robsonsiebel
Robson joined
Game Designer and Programmer, MiniChimera Game Studio
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Hello!
Very happy to finally be able to announce a date for the release of Blackout! The game will be available August 19th, for Windows, Linux and MacOS!
Here's our launch trailer, hope you like it :)
Hello!
The day has finally come when the art is final and I am able to update the old screenshots (and gif!) :)
Right now the only thing left is to fix some small bugs and performance issues on MacOS. And the trailer, which is in the works! If it all goes well, the game should be out really soon. I can hardly believe it, seems like I have been working on this forever (on and off, but for a long stretch of time).
If you work with press or gaming related content on YouTube and are interested in the game, let me know so I can arrange you a review copy ;)
The game will be released first on Itch, but you can also Wishlist it on Steam.
Hello!
I'm glad to announce that we just launched a version of Blackout: The Darkest Night for kindle devices!
The kindle version features the complete story of the game, only missing some mechanics exclusive the game and all the nice looking graphics and animations, of course.
So if you can't wait for the game you can go ahead and get the story on kindle now! We hope to have more news on the game launch soon!
Cheers,
Hello!
It's been a while since the last update on how Blackout is coming along, so I decided to share some details.
The text is finally complete and fully edited. Here are some stats:
Chapter names are redacted to avoid spoilers, since they are basically different locations in the game. There was a 10k words increase since the last time I made a word count, mostly due to additional scenes (and endings) that were added, and also some details added in the editing process.
So what's left now? Well, there's some art still to be finished, and in the meantime there will be a lot of testing and fixing going on. Speaking of art, here's a sneak peek on an unfinished piece.
If you have already played the preview version, you probably know where this will show up ;)
That's it for now! If you are interested in testing the game, get in touch through our discord or send a message here or on twitter @robsonsiebel.
Cheers,
Robson
Hello!
This week I've spent some time working on a crucial part of the game: Flashbacks!
The flashbacks hold some very important story moments, and they have a minigame element associated with them.
There are a total of 7 flashbacks in the game, and you can get all of them in one playthrough, but you can also avoid most of them, depending on what you value the most: the truth or your sanity.
While some flashbacks will reveal a whole picture of a moment, others are part of a bigger moment, and will uncover only one piece of the puzzle.
I have also recorded a video to show what the whole thing looks like in the game. If you want to avoid possible spoilers and go in knowing as little as possible, consider not watching. Remember this is still a work in progress, and some things will change and be more polished in the final version, like the text boxes, sound effects and the color of the puzzle pieces.
That's all for now, remember you can pre-order Blackout on itch.io for a discounted price, or wishlist it on steam!
Cheers o/
On this post, I will write about something very important that we have been working on for a long time: the map of New Wenders!
We're not Bethesda, so we didn't start the game with a map, on the contrary, the idea for the map came in very late, when the story was already finished. More precisely, when we updated the game to widescreen aspect ration.
If you played the preview version on itch, you probably noticed the map is just a placeholder and serves to nothing but aesthetics. But we wanted to make it interactive and something the player can use as a reference for story events.
We ended up removing the "chapter select" screen that is on the preview version. This screen was supposed to appear every time a chapter ended, as a transition to a new location.
But since we now had a map, it made more sense to show the transition through it.
Nothing fancy, the pin just moves from the current location to the new. This will also show up when loading a game, so the player will be able to see all important events from the current playthrough.
The pin show where the player is now. A red dot indicates a location already visited in the current save; A blue dot indicates a location visited in a previous save; A yellow dot indicates a location still unknown.
The player can also access the smaller version of the map at anytime. When he passes the mouse over the points marking the locations, he will see some information like how many passages has he visited and what events happened in each location.
The evens will written in bold if it happened during the current save, and grayed out if it happened in a previous save. If the player never seen experienced the event, it will show as ??????. In a similar way, the visited passages for the location appear in bold, while the known passages from all playthroughs appear grayed out.
This will make it easier (and more interesting) for players trying to see 100% of the passages or events =)
This post is more focused on the map itself, later on I will talk more about New Wenders. What kind of city is it? What kind of people inhabit it? What do they feed on?
See you net time!
Work in progress for an in-game gallery where you'll be able to see the art unlocked throughout the game.
Other than that, I've been spending a good amount of time play-testing and fixing bugs or inconsistencies. Also did some improvements around the saving system, and added quality of life features like automatically continuing the most recent save sage.
Lastly, I've been working on an event system that tracks the most important things that happen at each location, and displays them on the map. This will help the player remember what he has done so far on that play-through, and will also serve as a counter towards completing all important game events. There's still some art work to be done on the map, so hopefully I will be able to show it on the next post.
Hello,
Spent a good amount of time this week with UI stuff like text auto typing, buttons and images appearing smoothly/timely and... settings to turn most of it off if you so desire.
Also added sound effects for UI buttons. Since some or our UI elements resemble real objects, the sound of leather/paper ends up helping a lot with the immersion.
These small touches are not the most exciting thing to implement (or to write about), but they do a very good job of bringing the game alive.
Speaking of that, Ambiance tracks also do wonders. In Blackout, every chapter takes place in a different location, so the track changes accordingly.
Wishlist Blackout on Steam
Pre-order Blackout on Itch.io
Hello!
At first I decided to add keyboard control to make testing easier and faster (also tendinitis), but then I realized it might actually be a better way to play rather than using the mouse.
For the regular gameplay, you can advance pages with the left and right arrow, and make choices with numbers 1 to 5.
The white font on the third choice means this option was already selected on a previous play-through, since the game has many different paths, I thought it would be nice for the player to visualize which options are new to him.
The SPACE key has a different function depending on the context. In most places it will act as a mouse click (advancing a dialog cutscene, maximizing/minimizing an image), but it is also used in the minigames. By the way, if you played the demo version, you will notice that the minigames are now linked to the relevant attributes, so they will be harder or easier depending on the value of your attribute.
Fitness-based mini-game
And of course you can access the Map (M), File (F) and Options (O).
Besides that, I've also started working on polishing some aspects like adding fade in/out and adding some animation to tape-covered text.
"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity" - Edgar Allan Poe
That's it for now, hopefully will have more information on release date soon, for now you can wishlist Blackout on Steam or pre-order on itch.io!
Adding "cutscenes" for some images. Still WIP.
I first used this effect on the teaser trailer, but I liked the effect so much that I decided to add it to the game as well, it brings a nice dramatic effect and also invokes the comic book style =)
Art by the amazing Damsa
Checkout the Blackout demo on itch.io
Wishlist Blackout on steam
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