The Game is Released!!
>>> THE INVASION STARTS HERE <<< After two years and three months in development, and some recent, unexpected hurdles, the game is finally allllmost there. The final round of beta testing is almost over and I'm adding some final touches here and there. So unless we get invaded by aliens, the game will premiere on
Friday, November 30! Check for more news at the bottom of this post.
The game tells a story of
Gray - an alien living on the moon. One day he decides to (drumroll!) go visit Earth. And as he speeds through the atmosphere - surprise, surprise! - something goes wrong with the ship and - SURPRISE! - Gray crash-lands in a corn-field. What he has to do now is... Yes, you guessed it: find the ship and go home. How original indeed! :
Gray is your good ol' point'n'click adventure game - with a smart and somewhat sarcastic protagonist. Expect him to say something about everything he sees, do crazy things and have a snide comment for every one of your failed efforts.
Gray quickly makes new friends - both humans...
...and little critters of nature...
The game runs in 320x240 and utilizes only four colors: dark blue, red, orange and beige. I love experimenting with limited palettes,
my webcomic also makes heavy use of three-four color sets. This time, however, it's more than just my whim - in
Gray the four colors play a vital role. So I really hope the above screenshots didn't make your eyes bleed!
Here's a little walking cycle of Gray:
and for those who liked the farmer, here are two idleness animations of the hygiene-aware redneck:
UPDATE: October 1, 2010The game's got a musician on the team now
Swordofkings128 contacted me last week and offered help - which I was more than happy to accept! The guy's a real pro! His creativity and versatilty never cease to amaze me. Here's a sample of a beautiful in-game music track he did. Click to play!
And here's the location that the song is for:
UPDATE: November 10, 2010Swordofkings128, who's supplying the music for the game, made a whole bunch of wonderful background themes for different locations and different times of the day. Added a whole dimension to an otherwise humble project. Which, in turn, made me want to expand the whole game! There will be more interactive characters and MANY more puzzles.
Current progress stats (as of November 10):
Story: 100%
Backgrounds: 90%
Animation: 75 %
Coding: 10%
Music: 50 %
UPDATE: May 1, 2011The game had to be put on hold for a while due to work, work, work/college, college, college, some weird health issues plaguing the team etc. But work was finally resumed last month and continues at a nice pace - with yours truly dividing time between graphics, animation and coding. It's hard to estimate the progress in all those areas percentage-wise, because the game grew expotentially, but it's much, much, MUCH farther than the last time I posted an update and it's coming along nicely.
ALSO, a new member joined the team - Sephiroth, who's a great artist and an amazing coder. He's helped me out with some CRAZY pieces of coding (and believe me, I have CRAZY ideas) and a couple of nasty bugs that were driving me even crazier than I usually am.
Be sure to check out new screenshots above (replaced the ones that I originally posted).
UPDATE: January 14, 2012Check out the newest posts for news and sneak peeks!
UPDATE: April 30, 2012We have close to all in-game songs and the game's basically playable from start to finish -- but most conversations, Look At's and interaction responses are still in the works. There's still a FEW things to do that I haven't even started, like sound fx, the outro and the Polish translation. I'm hoping it'll be ready for beta-testing in a month or so, so we could then release by the end of June.
In other news: the dev team grew! By 100%! So now there's four of us:
- SwordOfKings128, who's stuck with me from almost the very beginning, does the music -- and blows my mind on a daily basis.
- Sephiroth is back and assists me with some serious coding. I just think of something crazy I'd want in the game -- and thirty seconds later he sends me the code.
- Paul Franzen, the newest member on the team, offered to proofread and edit dialogues (and monologues) in the game. Ah, poor, unsuspecting soul, didn't know what he was gettting himself into
Speaking of which, here's a sample of Gray's rhetorical talent - the all-time adventure game classic:
And this one of the game's milestones -- the game's own Quit GUI:
Because, obviously, a game with only four colors couldn't have a GUI that is GRAY
UPDATE: September 6, 2012After two years in production, the game is allllmost ready!
Dialogues: done
Graphics and animation: pretty much!
Music: last song in progress
I plan/hope/play for the game to be out within a month. I'm currently in the process of adding sound effects. Once that and the outro song are complete, we'll run the final round of beta testing.
Oh, and here's the new logo:
UPDATE: November 25, 2012THE ALIEN INVASTION STARTS ON NOVEMBER 30!!!After two years and three months in development, and some recent, unexpected hurdles, the game is finally allllmost there. The final round of beta testing is almost over and I'm adding some final touches here and there. So unless we get invaded by aliens, the game will premiere on
Friday, November 30!
Also, my long-time friend, Ellana Dayligaun of the incredibly talented band
Invisible Animals, let me use one of their
otherwoldly songs in the game's outro sequence. The result was MIND-BLOWING!
