Since I meet Jordi (our game designer) and from the very first day of working together, I tried to making him aware of my concerns about the puzzle design. Before hiring him I’ve been reading so much about the common mistakes some people did in past point and click games and I want this one to be perfect. The puzzles need: 1.       Clear objective, the player needs to know in every single moment what is the reason he’s [...]

Important post today! It’s such a pity that nobody is reading this yet. I’m going to make a recap about all the points of the game development progress that we achieved so far: 1.       Story base line final version – Done 2.       Character definition and specification – Done 3.       Locations early concepts – Done 4.       Map of the Town and the outside area – Done 5.       Puzzle list – Done So finally we will start programing, animating and illustrating this game. It’s [...]

Without unveiling or spoiling the plot, we can tell you that the game will happen somewhere between the 40s and the 50s … so this is really interesting and graphically really enriching… but it has a major trouble… none of the team members where alive back then, so we need to check a lot of old pictures and consult some Ouija technicians in order to get our facts straight. After collecting a whole lot of ideas we [...]

We finally got two of the most important parts of the team, background artist and game designer. After a lot of trials and setback we decided to hire a really good background artist with a lot of experience in point and click adventure games to give this story the look it deserves. One of the fists tasks of the game designer will be catching up with the story, the characters, the puzzles and all the existing ideas [...]

Well, we got really familiar with the landscapes and locations, and we narrowed down the scenes. Now the number is more realistic and achievable for a tiny team like ours. It’s our first game, we’ll learn a lot from it, and hopefully the next one will be even better. We are putting a lot of effort in making every single detail perfect. The story couldn’t be more awesome, detailed, and full of surprises and highly elaborated characters. [...]

Today I was reading this post written by nobody else than the man, the legend, the boss.. Ron Gilbert (https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck) If you intend to do something good or at least decent, you listen to the guy who created the Monkey Island. After reading the interesting post, one thing got stuck in my head more than others - the “Backwards Puzzles”. Before finding this post I had already been reading a lot about how you must use clear [...]

The game is starting to shape pretty well up with all the concept art almost ready. Huge amounts of digital ink and brain juice have been spent and squeezed during the past weeks, in order to transfer the spirit of the story and the script to the characters and scenarios. So far, the early concepts are looking quite awesome, and we are really excited about what’s going to come out of here. Honestly we can’t wait to [...]

I would like to introduce you all our 2D character artist (and acting concept artist) David Peña. His talent left everyone here speechless, he just started to bring life to the huge list of characters of “3 Minutes to Midnight” (yes in case you noticed, the game title is no longer “working title” we finally have a name). We’ll start sharing some concepts and ideas soon. Again if you have any suggestions or comments please don’t hesitate to [...]

We are hiring! (Again!) At this point of the project, and still with a lot of areas pending to be specified and clarified, we must stop a little bit and focus, again, on the hiring process. We need to fill the following positions (in case you are interested). Background and 2D environment artist, 2D character artist, Unity 3D programmer, Game Designer, Script writer, 2D animation artist (Spine). Apart from the obvious expertise of each position, it’s a [...]

Someone once said: "Life is a journey, where you are always learning until you die." While starting the new hiring process, with a bit more experience this time, I’m working into improving the story. I’ve been really cautious, making sure the plot unveils itself in the most surprising way for the player. The more puzzles you solve, the more plot you unveil, and the more fun you’ll have. For the first time in this kind of video [...]

It’s not all fun and games, folks, not everybody loves Point and Click Adventure Games, and that’s a fact and a pity. It’s not a problem as long as this kind of people are not a part of your main team to bring this project to life. So today we suffered our first setback having to rehire the whole team. Lesson learned, next time hire a team that LOVES this kind of games and wants to make [...]

After finishing the main story in depth, I’ve started working on the puzzles. At this stage, puzzles from chapter 1 and chapter 2 are finished (you can take a look at the spoiler-free image I attached). The game has 5 chapters and at this rhythm, it will end up having more than a 100 puzzles in total. For me it’s really important that every single one of them has a good sign-posting, correct feedback, right mechanics, appropriate [...]

The Copyright office gave my story a green light! Now we can finally start developing the basic story line more deeply. So far we can share with you that this video game takes place somewhere in New Mexico, USA. Even the year of the story is not completely clear, all we know is that it's set in the 40s-50s. One long night, tons of puzzles, more than 34 secondary characters (SPOILER ALERT: who will turn out not [...]

I keep working on the Project Specification, one of the very first steps has been choosing an Engine to program the game. Since my coding ability is quite limited, I decided to use (Unity 3D). I have also decided that the game should be available first in Windows, Mac and Linux, and later on PS4, Switch and Xbox. I started early conversation with Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft in order to get the Developer Kits to make the [...]

Stardate 20170202. No news yet from the Copyright office. In the meanwhile we are working on the early concepts of the main character. Too many unknown details at this point of the project, but what’s clear so far is that her name will be Betty, and that she will be a kick-ass! If you want, take a look at the early concepts. Any suggestions will be welocome, kindly ignored, but welcome nonetheless.

Great news everyone! The story is finally finished, after several weeks of work and huge a amount of coffee and energy drinks, this epic story of biblical proportions (8 pages or so) is ready to be registered. The base storyline of “Title unknown – work in progress” is finally finished and on its way to get copyrighted. Too early to share details, but we can finally start working on other parts of the game. [...]

Myself, like many others, grew up playing some (or most) of the point and click adventure games there were. In my particular case, my dad always worked in IT related jobs, so his friends and himself used to spend all his salary (or the part their wives allowed them to) in videogames. So as you can imagine, my childhood was full of videogames with almost a new one every week. Ah, those where the days… anyhow, that [...]

Every great company needs a great name. And when you have to pick your own one, it can take days… weeks… centuries! A little piece of advice, if you ever find yourself in this kind of situation, you’ll find out that in most cases, whenever you think of the “coolest one ever™”, somebody else got that idea first, so… after a lot of thinking and drinking… from now on our company shall be known as “Scarecrow Studio”. [...]

A day to remember. Stepping into the new office. It used to be a garage, and we all know that great things come from companies that take their first steps inside garages. Also, it’s always very convenient to have a place to park your car in a neighborhood like this. The new office, at this point, is quite empty and quiet and lonely. But I’m sure it will improve drastically in the upcoming months. The office looks [...]

Please be welcomed to the development blog! Believe it or not, this is our very first post, and since no one knows about us yet, I could write here whatever and wouldn’t mind, probably it’s only going to be read by myself and other team members (whenever we hire them), or family members (Hi, Mom!). Anyway if you bother to dig so deep in our blog to find this first post and read it… maybe you have [...]