Ib

I found this free horror game that came out recently called Ib (pronounced with a long “e” sound, spanish speakers shd have no problem pronouncing it).

It plays very similar to Yume Nikki and Corpse Party (both great games). But I like it better than those two games cuz it has simple, cute story and it has less gross gore than Corpse Party (I love horror, but am not a fan of gore). This game is still horror and has a lot of fun creepy moments, and like 5 endings).

You play as a little girl named Ib who goes to a museum and loses her self in a creepy alternate world.  I love the way it takes a simple setting (a museum) and just goes from there.  All of the monsters and threats and puzzles have to do with art in some way.  It doesn't bog itself down with a needlessly long and complicated story like many Japanese games do.

The game does a wonderful job creating a cute relationship between the two main characters.  And I love the use of the rose as health.  It works so well.

The art is great too.  It uses a typical anime style but keeps it simple and adds in some nice shading effects and sketchiness.  It goes a long great with the creepy vibe of the game.  Here's an example:

Seriously, everyone should play this game.  Download it out here:

http://vgboy.dabomstew.com/other/ib.htm

You won’t regret it. Be sure to read the txt file that comes with it though.

The game has already established a bit of a cult following for itself.  Here's some great fanarts:

Animation Examples

Here are some examples of recent animations I've done, mostly 2D stuff.  The majority of these are from a game called Curse of Shadows, released on Xbox Live Indie Games, where I was the lead animator.

Last Sprint!!!! (or whatever)

ACCOMPLISHED:
I drew out all of the cutscenes for the intro.  And I helped color them.  Cristine animated them and put them all together.  We are awesome!

QUALITY:
Good. Even Russel said he liked it.  We're not used to getting positive comments on the first try, so I think that's a good sign.

EXTRA:
I had to a lot of random art fixes here and there.  Plus other stuff I don't care to remember.  Also, after the semester ends we're going to do an ending cutscene.  That'll be 100% extra.

EXAMPLES:

Here's da video

NEXT:
............NOTHING!!!!!! HAHAHA!

Sprint 4/9

ACCOMPLISHED:
Valkyrie helped me come up with a better design for the box art.  I tweaked it til I got something that I was satisfied with.  Everyone else seems to like the new box art as well.

I don't think I mentioned this in my previous posts.  But somewhere along the way (I don't remember which sprint) I made a smoke animation that plays to show where hidden enemies are (guards or shadow monsters). For this sprint I changed the sizes of that smoke animation so that we can use if to different sized enemies.  That was a bit of a hassle as the shadow monsters are all different sizes.

I also fixed some problems with the sprite sheet.  I had somehow forgotten to add the pushing and pulling to the new sheets.

QUALITY:
I got a lot of positive comments about the box art, so I think it was good quality.  I haven't heard back yet about the smoke effect.

EXTRA:
I outputted some hi-def videos of all Suni's animations and the guard's animations so that Alice will have them at her disposal when she makes the trailer for our game.

EXAMPLES:

 

The FINAL BOXART!!!

BELOW You'll see the guard animations with the new shading. You've already seen Suni's new Shading in previous posts, but not the guards so I figured I'd add him here.

NEXT:
Cristine and I are going to try to convince the programmers to somehow include the old man in our game.  He's oh so adorable, it'd be a shame not to include him.  Even if we just use him as a loading screen graphic.  I'm not sure what the problem is.  They have moving lights and that's essentially all the old man is...

Also we need to make some better art for the start screen.  And Cristine still wants us to start drawing up some simple cutscenes for the story even if they don't make it into the game.

Russel says that we can always patch the game and add a story later, but I think that's a horrible idea.  Most games on XBLIG only draw attention when they are newly released.  If the game sucks when it's newly released people don't play it.  Even if it does get patched later, it won't matter.  It'll just be extra work for us that will not result in any more sales.

The reason I think that a story would help is this: I have played a lot those indie games, and I've never come across even one that actually had a good story that was presented well.  If we could just have a couple stylized cutscenes in our game (like the stylized still images used in The Dishwasher: Vampire Smiles), I think it would do a lot to set us apart from all the other crap available on XBLIG.

Anyway, that's all wishful thinking.

Since I'm already ranting, why stop now? I've told Russel several times that the sneaking should not be mapped to the analog stick.  It needs to be mapped to a button.  Stealth games are like my favorite genre, and having sneaking on the analog stick is one of the most frustrating things you can do.  You have to constantly be careful to only push the stick a little, so that she'll sneak.  If you accidentally push the stick to far she'll burst into a mad sprint and the guards will turn and notice her.  All that could be fixed by mapping it to a button.  You still use the analog stick to move her, but she just does it in sneak mode.

Sprint 4/2

ACCOMPLISHED:
Oh so much.

I finished the Shadow Switch animation.  I also did a reverse version of it (Russel told me we need a reverse).

I did a sneak idle for Suni.  I know we probably won't use it, but it was the very last thing on our list of needed animations that we made at the beginning of the semester.  And I guess I'm a completionist.

I re-colored both Suni and the Guard so that they are shaded in more of a toony style.

That meant that I had to re-output all of their spritesheets again.

I also drew some art for the Box Art.

QUALITY:
Cristine totally loved the shadow switch animation

She didn't care for the box art so I'm getting my sister Valkyrie's help in making some more aesthetically pleasing art.  She's a graphic designer who has made logos and things professionally so she'll be a good help.

EXTRA:
I feel like everything I do is extra these days.  I helped Cristine with designing a Zen Tower for the village level.  And I did a bunch of other stuff I probably don't remember.

EXAMPLES:

 

The Original Placeholder Boxart I made

 The Boxart I drew

The Shadow Switch Animation. Some of the cool FX didn't translate too well to GIF format

NEXT:
Better box art.  Different shapes and sizes for the smoke effect (did I ever mention that?).  Fix some glitches with the sprite sheets.

Sprint 3/26

ACCOMPLISHED:
Suni's attack animation for stunning the guards.  I had to do a lot of tweaking on this animation to get it right.  I'm still not fully satisfied, but I've spent too much time on it already.  I've also heard rumor that we're going to end up taking the stunning out so I'd rather not spend too much time perfecting it.

I finished a very cool level design for the final boss.  But I don't think we'll be using it.  They're still working on the farm and city levels.  They haven't even started on the mountain or palace.  There's no way this final boss level is making it in.  Oh well.  Goodbye for good, Baghead.

QUALITY:
Like I said, the attack animation could be better.  I still think the palm strike I went with looks pretty cool though.  Cristine liked my ideas for the final boss level.

EXTRA:
I started work on making a short tutorial level, but I didn't finish that, and I don't think I'm going to be doing any more level designs.  So far people putting the levels together have completely disregarded my level designs.  It's not because they are hard to understand.  I created a numbering system and I uncluded documentation with each level so that all the puzzles would be clear.

Right now the levels are looking very awful.  I don't see anything from my original designs.  I mean they are using some of my puzzles, but they're also just putting things in random places.  Seriously, the levels they are making are nonsensical.  I have no idea why they put shadow monsters where they do.  I know they're working hard, but these levels are our entire game so they need to be put together in a way that makes sense.  I've voiced some of my concerns (don't worry, I did it in a nice way).  And Sarah said they'll keep trying to improve the levels.

Anyway, Cristine's got other stuff for me to help with, so for now, I think I'm off level design.  The reason I was on Level Design in the first place was so that I could make sure we keep the story I wrote progressing throughout the levels.  But Russell nixed having a story in the game weeks ago.  He says we'll put in a story if we have time (yeah right).  Even if we do have time, which we won't, a story isn't something that you can just throw in at the last second.

It's too bad cuz I literally have zero interest in games with no stories.  I don't play a game unless there's some kind of narrative driving me.  This is probly cuz I started gaming with games like Monkey Island and Zak McKraken. That's also the reason why I've never liked games like Tetris or story-lite games like Mario.

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
We're getting close to release so all of Suni's animations need to be done.  The only one left to do is the Shadow Switch animation. I'm also in charge of box art.

Spring Break Sprint 3/12 and 3/19

ACCOMPLISHED:
I finished Suni's death animation.  Made it as creepy as possible.  I'd like to make some alternate deaths for when she lands on spikes or drowns, but I think Russell and Cristine need me to get other stuff done first.

I created a fairly cool level design for the Palace level.  I would really like to create one final boss level.  Something that brings everything together and puts the players skills to the final test. Hopefully we'll be able to put a cool final boss level in.

I created a design for a special chasing guard (who I would re-use as the final boss). I was very clear to ask Sarah if we could have a chaser.  I even specifically asked her if it would be too hard because of the chekpoints and how the game has to reset when you die.  I know they'd had problems with resetting states before, so I wanted to make sure that we could include this guy before I did the work for him.  She told me that we could have him in.

But unfortunately, after I did the work, she tells me that we can't have him.  She says that it's just to hard to have a constant chaser because of how their checkpoints and resetting states after you die works.  So we're not having this guy as a constant chaser.  This was a little frustrating to me because I had specifically asked her if that exact thing would be an issue and she said no.  Oh well, hopefully we can still use him as a final boss.

QUALITY:
The death animation is my favorite of all the animations we've done so far.  Cristine absolutely loved Baghead's character design (the constant chaser and the final boss).

EXTRA:
I didn't get the chance to do much extra this sprint.  I spent most of Spring Break catching up on all my other classes that I've been neglecting because of this game.  But I guess you could count Baghead as extra since we're not using him (unless we end up having a final boss level).

EXAMPLES:

NEXT:
Suni's attack animation (for stunning the guards).  A level design for the final boss level.