Shadow Field is a preternatural sci-fi tactical strategy game for the iPhone. You control four members of a scientific research team as they defend an isolated village from an unnameable horror…
The Shadow Field Team are currently working feverishly toward an end-of-year release date. To keep updated on how we’re going (and exactly when we’ll be releasing Shadow Field to the masses), sign up to the Shadow Field Newsletter! (It’s over there on the right.)
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Hello there, dearest reader.
Belying the apparent evidence that we have been indolently slacking away, our brains turning to mush and our bodies swelling and sagging until we look somewhat reminiscent of the Wall-E spaceship-dwellers, the developmental efforts on Shadow Field have in fact been continuing steadily, as we chip away at the ever-waning pile of remaining features and content.
Okay, we may have gotten a little mushy.
If you’re in Melbourne next weekend (the 14/15 of August), you’ll be able to come along and see the fruits of our labor in its current state at Freeplay, Australia’s best (also only) independent games festival! We’re not quite at a stage where a portion of the game is representative of the final version, but the core gameplay is getting pretty fun, and it’ll be great to catch up with you fine folk. We’ll also see if we can attract some more interest to the game… speaking of which, tell your friends!
And also, if you’re going to be at Freeplay, I’m going to be leaving our booth temporarily on the Sunday to be on the Ask a Game Developer panel with some other Australian game industry fellows – should be an informative event if you’re interested in how games get made. It’s at 3:30pm in the Experimedia centre.
Leading up to the event, we’ve been doing a few things that we probably should have done a while ago – we’ve got an sweet new logo (look up), quite a bit of new art in the game, and will endeavor to finally replace the old tower-defense screenshots on the game page with some shiny new ones. But to get the full experience, you’ll need to come by next weekend to see the latest, greatest version of SF! Look forward to seeing you there.
Peace out!
- Jason
Oh, I forgot to mention! We have a brand new, handy dandy newsletter (it’s on the right of this page), through which we’ll be releasing information about the game, most probably on a slower drip than this blog. If you want to keep notified about Shadow Field as it approaches release, signing up to the newsletter is the best way to do so.
Also, we will most likely be releasing some more exclusive information via the newsletter – if you’re interested in seeing some of our work in progress stuff (and hearing about certain surprises before they’re announced to the rest of the world), the Shadow Field Newsletter is the place to be. Subscribed. To.
Cheers!
- Jason
Hello there, dearest friend!
What’s that?
Why, thanks for asking! Shadow Field development has been coming along swimmingly – each of the four main characters now have a (rudimentary) version of their special ability that they’re able to use upon incoming foes, and the camera and combat controls have been improving day by day. Planning-wise, we’re starting to really nail down a lot of the core design elements such as the structure of the player progression throughout the game. Next on my list is the task of actually programming up a dynamic world for the player to explore, complete with “inhabitants”.
One thing that is really a focus for us in Shadow Field is creating a world that feels complete and as real as possible – not necessarily graphically (we are a 2D topdown game after all), but structurally and societally. One of the games that I look to as a shining example of what feels like a living, breathing ecosystem is Bioshock.
It's OWN!
Between the creatures who inhabit it there exist relationships that make sense, and that may not necessarily involve you – it doesn’t feel like a “game”, with a bunch of enemies placed around a level, but rather an existing habitat were entities actually live their lives, unrelated to the player or the protagonist. Rapture is definitely a key inspiration for us in our approach to world design.
I’m hoping to get a video prepared sometime in the coming weeks – the gameplay is coming together nicely, but we want to make sure to have something to show you that will reflect how the game will play in the final version – the only major thing left for that really is setting up the dynamic world.
Wish me luck!
- Jason
This weekend (after collectively enjoying Iron Man 2 – it’s research somehow, I promise), we sat down and forbade ourselves from playing Street Fighter IV until we’d spent some time thinking about the nitty gritty of the game’s combat systems – the moment to moment gameplay and feel.
It’s difficult to get on the right track, particularly when trying to brainstorm a particular element of the game – we had a few false starts as we went off on random tangents, having ideas about what to do in different parts. But fortunately we kept refocusing, and kept attempting to approach the task in a different way.
We finally scored a hit on the “First Five Minutes” approach, which I have to credit to Dan (my boss at my day job). It’s a great approach where you simply say: “Okay, we begin where the player starts in the game. Lets write out, moment by moment, everything we want that player to experience in the first five minutes of play.” It ends up feeling a bit like playing a pen-and-paper roleplaying game, where you’re making up the rules as you go.
Once we made it on track we were blazing ahead, and we came up with some great stuff – I’ve scanned a couple of the less spoilery pages of my (terribly scrawled) notes below to give you guys a sneak peek at what we’re looking to implement. After a mere hour or so, we had set up concrete ideas for each of the workmen’s strengths and weaknesses, and had created a clear mental picture of how we want it to play out – a picture I’m now in the process of breaking down to figuring out how to get there code-wise, system by system.
No, that isn't ancient Vedic Sanscrit, it's just my handwriting. Man. I wish I could write Vedic Sanscrit.
This week will be focused on getting as much of that moment-to-moment gameplay in as possible, with the eventual goal of being able to play, dynamically and in real time, the scene that we’ve constructed. I’ll let you know how it goes!
- Jason
