory before designing the game.

The talented Phil Fortier at IceFall games has published one of the finest collections of articles I fould online: https://mtnphil.wordpress.com/2016/09/13/adventure-game-puzzle-design/

So, you've made the puzzles. But how do you write them down? And what software should you use?

To answer the first questions, Monkey Island mastermind Ron Gilbert came up with the following answer: Create "Puzzle Dependency Charts"! Wait, what's that?`According to him, a puzzle dependency chart is "a list of all the puzzles and steps for solving a puzzle in an adventure game. They are presented in the form of a Graph with each node connecting to the puzzle or puzzle steps that are need to get there." ( https://grumpygamer.com/puzzle_dependency_charts ) Gilbert made it look like this:

But: what about the software? Which one can easily create puzzle dependency charts?

When you ask this question online, most people will recommend Articy Draft . I've never used it myself, but it looks pretty cool and powerful, escpecially if you're developing within Unity or Unreal. And it can do WAY more than just creating charts.

Actually, I found a pretty neat free alternative to Articy Draft, called yEd Graph Editor , an online- and offline diagram editor that worked perfectly fine for me. Here's what I've done with it so far:

Of course, there are many more things you have to do during preproduction than just mapping out the game and its puzzles.

This why, next week, I'm going to write about how PRIM's look came to life!
Hope to welcome you again, Reapers :)

How do YOU GUYS handle preproduction phase? What software can you recommend?

Stay healthy, guys!
Jonas

The Story so Far 3/3

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Wed, 01 Jul 2020 17:38:46 GMT

Everybody loves somebody... sometimes

Hey Reapers!

If you immediately start humming along - trust me, you're not alone.

This classic song (the version sung by Frank Sinatra in particular) was the initial spark of inspiration for PRIM.

Rather randomly, it appeared in a playlist I was listening to, when, all of a sudden, I asked myself: If EVERYBODY loves somebody, does this apply to Death as well? And what if that "somebody" was his daughter?

To be honest, I'm well aware that the concept of Death being a "person" and having a daughter is not a totally new thing in the field of literature. There are a few stand-outs, most notably Sir Terry Pratchett's characters Death and his daughter Ysabell (both of them have a major role in my favorite Pratchett novel "Mort").

But I wanted to do something new with the idea, so I started reading about Greek mythology and eventually, slowly but surely, Death started turning into Thanatos, the Greek god of peaceful death and the Underworld I created drew its inspiration from the Greek Hades.

What about you, guys? Where do you get your inspiration from?

Next week, we'll be looking at how we are going to have a close look at what we did during the pre-production phase!

So - stay tuned!

Jonas

The Story so Far 2/3

183:758791992 (Jonas Fisch) — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:09:00 GMT

Keeping it simple.

Hey there, Reapers!

After four years as a game dev, I have a tip for those of you who want to start out as one: Think big – but start small. When it comes to the scope of a game project, making it too big for you to handle will ultimately lead to frustration and maybe even to you giving up on it, while, if you reduce it to a few basic mechanics, an hour of gameplay and one single screen, you’ll be rewarded with the feeling of having finished (and published!) your first game within weeks, maybe even days, which, in turn, will give you the opportunity to receive feedback from players and fellow developers, boost your motivation and help you grow.

Game jams provide a perfect framework for this approach, since they force you to be a minimalist in various ways. In case you’re not familiar with the term, a game jam is a contest where you (and your team, if you have one) are given a limited amount of time (sometimes just a few days, sometimes a few weeks) to create a game from scratch. Sometimes they have a theme you’ll have to use in your game, sometimes they don’t. The games will then be uploaded and played (and sometimes judged) by your fellow contestants and, well, everyone else who’s interested.

If you have read the first episode of this devlog, you know that the adventure game is my preferred genre, so, naturally, when I was looking for a place to take my first steps in game development, the “Adventure Jam” was what I chose. It’s a jam that’s been around since 2015, happens on a yearly basis and runs for two weeks. I can’t recommend checking out Adventure Jam enough, no matter if you’re a developer or just a fan of narratively-driven gaming. The games are perfect examples for keeping it simple, but beautiful, engaging, creative and, most of all, fun. If you can afford the time, check out the 2020 results: https://jams.gamejolt.io/advjam2020 . Furthermore, Adventure Jam has a passionate and warm-hearted community, mostly huddling together on their Discord server: discord.gg/0paXBYLB0Yq80dmF

After this rather lengthy exposition, which I dearly apologize for, let me introduce you to the first three games I made: The first one is called “The Diary of a Roadie” and I developed it for the Adventure Jam in 2016. What you have to know about me is that I’m a huge rock fan and I’ve been a singer/guitarist in a band for more than 18 years. That’s why I chose the world of live music as the setting for my first game. You play as Emmett, who is both the roadie of a famous rock outfit, and the lead singer’s brother. Unfortunately, during a night of dancing, drinking and dames, he’s lost his backstage badge and the security guy at the door won’t let him into the venue in the morning, so that the player has to retrieve the missing object, figuring out what Emmett did the night before – too bad that the protagonist doesn’t remember anything about it. I’d always liked the idea of using Hangoverish mechanics in a game and the process of finding clues in the present time leading to flashbacks to last night’s excesses is something that I still really love about TDOAR. I also still admire its pixel art, created by the talented Quentin Louis from Belgium. (Fun fact: Our company’s name CMMN CLRS (pronounced “common colors”) was born at that time, and it derived from me being from Germany and Quentin being from Belgium, two countries who have the same colors in their national flags.) Despite including some immature sense of humour I wouldn’t go with today, no sound at all, only one screen and pretty lengthy dialogue, I am still very happy to call TDOAR my debut game. The Adventure Jam community seemed to like it as well, ranking it #2 out of 156 games, which gave me a lot of confidence as a newbie. If you want to give it a try, here’s a link to its gamejolt page: https://gamejolt.com/games/the-diary-of-a-roadie/146972 . Don’t worry, it’s completely free.

My second game, “Sidekick High” (2017), is the project out of these three jam games I am most proud of. At its heart, it’s yet another escape room game, but I still love its setting and puzzles. Sidekick High is a school for future sidekicks, kids whose superpowers aren’t strong enough to make them become superheroes in their adulthood, like the ability to spit coffee, walk partially through walls, turn into a were-snail during full moon or sweat really hard. The goal of the game is to pass the application test for the school, consisting of finding a way to escape a room – or being killed. Sidekick High provides a couple of nice examples how limitations can increase creativity: I wanted to make a game with two playable characters, but we didn’t have the time to draw and animate two protagonists. This is why we let them be twins, the only difference between them was the color of their shirts. Furthermore, we wanted to skip creating walk cycles, so we decided that our heroes’ superpower would be floating a few inches above the ground. It makes perfect sense in the context of the game world and nobody has ever complained about it. The time we saved regarding these aspects could be used for polishing others, for instance, Sidekick High was the first game we made that has voice acting. And what a difference it makes. (Well, mainly because the ridiculously talented Voice Acting Power Squad (www.vapsquad.com) did it.) And I’m still madly in love with the retro cartoon look created by the amazing Sascha Schneider and the 80s style music by Bryan Atkinson, both artists being part of the PRIM team as well. In case I just made you want to play it, it’s here and it’s free: https://gamejolt.com/games/sidekickhigh/253151

Lastly, in 2018, my professional and personal life were keeping me pretty busy, so I decided not to participate in Adventure Jam, which failed gloriously when the contest started and I scrolled through Twitter, enviously watching everyone’s projects coming to life. So I made an agreement with myself (and my wife), promising I’d go with a smaller scope than usual. If you’ve read the first episode of this devlog, you know that in my “regular life” I teach English and Philosophy. The latter inspired me to make “door”, a game about free will. To be more precise: about being predetermined by our genes, inspired by true events. Gamewise, I tried a couple of new things as well: Instead of making it pointy and clicky, I implemented keyboard controls and chose a simplistic, almost monochrome, ZX Spectrum-like look. The result may be pretty short, but I’m especially proud of the way the story unfolds, not chronologically, but in the order the players discover it, which means that, despite its simplicity, two players might experience the game in two entirely different ways. Did I make you curious? Check it out here for free: https://gamejolt.com/games/door/340800

In mid-2018, after having made three short games, I decided it was time to make my first full-length game and so the idea for PRIM was born!

Next week, in the next PrimLog, we’ll finally touch upon the topic you’re here for: “Prim – the Story So Far”.

See you then!
Jonas

The Story so Far 1/3

Thu, 04 Jun 2020 19:03:13 GMT

Everything you never wanted to know about me.

Hey there, Reapers!

As is common courtesy, I should briefly introduce myself before I start writing this devlog. My name’s Jonas, I’m 34, I’m from Germany and I’m not a game developer.

Wait, what?

Well, although you’ve read correctly, I think I should rather say “I hadn’t been a game developer until 2016”. Back then I was working as a teacher at a local high school (which I still do and love doing), teaching English and Philosophy. However, I had always been dreaming of creating games since I had been a little kid. This is why, in a burst of determination, I bought a book on game design, which was Jesse Schell’s “The Art of Game Design” (highly recommended) and then it happened: pure magic. Okay, it wasn’t real magic, but Schell suggests in his book, in order to become a game designer, you just have to say the “magic words”. And so I did:

I am a game designer.

I felt a rush kicking in. I felt great. Smarter. More aggressive. I felt like I could… like I could… like I could take on the world! (If you get this reference, this means you’re in exactly the right place.) The only thing I couldn’t do, unfortunately, was actually making a game.

Luckily, in our modern times, there are pretty neat tools that make game creation accessible to the aspiring. The one I chose is called “Visionaire Studio”, which is a German game engine that specializes in the creation of adventure games, the genre I love since my uncle had gifted me a copy of Day of the Tentacle when I was 10. If you’re not familiar with what a game engine is, imagine it as a software editor that enables its users to create games without in-depth programming skills (at least to a certain level of complexity). Actually, there are countless adventure game engines, offering exactly this (Adventure Game Studio or the Unity Plug-In Adventure Creator, just to mention two of them). The reason I went with Visionaire was that it felt most user-friendly and intuitive to me and, I have to confess, because it was the engine Daedalic worked with, the German adventure game developer at the time, famous, for instance, for the Deponia series. But, even though my original decision might have been a little fanboyish, I didn’t regret it and I’m still using Visionaire to make PRIM.

So, I had said the magic words and I had found the right software. What came next?
Learn about my first steps as a game developer and the first three short games I made in the next issue of (drum roll) the PRIMlog, which will be out next Wednesday.

Also, if you’re a fellow game developer, I’d love if you left a comment below on how your journey started and which game engine you prefer!

Stay healthy, guys!
Jonas (CMMN CLRS)

PRIMlog

Finding the Right Words

The Localization Process of the PRIM Demo Or: The Story of One Skeleton Arm

Games for Everyone

A few thoughts on accessibility

Books, books, books!

or: What to write when you don't have the time to write.

Why Devolopers are Terrible Exterminators - Bug Fixing in PRIM

or: The truth about how I am doing right now.

PRIM's Sound Design Vol.1: The Music

Composing the Dance of the Dead

Don't judge a game by its cover...

...except for ours. (Yup, we're really proud of the way it looks ;) )

Preproduction: What to Do Before Actually Doing Anything

In the Beginning was the Word

The Story so Far 3/3

Everybody loves somebody... sometimes

The Story so Far 2/3

Keeping it simple.

The Story so Far 1/3

Everything you never wanted to know about me.

The Localization Process of the PRIM Demo
Or: The Story of One Skeleton Arm