Gibbous - A Cthulhu Adventure

Started by Mr Underhill, Wed 17/12/2014 10:39:56

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Mr Underhill

Hey everyone, and welcome to a shameless self-plugging thread about this game we're making called Gibbous.



Gibbous is a classic 2d point and click adventure, and yes it's a Lucas Arts-like game. It also is, as the subtitle so unsubtle-y gives it away, a loving spoof of everything Lovecraftian, and then some.

The Story

You get to play as two characters (well, technically three):

Don R. Ketype



Grizzled, jaded badass private detective Ketype is hired by mysterious patrons to seek out the dreaded Necronomicon, and that's how the game starts out. How bad could things go, really? After all, it aint nothin' but a book of some sorts… Don will cater to your noir needs, including describing how the rain pattered down on the concrete like a neurotic jazz band percussionist, sometimes without anyone around to appreciate his poetic similes.

Buzz Kerwan



Buzz is no more than a mild mannered cust... erm, librarian putting in hours at the Miskatonic University Library to pay for his belated tuition (he's in his 30s, but that's cool, man, y'know?). He accidentally stumbles upon the Necronomicon, and also accidentally turns his cat, Kitteh, into a…

Kitteh



...well, a grouch, really. Kitteh is REALLY pissed off at Buzz inadvertently yanking her from her serene, illuminated state - everyone knows cats are buddhists. She doesn't want to worry about stuff like death cults seeking out the very object that personified her; all she wants is to go back to a worry-free life of sleep and kitty treats.  Thus, Buzz and Kitteh set out to find someone, anyone who can help reverse Kitteh's transformation.



Ok, ok, what about Cthulhu?

This story doesn't take place, as you'd probably expect, in Lovecraft's 1920s. It's a tale of an alternative present where death cults are popping out everywhere, all in competition to find the Necronomicon and awaken Cthulhu, a lot of them just to prove that THEY're the real cultists, and the rest are just a bunch of posers.

About the game...

As I mentioned before, we're going for that old school point and clicky goodness. All characters are fully animated, mostly frame by frame, but also combined with some cutout animation; all backgrounds are handpainted (which takes up a lot of  time, but that's the way to go as far as we're concerned).

The game will feature all known traits of the genre, and one I'm particularly determined to enforce: almost every possible combination of two items, whether in inventory or in the game world, will result in anywhere from one to five unique responses, so no more doing different actions just to have the same grating line thrown back at you. Of course, that takes a hell of a lot of writing, and makes voice acting a harder goal to reach, but, again, it's something we really don't want to compromise on.

We're developing the game in Unity.

The influences!

Gibbous is a love letter to HP Lovecraft, Tim Schafer, Alfred Hitchcock, Steve Purcell,Ron Gilbert, Karl Pilkington and some other folks. Not that we're big on sending love letters to dead people. 

The team!

The team consists of three people: myself as a writer, character & background artist, secondary animator, game designer and music composer; a main animator who also does sfx and additional music, and a programmer. We're based in Tirgu Mures, Transylvania, Romania.

Coming soon!

Gibbous is expected to have a fully functional vertical slice demo some time this coming spring, and we definitely want to Kickstart the project, since you can probably tell it will take some finances to get a game like this going smoothly.

So that's that, looking forward to your feedback and I'll be happy to  answer any and all of your questions, as long as they're not about programming stuff  or winning lottery numbers.

Dualnames

Looks pretty pretty, dare I say. The color palette is so smooth in my eyes. Keep us posted.
Worked on Strangeland, Primordia, Hob's Barrow, The Cat Lady, Mage's Initiation, Until I Have You, Downfall, Hunie Pop, and every game in the Wadjet Eye Games catalogue (porting)

Gribbler

Isn't this LucasArts font copyrighted? :) The game looks fantastic, btw!

Mr Underhill

Hey guys! Thanks for your kind words :)

@Gribbler: the font used is The Secret Font Of Monkey Island, which from what I can tell is fan-made and freely available. I have no idea if Lucas have any issues with it, I hope we won't find out the hard way! :P Worst come to worst, we'll probably go with a similar, uncopyrighted font. If anyone more law-savvy can enlighten us, I'd highly appreciate it.

BunnyShoggoth

Y'know, that almost made me collapse in awe  :cheesy: A Lovecraftian game with Bill Tiller-ish graphics, just perfect.

This makes me think of Crouch End, a great Lovecraft-inspired story by Stephen King. I really recommend it as a source of inspiration.

Mr Underhill

#5
You're too kind, mr Wolf :) And yes, Bill Tiller is a huge inspiration on the game, his work makes up for the majority of my inspiration wall  :-D.

I have a lot of catching up on the King's stuff to do, so I'm including Crouch End there, yup. At the moment I'm re-reading HP's stuff, I don't know how many people are aware that the game's working title is a play on The Whisperer... Well, folks for some reason seem to think it's a reference to The Last Of Us, so wish me luck as I embark on the search for a better, final title.

Also, here's a gif of random Buzz animations:


BunnyShoggoth

Quote from: Mr Underhill on Wed 17/12/2014 10:39:56
It's a tale of an alternative present where death cults are popping out everywhere, all in competition to find the Necronomicon and awaken Cthulhu, a lot of them just to prove that THEY're the real cultists, and the rest are just a bunch of posers.



By the way, if you're planning to include secret societies and stuff, I can also recommend A Series of Unfortunate Events. It is set in an alternative pseudo-Gothic present where almost every person is involved in one or another secret organization, with lots of unsolved mysteries, disguises, codes, Macguffins, etc.


Ibispi

#7
It's nice that you have a cat as your character. I'm sure Howie would be happy about that.
Although, if you want to please him more (I know he has long time abandoned us, but maybe to please his ghost :-D ), you would have to change the name of the cat from Kitteh to something like...
(WARNING: Word bellow is considered offensive today, not so much back then though*)
Spoiler
Nigger man
[close]
Seriously, that's how he called his own cat, and that was the name of the cat in The Rats in the Walls.
*although it is a known that he is racist, not because of that, but because of some of his private letters, and certain characters from certain stories...

Anyways, the game looks and sounds cool!  :=
Good luck with your Kickstarter! :)

Mr Underhill

Haha, I was aware of the cat and its name:) Our cat's a girl though - however, I'll definitely have to think of a clever way to have some kind of nod at HP's feline. Thanks for the reminder! Merry Xmas everyone.

Fitz

That looks r'lyeh excellent! A cthulhu-themed game made in Dracula county = mind blown! I love the the super smooth animations, too. Is it hand-drawn or is it vector graphics? If so, what software are you using?
Also, five unique responses per every single action insane -- but in a good way :) I did one per every action for my first game, and it was a hellish amount of work but also lots and lots of fun. So goog luck!

Mr Underhill

:D Thanks Fitz. Yup, that's what we're shooting for with the replies - they will probably be like the character's thoughts, because that would be an insane amount of voicework - we definitely want to voice all the dialogue though.

As for the software, we're using Toon Boom Harmony, and it's really a mix of vector (for frame by frame stuff like mouth, eyes, hands, and the whole character during "special animation" and some bitmaps (Buzz's torso, etc). I cannot recommend Harmony enough, and I promise Toon Boom isn't paying me to advertise :P We've toyed around with lots of animation software, but Toon Boom is THE one. Anyone doing frame by frame animation should give it a whirl (oh, don't worry, it's great for cutout/deform, too). It really helps give your stuff that professional look that is so hard to pull off with flash.

I'm glad people are interested in our gibbous little project, and can't wait for the holidays to be over to start to work on it again! Woo! :-D

Fitz

Oh, will have to look into Harmony, then. I did use vector graphics in a game once, but I did that in Inkscape -- which, while great in its own way, is not animation software and lacks certain useful functionalities, such as remembering user-defined pivot points (always restores it to the center point of the polygon), etc. I want to do some more complex stuff with one of my future projects. Anything else you could recommend for a semi-noob? Does Harmony have a time-limited trial version I could take for a test-drive?

Oh, and also, I love the name Don R. Ketype :)

Mandle

Quote from: Mr Underhill on Thu 18/12/2014 21:17:01
I don't know how many people are aware that the game's working title is a play on The Whisperer... Well, folks for some reason seem to think it's a reference to The Last Of Us, so wish me luck as I embark on the search for a better, final title.

Pacman's Model?

Mr Underhill

#13
@Fitz: Harmony is the professional stuff, it includes network features, but alas it has no demo. However, you can check out the TB Animate and TB Studio trials. If I remember correctly, the first one is closest to Harmony, while the second is a bit more basic and beginner friendly. Anyway, just try out the pencil and brush and you'll see what I'm talking about :) Also, there's the peg-system, which is the equivalent of flash's movie clips - but way more kickass, but I don't remeber which of the two has it. Again, we've moved on from flash to toon boom 2 years ago and, animation-wise, it's like going from prehistoric times into the space age.

Anyway, I think Harmony is a lot more expensive and it's mainly aimed at bigger sized teams (we bought it when there were 14 of us in the team), I hear the other versions are p good too.

@Mandle As for the game, I'm crunching hard on finding a name (why'd Pacman have to be copyrighted? Pun lover myself, too, we gotta stick together 'cause the world hates us!), so keep your fingers crossed for me plz. So far the one I'm leaning towards is "Gibbous", since it's short and not in too much use, I presume, what do you guys think?

Mr Underhill

Hey everyone! Happy 2015 and all that good stuff!

Thought I'd drop by and share another gif with you - this one's one of the unique animations that'll play when some puzzles are solved. Here's Kitteh fetching something for you:



(Actual object fetched not pictured for reasons of non-spoilerationing).

Well, back to animating! Cheers

arj0n


CaptainD

Lovely animations Mr Baggins... erm I mean Mr Underhill! :P

So nice, in fact, that I've posted them.  Looking good!
 

Mr Underhill

Thanks,Arj0n!

Captain D, we are so grateful for the exposure! I feel kind of stupid for not having a site or a fb page up yet, but it's all on not having had a final game yet. I'll post the relevant urls here as soon as they're up so you can update that post. Many thanks, again! We're thrilled to be featured, and I think it's our first, so there ya go, excluuusiiive! 8-):)

CaptainD

No worries - feel free to PM me anything interesting too! :-D

I really like the look of your game.  I actually had managed not to see this thread before!
 

Mr Underhill

You know what the peons in Warcraft 2 say, work work work! Here's a rough animation gif of a character you'll be meeting in the demo.


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