Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 018

play your games. I'm going to ask in advance that you guys are forgiving and loving and kind to me today and make me feel special and give me all the praise because I feel not great today. I feel um Oh man, I'm I'm trying to remember how it felt during the COVID times, but that fatigue, you know, and that just feeling right here, that's what I'm feeling. So, but I was still wanted to play your games today, so we're going to do it. I'm that loving and I'm that kind and I'm that sacrificial. Okay, so come on in. Welcome. Welcome. We're going to play some really fun games today. I wanted to say a huge thank you. A huge thank you to new students who joined full-time gamedev during the summer sale which lasts for I think seven more days. Um so it's ending here pretty soon. Diego, Marcos, Merrick, Jacob, Caleb, Shauna, Steve, George, Levjin, Myel, and

James, thank you so much for joining the program. And look guys, if you want to join the program and you want to support the podcast, you want to support this channel, it keeps me making videos. It really does guys. Um, having a income like this helps me keep making YouTube content. Um, so yeah, if you want to check it out below, it's 50% off for the summer sale. You're going to get 7 days left to join the program. I believe we have 50 seats left. So, I think we're about halfway through. I'm not sure. I haven't checked the exact numbers, but I think we're about halfway through um the total seats available. So, check it out below. You're also going to get my 2D art programs and my 3D art programs. And then also, I haven't done this. I don't think I don't I don't think I've given away all three of these programs, but I'm also going to give away my YouTube program and just teach you what I've learned. So, what's cool about this program is and all of these programs is that you're learning from an actual game developer who's been published three times. Uh who's made two successful Kickstarter campaigns. Um who's released uh two commercial games on every platform and I'm about to release my

third commercial release on every platform. and then who's also built a a a thriving YouTube channel. So, you're learning from somebody in the trenches. That's what's really cool. It's not like just being taught by somebody who doesn't know what he's talking about. I know what I'm talking about. At least I think I do. I think I've proven that I do. But, uh anyway, check out the link below. You're going to learn not only how to make games in GDAU, Unity, or Unreal, but also 3D or 2D. And then also how to actually make it sustainable, how to make money with a demo, how to pitch it to publishers, you know, how to uh pitch on Kickstarter, uh how to hit the Steam front page. I've done all of this um multiple times and I have I think 4,500 students worldwide. So, if you're a student in the program, let me know in the chat what you think about it. Um and if you're interested, guys, just at least check it out. There's a 30-day money back guarantee, so there's really no risk on your part if you want to check it out. I'll also give you a shout out just like I did with these students here. here. I'll give you a shout out in my next live stream. So, check it out below. And guys, let's go ahead and get

started on these games. Let me go ahead and pull up the chat. I want to have the chat right there. It's right here, but I want it there. Okay. I don't want it here. I want it right here. So, give me just a sec here. Going to pull up the chat. Hey, Ace Hunter, how you doing? Um, Delbone, how you doing, buddy? Come on in, guys. How's everybody doing? How was your weekend, by the way? South.
Was your weekend fun? Did you do fun summer things? Is it Monday? I think it's Monday, right? Okay. All right. Hello, Ace Hunter. Come on in, guys. Come on in. Okay. I'm trying to zoom out here. There we go. There we go. Okay. Okay. Okay. I am so excited to play these games, guys. I'm going to be honest with you. The games you submitted all looked amazing, but I picked this time in particular, I picked the games that I

that I want to play and also games that I would want to make. Um, so let's check out the first one here. What is it? Let's see here. If I go to my description here, let's start with father. Okay. And this is admittedly from the developer. This game is I think they they acknowledge that it it was I don't know if it was inspired by my original game father, but it was definitely they they know about it. They know that I had an old game father. So, it's not like they're unaware of that. And it's not a big deal. I threw the game out. So, they get to name their game whatever they want, right? So, I'm going to go ahead and open this up. This is I think the first time I've played an H.IO game. Um, but I can't find it. Hold on a sec. What? I just had it.

There we go. There it is. Okay. Good grief. All right. Let's open this up here. Oh jeez. Okay. So, if this game is in any way sort of blasphemous or whatever, don't blame me. I didn't make it. Y'all know that I'm a Christian. I I say this out loud. I'm very public about that. But I do want to play people's games. And if they if they want to make a weird blasphemous game, that's on them. But we're going to see what it's like anyway and see if it's actually a good game. Right? That's what we're trying to do here. I don't know if it is, maybe it's not. Um, so I love the graphics here. I think it's great. I love this menu. I think that it doesn't use any of the keyboard. So, you definitely need to do that. The developer watching, you

definitely need to do that. I would also make the highlight a little bit different. Probably this red color just because it's hard to see what's highlighted. Um, menu. It's It's a little chunky and big. It This is what's funny about a lot of indie games. A lot of indie games, including myself, I'm guilty of this, and I I sort of reworked a lot of my UI in the past three weeks. Indies, for some reason, they're it's almost like they're stuck in the Flash era, and all of their UI is really big. So, shrink down the UI. It makes it feel a little bit more professional to have things um small. Uh if you're going to do a tea like this, I would definitely put seraps on it. It looks cheap that there's no seraphs. Um, so put some seraps on it just like the text here. Let's go ahead and get started here.
I kind of love that it just starts.

Can you guys hear everything? Okay.
Talk to your family. What? So, I kind of love that Banjo Kazouie style talking, but it does remove me from the immersion. So, we'll see like what the tone of the game is supposed to be, what the developers aiming for before I critique it.
All right. All right. They don't like me.
Golly, that's loud. Turn it down.

Give me a sec. I'm going to turn it down. Is that better?
Close the door.
Okay, I could sprint. Cool.
Oh, we got a demon. They're cheering. What are you doing? Why are you cheering? That's cool. I like this.
I think some music could really help there. [Music] This is great. Good storytelling.

Yeah, definitely need some music. All right. The the terror of being a father. We all know that feeling. Oh my goodness. Are we inspired by the witch? I think we are. I need to pray with my family. So, the ambience is, I would say, the biggest flaw of this game so far. I think um graphically it's awesome. Everything feels tight and smooth. The storytelling is good, but the ambience, what I mean by that is the sound effects of the world of the of the the tone of the sounds. So, like the birds chirping, it doesn't look like there should be birds chirping. Um, what I think there should be here is obviously the sound of a crackling fire

and then a creepy woods. Like, let me show you guys what I mean by this. This is actually really important. I I would say that I would argue that this is like the most important thing when it comes to these kinds of games to be really, really strict with the tone you're trying to create. So, creepy woods ambience, you just search it on YouTube. Obviously, you don't steal it, but let me show you kind of what I mean here.
I started my degree in 1986 and 30 years later.
Okay, here we go.
You guys ready? Let's take a look. Do you see how important this is? Now, you can hear the birds chirping because I can't turn off the sound. But imagine the birds aren't chirping and all you hear is crickets and a subtle ambient tone with the fire crackling. The fire

crackling is going to give it that feeling of like, oh, we're in the pioneer days, you know? Watch. Let me just throw it throw you here. Fire ambience. And guys, these kind of things are so freaking important. They're so important. I'm not just throwing random crap out. Listen now. Now I'm scared. What's out there? Black Phillip. There's Black Phillip. Live deliciously. That's a great movie. Okay, so there's that tone. Let me turn it up for you guys so you know. So, there's that. Are you guys scared now? Right now, now let me show you what it is.

You see? You see the problem? I'm not scared. In fact, I'm a little confused. Okay, let's keep going. I would definitely get rid of that. Use real voice acting. Come on, it's not too expensive. Imagine this. Let us pray that the Lord may grant us strength for the coming day and not turn his face away from us. Winter is coming. We need to prepare firewood. Hooray. Just to the woods. Please, Caleb, give me give me the option to press space to move forward cuz I'm not c I'm not reading this fast enough. Don't rely on me reading this.
Unless it's voice acted, then you're good.

This looks great. Okay. Sorry, I I couldn't read that cuz I was critiquing it. Sorry. This feels really good. Wow, look at that art. Good color theory here, guys. I like that I could see my body. I'm always a fan of looking at my body. You know what I mean? Teacher said to chop wood. All right, Mr. Caleb. Good. Good sound. I'm trying to break the game. Sorry. Okay. Good. This is awesome. I love this tone. I want to tell you guys about why this is so important to have good UI. This game looks

This game looks amazing, but the UI is really hurting it. So, I'm going to open up Photoshop and show you guys what's really important here. UI can tell publishers and players that this game is cheap. This game is not cheap. I don't think it is. It looks It looks great. But the UI makes it feel like it's made from a college student. So, if I were the developer, if I had a mission, I would use really clean text. So, it says, "Teach your son to chop wood." And I would use a smaller font. I would choose a white in that color of the world. So, it looks like our lightest white is something like this. I I'm brighten up just a little bit. And then we're going to use a saraf font. Something like garam. I like garam.

Let's Let's warm it up a little bit. Actually, give me just a sec, guys. We're going to warm this up just a little. There we go. Um, and we're not going to do caps. Teach your son to chop firewood. Good. Going to do this. We're going to put it right there. Nice and small. Okay. And maybe it's a little confusing to you. So, we're going to do 16 by9 here. Just so you know, I'm not relying on widescreen for some reason or like ultra wide. Let's just do like a 16 by9 here. This is the UI you're supposed to do. Okay, just just trust me. Please trust me. This is great right here. And then you could do a little you could do a line right here like this, right? Something like that. You could do a plus icon or let's say that this is a sort of a cult cult game or like I don't know

what do you call that? A cult symbols. We could use an oult symbol. Let me Google search it really quick. Yeah, we could do something like this. Give me a sec, guys. UI is insanely important with these pixel games. It's so important for you to use something that feels modern and clean with the UI. I don't know why, but I've always thought that a real modern and clean UI can help so much. Okay, we're going to do a tiny little icon here. Look how clean and professional that looks. You see? Um, you could do a pop of color. You could do a pop of color of orange or like red. And when it appears on screen, it's like a makes it feel very um

professional. So, here's what it looks like here. Do you guys see why I did that? There's a tonal uh inongruence with the UI and the world with the pause menu. Same thing. Look, whenever I It's It's funny because like whenever I focus on sound and UI, I feel guilty or something. Like during these live streams, I feel like Thomas, you're just focusing on on the wrong things here, buddy. But the truth is is that it really helps a lot for the players to feel like this game is professional and intentionally made. Um, UI is so crucial. So, I would do something real clean like this. Continue. Options. Quit. And then you could use that same occult symbol as a selection device. Color overlay. I don't know why, but

game developers struggle so much with UI. Like the games look amazing, but the UI is always a struggle. And I don't know why. So yeah, you could do something like that. And then you could have the name of the game right here. Um, what's it called? What are we playing? Father. How did I forget? Father. Yeah, there you go. And I think it was Yeah, it's a Sarah font. Um, and then we Let's just go spread it out. Make it look pretty. There you go. So, that's what I would do for the pause menu. So much more professional. So much more professional. Let me turn my mic up. Sorry, guys. Check one, two, and two. Check one, two, and two. Is that better? All right, let's keep playing. Let's go uh teach Caleb how to chop firewood. I love this environment. It's so pretty. I would put a little E icon to tell me to press E on Jonah. I would also make

that font smaller and I would put it above his head or at least above the cursor. Right now it's right in the center of the screen and it feels strange. Every righteous man must heat up his house somehow, my son. The hand that works is blessed. Oh, let me try again. Every righteous man must heat up his house somehow, son. The hand that works is blessed, and a labor is for the glory of God. Watch, son, how a man should handle an axe. Let your hand grow strong. Strike true. So our home may always be warm under God's roof. Okay. Nice. Now try it yourself, my son. Go, Caleb. Oh, that's not Caleb. Who is that?

So I'm being a dad. give your daughter some guidance. I don't love that reflection there. It's definitely throws me out of the immersion. And that's because nothing in this is specular. There's no normal maps and then suddenly there's a ton of specular and that's strange to me. Um, but let's go find my daughter. Abigail, you know, we don't talk about what happened in the woods.
Yes, father. Forgive me. Only God can forgive. Finish up here and go home to prepare for a prayer. Okay. Um, check on your son's work. That's all. Yes, father. I thought crooked, slanted. The length is uneven. How well do you think this will burn? Ah, it's hastily put together.

splinters. Everything is rushed. Unmethodical. Oh, do you want us to be let without any heat in winter because of your laziness? Do you want your mother to freeze? Then work like a man, not like a child who expects to be praised. Now go help your mother. Maybe she will be more Maybe you will be more useful to her.
Uh, okay. Yeah, like the the clip the things moving between conversations like when when my son goes and he like appears he's like and then he's like it's too jarring even for like a PSX style game. Even the the axe moved a little bit and it felt str it just felt I don't know. It felt unintentional. Um okay, let's keep going. So far so good. Heard the goats into the pen. You have to do everything in this house yourself.

Go get fun. I think a tonal shift like we were talking about where there's horror music playing and you can hear crickets or storm clouds like thunder and stuff. I think that would help this so much because right now I'm not scared. I'm just kind of just doing stuff. If you make me scared and I hear like wolves or coyotes or even like subtle screams, creating that mystery will make me want to keep playing. Imagine like the voice of a of a witch or a woman. I mean, come. It's kind of like the witch. So, I'm just coming up with ideas in that in that vein. But like imagine if you heard like just echoing in the distance and you're like, "What what is that? Okay. Yeah, we need we need to feel some horror. Okay. What am I doing? Close the

pen.
Don't underestimate the value of creaking wood as a sound effect. It creates horror. There are certain horror tropes that never get old. Distant screams, thunder, uh, droning creaking wood. They always do wonders for your horror. Go into the house. [Music] I would be careful. Yeah, I I'm be I'm going to be as loving as I can here. Watch out for A24. Watch out for A24. You're This is a little close. Okay.

I like the cinematic feel here, though. This is really great. I just feel like we're a little too close to to an A24 game here if they made games. All right, let's see if we get it some good horror here because I haven't been scared once yet. And I I feel like I feel like we're supposed to be or at least there should be a lot more tension and there's not. The the visuals are great. It's the It's the ambience that's the problem here. Okay, this is cool. I mean, seriously, I would probably just swap out the goats for pigs, you know? Like, if you want to avoid getting sued by A24, get get some pigs in there, change his name from Caleb. Um,

being a grumpy dad, make him a nice dad. You know, there's a lot of things you could do to just change it so it's not so um so similar, but this is cool. [Music] Okay. Well, now we got some change, so that's good. Our guest today is Caleb, a lover of comfort without amenities.

[Music] H. [Music] [Music] [Music] What? Very interesting. What do we do here? What is going on?

Tabitha, did Abigail not clean properly again?
Why does it smell like rotten meat? I don't smell anything. Besides, we haven't eaten meat for a long time. But I shall clean everything again now. What kind of house is it that you can't bear to stay in?
Jordan wanted me to talk to you. Please don't be too hard on him. He was so upset yesterday.
You know better than me how cruel this world is. If he doesn't learn to be responsible for his actions and take a blow, what will become? What will be what will become of him? He's still a child. At his age, my father was beating me to a pulp for the slightest offense. And I, mind you, never raised a hand to my son. And you blame me for being cruel. I'll talk to him like a father to a son. I would just say uh uh manto man.
Thank you, Caleb. Okay.

Okay. Sorry. I got to move forward here. There's a lot of games to play, but I don't want to skip too much. I know it's a story game. Find the knife. Oo, a pretty apple. Okay, so so far I think the visuals of this game are rock solid. The dialogue is good. Um, we talked about ambience, we talked about tone. Uh, there's one final thing that I would mention here to to really make sure that this game I mean it's I think it's a solid game. I really do. One thing that I would do is I would I talked about this a million times, but I would make sure that you really g me a few good scares or something to

to start this off and create some very strong mystery. Okay. um something like it's the easiest mystery to solve or the easiest mystery to interject in your game is where am I? Who am I? Or where are they? How did I get here? Some kind of mystery to drive me through the story. Because right now, right now there's no driving through line. There's nothing in this that I'm like, "Oh, I got to find out the answer, right?" Um, so I would just try and figure out a way to put that sort of mysterious black box into the the the beginning of this, some mystery that's hidden from me so I know that I can go solve it, right? So,

overall, uh, the the the graphics are top tier. I love these graphics. I think they're great. Great work to the developer. I think it's solid. Um, throw in some fixes to that UI. And you could even do this, by the way. Have it come forward to the to the right when you select it. All right. Let's go ahead and play the next game. The next game is Dead Thrash. Let's take a look. And don't vote for any games yet, guys. Um, don't vote for any games yet. All right. And by the way, just remember that this live stream is sponsored by my course, Fulltime GameDev. If you want to get 50% off, but also my 2D art program, my 3D art program, and my YouTube program, which by the way is one of the biggest sales I've done, check it out below. You have 7 days left. And it this is real,

by the way. It is truly 7 days left. It's not some fake timer. Okay, so for some reason, we're getting a weird size issue. Oh, you can't even see it, can you? [Music] Let's try again. Hey Thomas, I can't find the um development where of Poison Tail, the live stream uh development streams of Poison Tail. I made all those private. I have a problem where I make things private all the time. It's probably some shame or something. I feel shame all the time. Okay, so for some reason, guys, we're getting some issues here. Let me see if I can

fix this for you because I don't know what's going on here. This is something the developer needs to resolve. Uh, so the developer knows I'm doing a display capture right now, not game capture. So, make sure your game works on display capture because a lot of develop a a lot of streamers, they want to be able to capture their full display. Um, all right. Let's turn on game capture here and see if we can fix this. Hit play one more time here. Oh my word. I'm not gonna be able to play this. Excuse me, guys. Capture specific window. Dead thrash. Cool. What in the world? There we go. So, I would I would fix that if I was a developer for sure. Okay. Give me a click sound.

Why do developers put things so close to margins? Shift that over, man. So that's it's a give make the margin margins equal for the logo. The logo should be like right here. Okay. Let's go ahead and hit play. Whoa. Okay. Years into brutal lockdown once thriving city lies in ruins. Abandoned by its government, overrun by vicious, mindless infected. Those left behind are treated as human waste. Discarded in a world that can no longer care. I wish that we you would fade in. move me through the story because this is so this is a lot. Um, the city now decaying shell. So you could move to this frame here full screen and then fade in the text. The city now a decaying shell is littered. Blah blah blah. The government enforces the quarantine with ruthless precision. Blah blah blah. They want to control the outbreak, but the true mission lies deeper beneath the

ruins of the city. Something far more dangerous waits to be secured or unleashed. Okay, third floor movement. They said the quarantine was for our safety, but safety doesn't look like burning bodies in the street. The government doesn't care about survivors. To them, we're just loose ends to tie up before the secrets get get out on me. Keep it quiet until we confirm. If they're armed, drop them. If they're infected, torch them. Above ground, it's chaos. Below, it's hell. But I know every crack, every tunnel. This every tunnel, this city won't let me go without a fight. We got a lot of text here. Um or a lot of exposition. This is the door. Get in position. Let me see if they like what's behind door number one. Spoiler. It's me. Catch this. I'll take it. Oh sh. Okay. If this is all they've got, they're in

trouble. Time to move on. More will come. Okay. So, you know, man, was any of that necessary? Yeah, we don't need any of that. Get rid of that. Start me here. And just have a a poster that says quarantined. Oh, look. We already have one. So, that was completely unnecessary. Uh, just just tell me that like guys, if it's stuff that isn't character driven, you don't need a cut scene. I think that's the rule of thumb for me. If you're not trying to create strong character connection to to individual characters with faces and moving mouths and eyebrows shifting and smirking and sniffing and crying and coughing. If you don't have that in your cutscene, you don't probably need the cut scene. You

could probably just put it in the game because cut scenes are great because they're a cheap way to create an emotional connection. [Music] This looks great, by the way. I really like it. Music's good, too. [Music] Look, now we know there's a lock down. That's all you had to do. So, we don't need that cut scene. Okay. [Music] I kind of like that the characters are like I think they're photographs. Cool.

Man, I do wonder what this would feel like. Yeah, the menu definitely doesn't match the gameplay. I wonder what it would be like with better sound and music because I think the music is kind of a it's too much for me. But that's just me. Like, let's see here. Let's find some good good music. It'll probably get me copyright struck, but um give me a sec here. No, don't turn on a Lavine Thomas. Don't tell them that that's your guilty pleasure. Here, let me open it up Spotify here. Let's find some more ambient stuff and see what we get. because this game the visuals look really dark and and ambient and the music doesn't feel that way. So I would consider this.

Just feel like this would solve a lot of your problems. [Music] So, it feels like there's not a lot of feedback when it comes to the sound of your bullets. Okay. [Music] Like I want to hear, [Music] well, that sounds great. So, like I said at the previous live stream or the previous um let's see what another song sounds like. Give me a sec here. There's another one. This is RE4, by the way, the remaster or the remake.

Uh where where's the the sound of the ambience? Creaking trees. I agree that it's it's more shooter oriented, but I think that this game feels like a story game. The way I just got a bunch of story exposition and the fog and the lighting makes it feel more like a survival horror game. I understand that it's got that that Doom vibe or Duke Nukem, but I think it would be beneficial to have it more like this. We
got an eyewall here. Who's shooting me? Yeah, it's just got a serious tone to it. I feel like more serious music makes sense. Now, it doesn't mean that you couldn't

do something that's more rhythmic. Give me some space. So, more ambient with subtle lowass rhythmic um Half-Lifeesque uh percussion I think is the solution here. And give me some some voices for the characters. He's over there. Get him. Uh, give me some telegraphing of some kind that we've got a um a guy with a gun. So, if I've got a guy up here with a gun, maybe up here somewhere. Let's say there's there's probably a guy with a gun up here. Give me that cocking sound so I know. Yeah, I need to hear a [ __ ]

so I know what's coming, right? Okay, so okay, good. There we go. Uh-oh. So, let's go ahead and skip all this. So, we're forced to watch the cut scene after we die, which is kind of a problem. Um, let's turn the music back on so that we can get an idea of if the music is actually the problem. It might not be. Let me turn it back up. Nope, that's swaying. Where was it? There we go. Let's go to 50. Footstep sounds. We always want to have footstep sounds, right? Yeah. This menu is not matching the game.

Don't get me wrong, the music's cool. I just don't know if it matches the tone of the game. Just saying. It's got some uh Carpenter Brute vibes, [Music] which I love. Carpenter. [Music] Here's the thing and the developers watching. This is something that I've struggled with as well. So my my opinion is something that I've I've been for myself and for my game. And I've been sort of coming up with this strategy for the last 3 years, which is music should be a way to reward the player or inform them of a beat shift or a change of tone.

It's okay to have this music playing, but let's wait, you know, wait until I get to a different spot in the level and have this music fade in. So, get, you know, get me a little nervous. give me some weird horror ambience. And then let's say I get over here and there's like two new gun guys and it's the first time I've encountered like say two or three gun guys. Then you start playing this music. I don't think the synth is the problem. Synth is fine. Um, this has a very John Carpenter feel to it. And John Carpenters is all synth, you know, or a lot of it. Actually, I think all of it is synth. Yeah, there's no hammer swing sound. I mean, there is one, but it's super

quiet. [Music] I think this game could really benefit from from some lighting. So, let me show you what I mean. Right now, all we have is ambient lighting. It's not even directional. Is ambient lighting. A single color ambient light with no shadows. So, let me let me show you guys why. Okay, we finally got a light. Okay, so we have lighting here. It looks like it's Is this a custom engine? I feel like this is a custom engine because that lighting right there is very interesting how it's a lighting the the web. Um, but yeah, like let me show you guys an example here of how lighting can help or at least shadows. So, if I take this I don't even think I

take a screenshot. Hold on. If I take this here, if we wanted to, we could make this feel a lot more ambient. Um, I'll show you after we play. We'll play a little bit more. I don't want to, you know, not play this game and only do color changes or lighting changes. So, give me a sec here. So, I know I'm going backwards. Drive slowly. I'm just looking at the signage and stuff. Listen, if the developer feels like the the footstep sounds are so annoying that they need to put something in the options menu, then I would make the the footstep sounds randomized. So, just sort through an array of like six or seven footstep sounds. They don't even have to be dependent on the ground.

They could be a singular generic universal set of sounds. [Music] But I love the art. I think the art is great. It feels really good. Okay, I'm stuck there. [Music] Get some health. Oh, so yeah, there's voices. Actually, you just could barely hear them. So, be confident, you know, really make those voices loud. He's over here. Get him. [Music] Where's my gun? Okay,

I think it's good. Um, I think it's fine. Uh, we'll talk about the the visuals here in a sec. Let me pull up the visuals if I could show it to you guys. All right. So, let's see here. Shadows just make a big difference, you know. Um, if you had, let's say, a shadow like this, it just makes a big difference. And I think it's okay to use shadows with these more retro games just to modernize them a little bit. Something like that could make it look really cool. Um, but yeah, that's about all I have to say. I think the visuals are great. I think that I'm not really motivated as a player. Um, yeah, I'm not really motivated. If you

could tell me like there's a I remember you told me the developer in the in the cut scene said something like there's something underground or something. Um, so yeah, I I don't know if it's um that's about all I have to say. I think I do like the visuals, though. I I think tonally with the music, though. I think there could be some music fixes, though. All right, let's open up the next game. Do not vote yet. We're going to go to the last game here. I'm going to go potty. Once we go potty, then we will um once I go potty, we'll go to the next game because I've been drinking this water and I actually feel a lot better. So, that's good. Um so, we'll move on to the next game and then we'll vote. I'll be back in 30 seconds. Well, that I can't do it that fast. Five minutes.

All right, I went PP. I feel great. Much better now. Um, the next game we're going to play, this is the last one, is called Crypt Robbery. Let's go. And guys, remember what the

goal of this live stream is. It's not to critique games. It's to offer constructive constructive critique. So, we'll offer up a good conclusion for all the games. We'll do a vote and all of that, but let's do constructive criticism here because guys, all of us know this. All of us, if you're making games, um, you know, this is hard. It's real hard. It's really hard to make games and so let's be encouraging and kind. Is that a old No, that's Unity 6. Okay. I don't know what that said. The G game contains dark scenes, jump scares, blah blah blah. Okay. Okay. I don't like all the disclaimers. That was my first inclination. It's like

you don't have to tell me everything I need to feel. Uh just trust me, you know, trust the player. Okay, we have some color theory issues. Really, really big color theory issues here. Let me show you what I mean. Uh there are like three different color theories within this one menu. Um there's a lot going on. I'm going to open up Photoshop to show you why this is so important. And this is so hopefully going to hopefully all of you watching can apply what we're saying here to every aspect of your game, not just the UI. So, let me show you guys really quick what my eye saw immediately when I opened this menu. I saw this. I saw this. That red is like saying, "I'm terrified of this game. I'm terrified of what you think about this game." That's what that red says. It's an insecure color.

Right. Just Just put it just tell me at the beginning and say there's no saves. Thanks for playing. So, this is the game's color. Okay. And then finally, this one. Um, we've got that grayish blue right there. I don't feel like that's color theory. I feel like that's random. I feel like that's a random series of colors. Now, let's get rid of the red here. because that's a disclaimer. I'm going to just remove it and let's talk really quickly about how we can make this look a little bit more interesting. First off, that is low resolution. This is high resolution. You made that too big. So, let's shrink that down. Makes it look cheap.

Okay, I'm going to do this. And then I'm going to shrink it down like this. And then fill that in. And I'm going to grab all of those. Go. And we're going to do less is more, baby. Less is more. Oh, already looks so much better. I'm matching that color to this color. Okay, that green and blue. What are we doing? You know, why do we got so many different colors here? Let's take that blue out. Just desaturated. Let's take some of the green out, the scyans. Okay, good. And then I'm going to go ahead and adjust the hue

so that it's either the the That's good, actually. Now, you could do a pop. You could do a pop like that, right? You could do something like that. But I would prefer to keep it the same tone as that cream color. Something like this. It's hard to do because I can't capture that because it's so skumorphic. That blue looks really good actually. Yep. So now what we've got is just like three different colors. We've got the cream, we've got this blue, and then we've got this black and white cream, which is basically the cream. So that's what I would do. But right now, what I'm looking at is a lot of different hues, right?

All right, let's see. The highlight color is not strong enough. It's It's hard to see. So, I would I would make it a little bit more vibrant and give me a sound. All right, let's play story. Lot of different fonts going on. Well, maybe there's only two, but they don't match. Sorry. I don't want to be too annoying here, guys, but I want to show you. There's so many different fonts going on. One, two, three. two max four different fonts. Oh, I love that. You guys know I love the South. Your name is Paul. You're a thief who steals at the request of other people.

This time, you intend to rob tombs. More specifically, you will be looking for three artifacts hidden in some underground blah blah blah. You think graves are the easiest to rob because the dead don't care about the things they were buried with. Don't trust the reader. Do not trust the reader cuz look, I just talked. I'm in a live stream and wait. Okay, let's read. But oh, don't trust the reader. Let them press space. Also, your depth of field filter here is blurring out what's in focus. More fonts. This is wild. Lot of fonts. Another font. Whoa. My head is on like a bobble head.

Very, very slidy. Another font.
It's too dark. I should take the lamp from the car trailer.
Okay, let me turn this up. Too dark. The voice acting sounds like AI voice. I would hire somebody eventually to do it.
Good. The lamp is full of oil.
Okay, you're going to have to tell me how to go into my inventory. This is wild. Lot of sort of a dump of instructions here. Okay. How do I use it?

There we go. I had to double click it. Looks good though. This looks like uh It looks like Sorry guys. Let's see here. My Zen is making me cough. I hope I can pull those planks. Well, that feels good. I'm so sorry, guys. Whoa. Just Just disable the collider for those. Uh that's the same is true in We Harvest Shadows. The doors once you open them, the collider's gone and so you're not pushed.

The frog sound makes me feel like I'm in a swamp or it's like a swallow or something. I would uh I would I wouldn't have any any life any sounds of life unless it's a crow. Get rid of it. Just say it's locked. Okay. Give me something quick. You know you you're you got to capture my attention. You got to give me something here. Jump scare. Something goes and runs across something. That's cool. It follows gravity. It's very draggy though. I would reduce the drag on that. It

feels like I'm like made of like or like I'm on the moon or something. The game is very slow. It's like which is fine. It's just it's it feels draggy. Really draggy. some glass lamps with lit candles inside. These help spirits of the dead find their way back. So, you'll notice that the light source is not colored the same as the um that lantern or that blue candle thing. Why can't I take screenshots? But if we take this screenshot here, I don't know why, but I can't take screenshots.

I can't take a screenshot. There we go. Okay, let me show you why this is important. You could create a tonal shift to make it feel like it's not all just gray. Now, I'm not saying you have to do this, but if you were to create a blue light right here, it could make it feel very ambient, very interesting. Something like that. It could feel really interesting. Push the slab. Okay. Give me some feedback with sound.

Okay. So, so far nothing interesting has happened. We've got a frog here. But nothing has really interest nothing interesting has happened. And I'm also not particularly scared because I don't know what what the threat could be. Um, so give me give me an idea of what the threat could be.
Find the entrance to the crypt,
but open the doors.
Man, this I can find around here.
Got jacko'lanterns in a in a graveyard. All right, we got to go find a key. If you want to submit your game, follow me on Twitter,

x.comomasbrushdev. And um now I'm not saying this is true. I'm not saying this is true of this game. it. I could be wrong, but because of the discrepancy of the UI, it feels like an asset flip game. It feels assety. Lot of assets. So, I got to find a key. And I'm super lost. So, I would say make this part a little easier. Give me a quick reward. just for the beginning of the game.

Okay. Did anybody see the key? Maybe there's a key under this grave slab, but it's blocked. Okay. So, there's kind of like that. That was tough. I I didn't know that these could be pressed, but maybe that's just me. I need to know what order they can be pressed. Okay. So, what am I looking for? I'm looking for skull and crossbones, some faces, an eye. [Music] Cross. Cross. Okay.

Who's there?
All right. So, we got something. That was what we needed a little bit. Wasn't particularly scary, though.
I think the words sprayed here are important.
Okay, let's write this down. The eye, the bird, the kid, blank, the old man, and blank. Yeah. So, there's no real hook here or like I'm not curious about anything. There's nothing that makes me wonder.
Someone wealthy was probably buried here.
How do we solve that? Let's think about it. I don't care. I don't care about who I am. I don't care where I am. I don't know what I'm looking for or why I'm

here. Um, one of the solutions could be that um, your child goes missing or your child is sick and you need the money and a mysterious voice calls you on the phone and says, "Um, there's a a corpse that I need you to to find for me and if you get the corpse, I'll give you uh a million bucks." And so you have a motive, right? Another another thing you could do is um this place is in the middle of nowhere and you say it. You say it's in the middle of Louisiana and you were blindfolded and you were taken here by this mysterious figure. And he says, "You're not allowed to know where you are." And that's this really fun um storytelling

device where you can make us confused along with the protagonist. Where am I? Where did he take me? Where is this place? And then you hear a voice and you're like, "Who's there? Help me. Help me. Help me. Just give me something, a direction." Okay, the eye. Really hard to see those. I would make it clear. Okay, the eye. The bird, the kid, skull and crossbones, the old man, and then another blank. Okay. Hi, the bird. The kid.

We'll do this one. The soldier. What? Okay. I the bird. That's the That's the soldier. the kid blank the death the old man and then the soldier. So that didn't work. Um, the old man, I'm sorry, the soldier. The old man blank. Can you guys scrub back in time and see what it is? The eye,

the bird, [Music] the kid, blank. So, we're going to do the soldier, the old man, and then we'll do death. Okay. Some reason it worked that time. Okay. Got the key. Did I do it wrong the second time? Okay. So, let's see here. Yeah, I think it's just too well lit. It just feels so lit. So, I'm not very scared. All right.

Is it this one? So, there's two locks. Neither of them open with the key. Maybe I have to use the key. Let's open up my t uh my interface. Trying to insert it. What? It's a little confusing. I don't know why I'm doing that either. I can't insert it. I'm going to tab and I'm doing this. What? That's how you use it. No.

If anybody has any ideas what I'm missing there. Whoa, that's an asset. Yeah, we got to get rid of that. Okay. Key, you know, so I don't know what I'm doing wrong there. So, how are we rating interest in this game? This is for the developer to know. One is I'm I'm not interested at all. 10 is I'm super interested. I want to know what's going to happen.

One is I I'm not interested at all. 10 is I'm super interested. So, rate it one to 10. This is for the developer to know because this really matters. If I if the player is not interested or they're not engaged, they're not going to keep playing and they'll quit a demo and they won't even think about it. You know, two to three. Yeah. I don't know why that key is not working. It's broken, I think.
Perfect.
What? Why did he say perfect?

I'm going to try one more time. Maybe that did it. him saying perfect. Not sure. All right, guys. Is I don't know what's going on there. Yeah, that we got in a glitch or something. Okay, go ahead and click the link below, guys, to get voting. We're ready to vote on the games. Um, vote on your favorite game. It's that simple. Um, I'll do a quick recap as you guys click

the link below in the description. And I'll give I'll do a quick recap for um to give an idea of my thoughts on the games. The first game was I already forgot. Uh was it Deadash? No. No, it was Father. Father had really great story. The story was nice. The graphics were my favorite part. It was lacking ambience. It when it comes to ambient sound and music, it was lacking that. I felt like it was very linear, like I didn't feel like I had any control over anything. Um, it was just like go to area, press E, go to area, press E, go to area, press E. But the graphics were great. I would also be worried about infringing on A24 storytelling with the witch. I would change that up. I appreciated the weirdness of it and giving me these weird dreams and flashbacks and flash forwards. That was really strange.

Uh, Dead Thrash was good. I felt like the sound was really weak, but the graphics were really nice. I liked the graphics. Crypt Robbery felt very asset. Um, and it didn't have the UI was all over the place, which to me was an an indication that this was a a very asset driven game because there's probably a lot of UI assets that were used in this game that were not reskinned. So, it felt very inongruent. It also bugged out on me. I think the key also starting a horror walking sim with a key lock puzzle is a bad idea. at least give me something unique and new and different. Um, tell me some really interesting story, like really get me engaged. Whether it's the isai, is it the isaya uh tool that you could use to make me wonder where I am? Say, where is this

place? What where am I? Who am I? Or tell me that I'm trying to get something or achieve something. Um, give me a motive. All right, let's go ahead and take a look at the uh let's go ahead and take a look at the the uh votes. And by the way, before we do that, one final sponsored ad read here. Thankful to all these students for joining full-time gamedev during the sale event. If you want to learn from somebody who's actually in the trenches making indie games, I'm on my third commercial released uh game. It's called Twisted Tower. I'm also published for my third time by a publisher. This my publisher I'm working with now is 3D Realms. If you want to learn how to get a publisher or how to get a Kickstarter campaign funded, I've done that multiple times. If you want to learn how to make a game in GDAU in Unity or Unreal, you could take your pick. This program is for you. If you want to learn how to hit the Steam front page and market your game, this program is for you. It's 50%

off for the summer sale. Seven days left. I think there's 50 seats left. Um, it could be a little bit more than that. I'm not sure exactly how many are left. You also get 2D art Pro and 3D Art Pro and my YouTube course completely free, but only for the sale event. This is probably my biggest sale, I think, ever, but at bare minimum, it's my biggest sale this year. And if you're a student, let me know what you think about the program in the chat. It's a great program. Got some really cool reviews here from people who went full-time. I mean, that's pretty sweet, right? Chris Stair went full-time. Andre Bart and Everflux, they went full-time and all these other fellas here as well. So, check it out below. Now, let's go ahead and take a look at the straw poll. Let's see here.

Sorry, I got to open it up here. I don't know where I went. Okay, I'm going to make a guess really quick. Close your eyes, Thomas. Okay, I didn't see it. I swear. My guess is Father One, then it was Dreadnot. Is that what it was called? And then the grave robbing game. So that's my suspicion. Father, dread, thrash, and then crypt robbery. So let's take a look. Yep, there you go. Now we know. So father, you're on the right track. I think um I think you need to get that game up on Steam um because it's going to get some good wish lists. I think it's very interesting. Uh, Dead Thrash has some work to do and then Cry Robbery has some polish to do, especially with the UI.

All right, that was a lot of fun. That was a lot of fun. Thanks for hanging out, guys. I love you