Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 040

It's my favorite part of the day. [Music] We're going to play your games today. And the goal the goal always with these live streams is to discourage you, make you want to quit, make you hate yourself. If I could do that I've done my job. So we're going to play your games and we're going to see how terrible they actually are. Obviously I'm kidding. The goal is for you guys to get encouragement and to encourage one another because making games is tough and making good games is tough, believe me. It's hard for me to make good games. It's always been hard for me to make good games. Regardless of how they turned out, the process to get to a good game is incredibly difficult. One of the best ways to figure out if your game is good or not is to have people play it. So I'm going to play it and everyone's going to play it with me, right? In the chat and we're going to offer feedback to three

games that we're going to play today. Let me light this candle and get the vibes right. You guys know I like candles. Oh, look at those vibes. Get rid of that logo. All right, you guys ready come on in? Come on in. Check one two, one two. How's everyone doing today? And I want to say a huge huge thank you. Massive thank you to Nathan, Austin, Michael, Ryan, Thomas, Jan, Jack, Leandro, Mark, I'm sorry, burping here. Gavin, David, Seguy guy, Samuel, Junaid, Remy R, and Jonathan M, and Brock, and Ian. Wow. Wow, lots of people enrolled in full-time game dev, which is my massive program. Uh a lot of people enrolled over the weekend um during the New Year's sale. The New Year's sale ends in two days. As you can see by this wonderful beautiful timer here. It ends in two days. After this, I'm not going to have a big sale for a while. Uh Black Friday and New Year's are

usually my biggest sales. So please enroll below if you're interested and you want a course that's going to take you from point A to point Z and it's taught by an actual indie game developer. I'm currently in the trenches working on my third commercial release. By the way, if you don't believe me, I understand. I understand skepticism. I encourage everybody to be skeptical. But these are my games. This is called Never Song. This is a PlayStation copy. That's the collector's edition. This is a game called Pinstripe. Have you guys heard of it? That's the Switch copy. My foot itches really bad right now. Mama. Woo! Oh, this is a cool one. It's like a Korean bundle or something. Um So yeah, and you can Google my my latest game is called Twisted Tower and that should be released this year Lord willing. Um so so itchy. So be sure to check out the link below guys if you want to learn not only what it takes to make a game and you can learn whether you want to

learn Godot, Unreal, or Unity, and you want to learn to code, but also you can learn how to pitch to publishers, how to pitch on or how to hit the Steam front page, how to get press coverage, um how to get YouTubers to play your games, and also my 2D art program and my 3D art program are completely free, but only for the sale event. I believe there's something like 30-some seats left. So and that is for real. So there's 30 obviously. The links uh the the timer's real, the 30-day 30 seats left, that's real, and these reviews are real. And the reason I have to keep saying all this stuff is real is because well, some some YouTubers have lied about that kind of stuff. Not me. This stuff's real. These students actually went full-time, which is really really cool. By the way, if you're student in the program, let me know what you think about it in the chat and I'll say hello. Okay guys, man, it stop itching. It's so itchy. Thomas, do you have any new uh podcast episodes on the horizon?

No. I got one coming up with Zalavier Nelson Jr. I'm really excited about that one. But the podcast probably going to slow down a little bit uh because I got to finish this game right here, which is called Twisted Tower. I got to finish this thing. It has taken every ounce of my discipline to to get this game done. Okay, let's start with the first game, guys. Links are in the description, by the way, for all these games. Let's start with the first game, Always in Mind. Always in Mind is kind of a strange name. I kind of feel like it should be Always in My Mind, but then maybe that's cuz um or Always on My Mind. But uh we'll see. We'll see here. All right. Inevitable Studios. Made with Unity. Good. So far, so good. I like those intros.

Always in Mind. What do we think, guys? Are they going to are they going to do what Thomas wants them to do? Here we go. One, two, three check. Good. There's a sound that plays. I don't love the sound. But there's a sound that plays on the menu. That's good when I hover over things. Feels good. Arrow keys don't work. Make sure they do, guys. They really need to work. Okay, let's play the demo. I've no idea what this game is. Lost in a coma, 12-year-old Teddy plummets deep into his own subconscious where he's surprised to find a talkative AI implant he names nicknames Proxy. Seeking insight to his escape, Teddy explores reconstructed stories of his extended family. So that's like right on the nose, you know? It Do I love things on the nose? Sometimes. This might be a little bit on the nose. Um and it's really like it just tells me everything really

quick. But that's maybe that's okay. Jump is uh What? So it's a gamepad game or a keyboard game. I don't know. I don't know why it's doing that. Your game should really if you you're going to launch it on Steam, it really needs to be keyboard. Oh, wow. His full name was Henry Theodore Jacobs, a serious name for a serious man. Henry was the kind of man who spoke gruffly, but was really a sensitive butterball under all the grumpiness. I think your father got that from him. My dad? I'm trying to figure out who we're talking about.

Let's keep going. Woah. [Music] Henry's childhood wasn't easy. Okay, it works. The memories he shared have been misplaced over time. But you have the power to illuminate what's been lost. So like
I'm still not used to hearing your voice. Did your mother make this place, too? Your mother had unprecedented access to cutting-edge technology. I've generated most of this from just a single scan of your grandfather's brain. What was it Mom was saying about illuminating things? I can help with that. Consider this your first upgrade. I get upgrades? Okay. [Music] Okay, you can press C. So the keyboard controls need to be shown on screen for

sure.
Nothing is ever fully forgotten. Sometimes memories just need a little reminder that they still exist. Cool. Your grandfather's dementia hid his life story away, but you have the power to bring it back. Let's start with the basics. Try throwing me. Okay, so let's let's give some feedback really quick for the story of the game. Did you know you can focus your aim? Okay. Um
You can retrieve me with ease. Okay. I don't fully understand what's going on. I feel like the attempt was made to give me a quick like setup for the story. There was like three different ways in which that was done with like voiceover and then also an intro screen that looked like a loading

screen. And then this AI character and then there's also this voice of someone talking to me.
can. It won't hurt. So I I kind of feel like there's too many ways in which the story's told from too many perspectives. I kind of wish that it was told from one perspective. And it is the boy's. Right? Or the mother or some some voice and that's that's where the story's being told because I just feel like there was actually like a bunch of perspective shifts and maybe I was incorrect there, but I feel like there was a bunch of perspective shifts there. Okay, bro. All right. What is memory, Teddy? A million novels filling the library of our minds. An innumerable collection of canvases painted by the gradual brushstrokes of time. Go far enough back and memory changes from still life to surreal, from biography to fantasy.

Everything you see here, inside and out, is your grandfather's story. And you have the power to bring it to life. Okay. Mom left all of this for me? She wanted you connected to your family, and there is much more to explore. Where shall we go first? Okay. So, it's a story game, and so story is really important, and so I want the developer to do I I want to try and help the developer here. Where Apparently, we've entered like an AI sort of machine that will manifest my grandfather. I don't know why I care about my grandfather. Uh I feel like you should give me really quick why I should care about my grandfather. For example, um we could say that um

maybe maybe you have a personality defect of some kind, like depression or something, if we wanted to go with like a moody story. And you need you need to find something from your grandfather to help you understand yourself better, right? Uh or you could make it something more urgent, uh like a sickness, or maybe your sister went missing, or your your mother went missing, and the only way to find out where she is is to dive into your grandfather's memories of of your mother. Some kind of motive for me to to want to be in my grandfather's brain or his memories cuz like I don't care about my grandfather right now. Um but let's keep going here. The graphics look great. Uh I really like how moody they are. I like how flat and simplistic um a lot of these graphics are. Okay, we got to be careful with too many mechanics. So, we have double jump and glide

already, which I would I would remove and and distribute those slowly um and teach the player about a new ability and require him to train with it before allowing them to use it. So, I would do that. These look like collectibles. I would decrease their size. That's fun. That was great. That felt really good. The running animation is a little too fast. It looks like he's like maybe gliding on the a little bit. I might slow that down a little bit. And he restarts a lot. So, it feels like he's so he's kind of sort of sliding like you can see him restarting. So, you want to be careful with that. Okay. Good graphics, though. These look really good. It's really interesting. And I like how the character is kind of unlit. It's kind of fun.

Okay. Oh, good sound. That feels good. There's like a a a rustling sound in my right ear. Felt 3D. Speak with proxy. Hey, what's this? It appears to be a puzzle. Three letters, huh? Wonder what it could be. g e a gear r I'm not sure what those are. I forgot. o What's happening here? It's the update. The code conflicts are causing interference. We should probably do something about that. Fortunately, you have a solution in hand.

Okay. Not sure what the solution is. I feel like I have a lot of uh a lot's going on that I'm kind of confused by. I would definitely reduce the amount of new stuff introduced to the player. Um a couple things here. Get So, so to recap here, give the player one introductory moment, one story moment at the very beginning that's one voice, it's from one perspective. Give me some motive of why I care about being in my grandfather's brain. Um and give me no abilities except the ability to run around. Give me one path, and teach me how to use one ability, like double jump, or um

or how to speak to the guy, to the AI. But right now, I've got like three abilities already. I can throw these weird things. I don't know what they are. I can do this. So, it gives me a lot of control over traversal, which you don't want in the beginning of an adventure game. The beginning of adventure game should be pretty limited. So, let's let's go over here and see what else I'm missing. Is it fair to build all of your abilities early and then lock them? Yeah. That's fine. Help track down glitches. Well, I'm just trying to explore here and see where I need to go. Okay, there's this as well. So, sometimes there's a jump sound, sometimes there's not. Hmm. Okay, what's that up there?

But graphically, I I like the game. I think the game looks really good. Um I think just the story and also it Yeah, I just feel like there's kind This is more kind of like a a dump of all the abilities and story and perspectives and characters, and I just felt like a little overloaded. That doesn't feel very good. With these kind of platforming games, you need to have a pretty precise platform uh height for it to feel good. Um but we'll see here. I guess I can't go over there. What? Okay, that's a little little buggy. Does it It doesn't feel very good to to land on something like that and it you get treated punished for something that I guess there was fire there,

but I'm not sure why that made me bounce. Okay. I don't know what those are. Is this really how I get to know my grandpa? I just have so many questions. What's on the list? What was he like as a kid? Who was his best friend? What was his favorite color? Conflicted. Tommy Fisher. Red. Okay. Proxy cam is Y, which is I don't know what that is because it that's gamepad, but I'm playing with the controller. So, let's see here. These should be in an options category. There we go. Okay, so they're showing up as keyboard here. So, that's sort of problematic. Um I don't know what's what was going on there.

Double jump space space, paraglide space, sprint is shift. Throw, retract, destroy orbs both. Super kick is E. Okay. [Music] Whoa. Yeah, you got to be careful not to give me too many abilities because now I'm just confused. You there. What? Oh, those are enemies. Hey. Okay. So, that I need to do some kind of puzzle here. r

[Music] Yeah, there's something There is something here that is good. I just think it's not being taught well. Um proxy cam is F. What is a proxy cam? Proximity cam. Okay. This actually looks a lot better from this view. Honestly. Doesn't Guys, doesn't it look so much better from this angle? There's part of me that would encourage the developer to zoom the camera out more like this. Okay. Boy, I don't know what's going on here. Um I don't know what those easels are up there. Discover next beacon, eradicate all glitches. 100, 250, and 500. I don't know what those are down there. Change camera E. Okay, what else? Destroy orb, super kick, kick, retract.

But like what do I do with that R? What was What was the camera again? The camera was F. Hmm. Would you guys have any ideas what we're supposed to do? Any ideas, guys? Any ideas why or what I need to do here? Did I miss something? Yeah, I would say everything feels a bit a little bit loose. I feel like there's there's a something here that could be really fun. But right now it feels like everything

is a little loose. Like the player movement is a little loose. Like it feels like sometimes he'll restart his run. We've talked about this. Yeah, like that. Um the music is a little dry. Um I'm not sure what to do. And sometimes there's a jump sound, sometimes there's not. I don't know. Okay. So there's just a lot to explore really early on in the game and I I feel like that's a little dangerous.
Grandpa Henry was a painter? He grew into it late in life. Okay, so I have to hit those enemies with my gravity balls. Oh. Well, there you go. But they don't explode. Hmm. Okay. That's fine.

So there's paintings. Come, Broxy, to war. Mine is not to reason why. Mine is but to do and die. Okay. You're pretty useful. Just like playing catch with your old man. Yeah, but Dad, there's like a lit professor. I'm surprised they let him drink in the classroom. He teaches literature. Did you see that? Spectacular. Okay. [Music] So I guess I need to to break more of those fragments. Let's see here. [Music]

There we go.
of them. Okay. Excellent work. The way forward should be clear. Let's get back to that gate. Smash the gate. Right trigger, left trigger. But I don't know what that means because I'm not using gamepad. Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, I I'd say that it needs some polish. Um there's something there. There's definitely something there that could be great. I just think it needs a lot of polish. Um I'm not going to go through all the

polish because I feel like we went through most of it. The biggest piece of feedback I have is make sure there's no weird control tutorials it tutorial issues with the controls cuz boy, I don't know. I don't know what uh how to do stuff. Um and that's important because I think a lot of develop gamers, they're not going to they're not going to struggle through that. Um so so far so good, guys. Let's jump on into the next game here. This game is called The In-Between. I found this game interesting because it it had like a old old school Thomas Brush flare, if I'm allowed to say that. I feel maybe that's cocky, but it had it looks like a old 2D game that I would have made. Um and so I was interested. And um I also like that it felt very hand-drawn. So let's take a look at this game called The In-Between. You guys ready to go? And how we feeling, guys?

This Thomas Brush looks AI. Yeah, that the the game itself looked great. Um the voice acting was was pre- It was better than most indie games. Um but yeah, there's just a lot of polish issues that needed to be ironed out, especially the teaching, like how to teach uh how to play the game, you know? All right. This game is called The In-Between. Okay, here we go. So the mouse doesn't work. I would I would make the mouse work. Um yeah. Let's go ahead and click new game. Make space uh confirm. Right now it's only enter, but make space confirm as well.

Give me some sound effects. Give me some sound effects. The voices or something. I don't know what that is. His eyes open. He had a dream. He wakes up. Oh! We need sound. We need sound here. Give me some sound there. Um something like that or actual voice acting. Pippit! What are you still doing asleep at this hour in the morning? Whoa, there's a sound there. Hurry up and come down for breakfast. Okay. All right, so I can't move. Okay, I got dressed. So that was interesting. Let me let me get out of bed. I think that was kind of weird. I just appeared over at

the door. So is that a tooth? Not yet. I don't know what that means, that arrow thing. I guess it means up. [Music] Give me a sound there. Oh. We got a blue box here. So no I don't understand. Where do you think you are going on an empty stomach? Get back here. Okay. So so far the uh it feels it feels unpolished. I don't know what that blue is. I don't know why there's a piece of blue there and I can't skip that dialogue, either. Okay, there we go. Yeah, it feels a bit unpolished. Uh the art feels

a little unpolished, but let's keep going. All right, here we go. Surprised? I learned the recipe from the baker the other day and I decided to try baking one myself. Have a bite. How is it? Give me some sounds. [Music] I'm glad you liked it. Okay. So I'm a little bored because there's no motive. I don't know why I'm doing what I'm doing. I don't know why I woke up. Why I should care about this character. There's not really anything here that's making me want to continue to play. I'm not trying to be mean. I'm trying to be helpful to the developer. You've got to give a motive to the player. Some kind of setup that makes me want especially with a

story game, if this is a story game, you got to give me a motive. [Music] Now maybe it's something's going to happen to my beautiful mother, which would be good. You know. Wait! You're heading out for a while, aren't you? It's a bit cold outside. You'll need this. Give me my scarf, girlfriend. There, all set. Have fun out there and make sure you come back on time. Also, no going beyond the village gates. I like the character design. I like the black uh coloring with like the blue outline, that's cool, too. But, I don't know why there's no what that blue is. I would get rid of that. I don't know what that is.

Oi! Pippit! I like that music. Get over here. There's something really cool I Sorry, chap. There's something really cool I want TO SHOW YOU. WOW! OKAY, move and then jump. Oh, that feels good. I actually really like that. This is good music, too. Okay, so now the game is getting more interesting. That intro was real dry. But, this feels good. Oh, this is the life. There's almost nothing as satisfying as getting a good soak of sunlight in the morn- is is it the morning? It's like night. Hey, what's up, little dude? Care to join me? Oh, wait, there's no extra chair. Bummer. Oh, well. You could join me if

you want, but you're going to have to get your own chair. Woohoo! Got to be careful with this stuff here. Looks like I can jump on it, but I can't. You want to make sure that it's pretty obvious what you can jump on. Wee! Wee! Wee! Hello. Good morning, Pippit. Here to see the elder, aren't you? Oh, sorry, but he went on a stroll to see the to see the statue of Elysia Cliff Elijah Cliff. Oh, the statue at Elijah Cliff. East of here. When you see him, do me a favor and remind him to get back and rest, okay? Thanks. You bet, girlfriend. Woo! Woohoo! Okay, how do I get down there?

[Music] How do I get down? How do I get down? [Music] How do I get down? Okay. That was weird. Let's try again. You have to like hold Z and down. So, I would I would clean that up. That was a little difficult. Whoa. What? What what? I guess that's a save thing. That's a weird sound. Okay. Let's keep That's weird. I don't know what I I don't know. And also, you need to tell me it saved. I don't know what that is. Okay, let's keep taking a look here.

Oh, I'm hungry. Which one should I buy first? The bread or the bagel? Gosh, I don't know which one to choose. [Music] But, where you Are you talking about um Okay, you should let me be able to skip if I spam Z. Are you talking about here? Okay, yeah. So, I would I would have it say like restaurant there or something. Or show an icon or something. Cuz I didn't know that this was a restaurant. So, I I didn't understand what he was saying. I'm actually having a good time, though. I like the hand-drawn art. I like how personal this feels. You can tell it was made um by an individual that cares about the project, and you don't get that a lot, honestly, with games. So, uh seriously. There's a lot of personality here. Um that intro probably should speed that intro up. It was a little boring. I don't even know if we needed it, honestly, unless maybe something happens to your mom.

Um there's like no sound, so it feels very uncanny. We need And honestly, that could that could be a huge improvement on the game. [Laughter] And then when I press a button, Put some flour. Add enough milk. Add some sugar. With a little bit of salt. Enough eggs. Mix the batter. Fry for a little while, and Whoa. Hey, WE GOT SOME PANCAKES. VOILà! Instant pancakes. Why, thank you. So, what just happened? What? Okay, something happened, but I don't know why it's relevant.

The timer is definitely a mystery. I don't know what just happened here. Maybe I give this to that that guy or something? No? That's an odd statement. I don't know which one to choose. This parallax is incorrect. Okay, so there's a parallax going on, and it's incorrect. The background moves faster than the foreground. It's It's supposed to be reversed. So, there's an attempted parallax going on here. But, it doesn't It's not working correctly. So, we need to We need to make the background move slower uh than the foreground. [Music] Hey, I heard you could get a good view

on the rest of Aisia at the top of Aluna Mountain, not too far from the village. Whoa, really? Yeah. Legend has it that on one of those mountains out there, the three elders had an intense battle to save the world. I wish I could go take a look. Me, too, but we can't leave the village yet. Bummer. Lots of characters, so I feel like we have way too many characters, and I don't know any of their names. So, I'm not sure it's valuable to have all these characters introduced at once. I would spread them out slowly. I'd give them names and idiosyncrasies. Right now, there's not really any idiosyncrasies. We've got the hungry guy. [Music] The guy tanning. But, it's I I can't tell if it's night time or not. And then, these people reading a book.

Lots of things to explore. What is this? Say your goodbyes and leave now before it's too late. Notice the time at the bottom right hand corner, you got less than 15 minutes. Okay. Hey, guys. Woohoo! Let's go! Woohoo! Lots of characters. Lots of characters, and I don't really want to talk to them cuz I'm just getting sort of lost in dialogue. There's just so many characters. And you'd think that would be a good thing, but it it's a little risky. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so on the left side, it's like dense with characters, and apparently there's a right side here, which I could just go to without talking to any of the characters. So, that that's that's an interesting

game design choice. It's a big problem because we're not guiding the player. Our the player's decisions are radically going to change things. For example, if I go to the right here, if I had gone to the right there, I wouldn't have talked to any of those characters. If I go to the left, suddenly I talk to all the characters, and I play for 15 minutes reading dialogue, and don't even know about this side. We've got to guide the player strictly at the beginning of this game. Yeah, that parallax is real disorienting. Do you guys see it? It's like moving, but not. It's very disorienting. The nature of parallax is this, okay? Yeah, let's say we have one one two three four layers, okay? As the camera

moves, it's going to move at the same This is going to move at the rate of the player. All right, at the rate of the camera. Or this is going to be basically parented to the player, right? This this ground layer. These are going to move slower and slower and slower and slower until the furthest parts of the background, they're actually not going to move at all. Like the sun, it'll just stay in one spot. Things move much slower when they're further away from the camera. Okay, let's keep going. Good morning, Pippit. My, you've grown quite a bit, haven't you? Oh. You want to explore the areas outside the village, don't you? Surprised? I can easily tell what's on your mind, lad. That's one of my special traits. Not to worry though, it's something that was bound to happen eventually.

The world has been peaceful for quite a long time. Ever since I was born. We were never completely at peace with the other tribes. Yet I feel something ominous approaching. I just hope my hunch isn't right. Maybe it's just old age that's messing with me. Anyways, Pippit, you can leave if you want. That keen passion for exploration isn't something that's meant to fade away. Just make sure you get back home before the sun sets. I wouldn't want to worry your mother, you know. Okay, so be careful with that. Uh Z is jump and Z is also confirm. So what happens is when I confirm the dialogue at the very last line, I'll jump as well. So you need to have a timer there. Then it shows I can't jump right when the dialogue closes. I wouldn't go that far if I were you.

Wouldn't want your life to have a tragic end now, would you? Get away What? You just told me to explore. Oh my word. Didn't you just say to explore? So he said have fun, but then he also said don't. Am I Is that disorienting to you guys or am I wrong there? I feel like he said to do something and then now I can't do it. Oh, okay. There's some Oh, it's some kind of glitch. That's funny. Okay, yay. Good job, developer. That was really fun little trick. Huh? Did I say something just now? Anyways, have fun out there and be careful, okay?

Okay. I don't understand. Yeah, there's a lot that's confusing me about this game. I'm not going to lie. The developer has a good character controller. I love games with story. I love games with a really fun little weird setup. I love games with world building. So there's creativity here. It's just right now it's there's so much thrown at me at once. Eight different characters. This confused me. I don't really know exactly what he wants me to do. So I can't go down that way. Okay. So what do I do? And also I'm just a little confused about what to do, honestly.

He wants you to do something before going to the right. I said, "What does he want me to do?" Okay. All right, let's go down here. Hey, dude. Where you going? I like the character design. I really do. I think I like it I Something about this game is really strange and I do like that. Um Yep. Okay. Thanks for coming. Now I present to you my very own magical mini game. Pixel mode. Right. Uh let me explain.

Pixel mode is an alternate reality where you battle your opponents in turns. The first person to run out of HP loses. Let's test it out, shall we? Here we are. Now your opponent is one of my toys. TB1, you have three options. Bite, check, and you know what else? And you know what? These things are kind of pointless to explain. Now that that's been taken care of, let's begin the battle. Good luck. [Music] Oh. In- Initiating second attack.

Oh. [Music] I guess I can keep fighting the guy. Is he getting hurt? I can't tell. Oh, he is. Okay. [Music] Okay, he's almost dead. [Music]

So, how was it? Pretty fun, right? Sure, there are some issues that need to be fixed, but what matters is well, it worked. Anyways, thanks for playing, Pippit. I'll see you later. I know you want to go beyond the village gates. I won't tell anyone, but please be careful, all right? Also, there's a secret passageway I made a while ago for us. It's at the top floor by the left side of your house. It's at the top floor by the left side of your house? It's the top floor of of my house? It's right beside the chill looking man resting on a chair. Okay, let's go over there.

Woo! Woo! Woo! Woo! All right, here we go. Okay. That was a little strange. It's It's It's a little strange. I'm not going to lie. I don't know what why that piece looks that way. Let's keep going. Yeah, I don't I don't quite know the motive for the player and I I've been playing for 10 minutes. Um So I feel like that we just need a lot more motive. We need to know why we're doing what we're doing. I don't know what that is. What is this? Whoa. Wow, I don't know Hang on. It's a little disorienting knowing where

we're going. Let's see here. I don't know what that blue is. Uh Okay. That's a little strange. But hm Let's keep going. [Music] There is charm here though. I will say there is charm here that makes me want to keep playing. But there are there are There's definitely has some screws that need to be tightened, for sure. Hey, there's the footstep sounds. Well, that sounds good. Yeah, let's let's fix that that parallax.

It's very strange. Let's go. Also, the music everything feels handmade. It's not that it's super well done cuz there's a lot of flaws, but I do appreciate the personality in this game and it feels like it's coming from a singular heart, which I really value. I really really do. So hats off to the developer for that. So we've got a map here. Oh, there's the village. And we are currently in a new level. Alrighty. Okay, so I feel like we've we've played a good amount of that game. I feel like um primary concerns, I won't get too deep here in the weeds, but primary concerns are the setup. I have to I don't know what I'm doing. Like I don't know why I'm

doing what I'm doing. There's no real motive that I could find. Um so give me a motive. An example is go fetch the amulet for your dad. He's dying of radiation poisoning. Um go go get the bomb so that we can bring it to the other side of the map and blow up the evil AI mastermind robot thing. Give me some motive for a story game like this. I think it's super duper important. Um positive stuff. I think I love that it's hand-drawn. It's got that hand-drawn vibe. I love that the music seems custom. Uh I love that the whole thing has a very strange bizarre color palette. I think that there's creativity there, honestly. Um I would encourage the developer if the developer is young I'm getting the vibe that that the developer is young. If the if if the developer is

young they need to keep making games because they did a great job. They really did. Um there's something really special here. Um do I think it's going to go gangbusters? I don't. Um I think it's a great game to get done and to release cuz you're going to learn a ton. And this is where your voice and your personality is formed in those first games that you release. So that's great. Keep it up, seriously. Um okay. Next one is called Nightmare on Maple Road. We got to install it apparently. Um but let's go ahead and do that. Uh while we wait to for it to install, again, a huge huge thank you to all these new students who joined Full Time Game Dev. Um so it's installing currently, but I'll give this these these folks another shout-out. If you want a shout-out in one of my streams in particular, tomorrow's live stream, feel free to enroll in the New Year's sale for Full Time Game Dev. If you want to learn from an

actual indie game indie game dev in the trenches making his own indie games. These are the switch copies, I think. Yeah, switch. Never song in Pinstripe and then also a game called Twister Tower. Be sure to check it out below. It's 50% off for the next 2 days. This has been up for 14 days, so it's closing here very soon. There's like 30 seats left. Um so as you can tell, they've they've been selling pretty fast. Um you're going to get 50% off my master program which teaches you how to do a Godot, Unreal, Unity. Um you can take your pick whichever engine you want to learn, but you also going to learn 2D art and 3D art with my art programs that are completely free. You also going to learn how to reach out to publishers and get deals signed with publishers. Uh how to get crowdfunding campaigns funded, how to hit the Steam front page, how to get wishlists. Uh how to reach out to the press. All of that is in this course and it's actually worked for these students here on the front page. These are real reviews. You can reach out to these folks. Ask them what they thought about the program. Um but they went full time with the help of the course, which is really

really cool. Okay, let's go ahead and jump into the next game here. Y'all ready? It's called Nightmare on Maple Road. Let's go. Uh no, I do not play itch demos. And hopefully that reason's obvious. I just can't be downloading zip folders. Oh. I sense a game that is maybe actually good. Here, look at this. I like that menu. That's interesting. Sorry, I'm really interested in this menu. It feels good. It's not every day you get a a menu that feels this good.

Nice. That felt great. Menus are really really important. You had a nightmare again, didn't you? Yeah, same house. Same thing following me. That's what happened to the others before they died. It's getting worse, isn't it? Worse, isn't it? Yeah, but I think I know where it is now. Actually I think I found it for it hurts my ears. An old property off Maple Road. Same roofline, same porch you drew. Maybe that's where this thing started. Maybe if we go there we can find a way to stop it. Okay, so then what's the plan once we're there? I'll fall asleep to lure it out while you search the house. Just make sure you don't fall asleep no matter what. All right, I'll I'll sneak over at midnight when my parents are asleep. What do we bring? Hey. This looks pretty good.

I don't love those sounds. I understand that it's the like a heartbeat or something, but it really hurts my ears. We need some toilet paper and some cigarettes. Oh, that's batteries. We need candle. I I know all this. We need a match. And we need more Coke. Duh. Ashton? Coke, Coke. Candle, match, toilet paper. Duh. Cigarettes. Those are batteries. Actually. So far this feels really good. That sound is killing it though. I would get rid of that sound. That is brutal. Oh, thank you, Matthew. Matthew says, "I bought Pinstripe the other day. I played it for the first time and beat it. I really love the art style." That's awesome. All right, is there any ambience? Please God.

No ambience. Okay, let's let's let's do a little crash course in why ambience is so important. So I'm going to type in uh let's see here. Uh let's see. Night interior mansion creepy ambience on YouTube. There we go. Here's here's some ambience. Y'all ready? This is why it's so important. Okay, so the mouse controls the camera, but not where the character's facing, which I don't know. Might be a problem. But let's turn it off now to show you guys kind of why it's important.

Okay, so that's now the sound is now the ambience is off. So you can see why it might be important. The clock seems to be broken. The time is stuck at 3:42. I would always play a sound when you click something. So a clong clong clong sound when I click it. That's good. Yeah, always play a sound. Give me a reaction if possible. Power's out. Yeah, something feels disorienting to me about the controls. I wish that the camera moved the player around kind of like Resident Evil. I feel like Resident Evil does that. And

then the keyboard is forward. You just press forward to walk. So I can turn the camera. Okay, it does do it. Okay. But not in this case. Yeah, it's a little strange. If I turn this way, nothing happens, but if I hold forward and then turn, it does move it. It's a little disorienting. I'm not going to lie. That's fun. Give me a a reward sound there. Like an unlock broke. Or a lock broke. But that's that would be great. Oh, that's cool. Way to go. We got a mirror. Another grandfather clock. Uh I wish I could move the camera

faster. There we go. Nothing in there. Yeah, I don't quite know I know we had that story exposition, but if you're going to do a story exposition at the beginning of the game, it's good to try and reinforce it. Um just remind the player again, give me like a a walkie-talkie calls in and reminds me of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Yeah, sound there would be awesome.

I read somewhere that supernatural entities can be warded off by iron. Therefore, I've placed that mask in an iron chest and hid it away in the attic. It's been there for 36 days now. Soda pop, good. So, I can use these somehow. Candle. Okay, I just dropped it. So, I don't know exactly what its usage is. Okay, there's matchstick, good. Got to find the power source. Ah, yeah, the controls are pretty pretty disorienting. I'm not going to lie. Okay, so if a door is locked,

um my opinion is it should be visual. So, you should see it locked. You should see a lock icon, especially in a tune style game like this. I should see some kind of lock on that door. Um I I think that's debatable, but that is my opinion. Okay, so Ashton's sleeping, cool. And so, I'm trying to like communicate with his dreams or something. Yeah, I feel like a couple things here. I feel like ambiance is going to be a huge aspect of what makes this game successful. And so, I feel like you guys need to have some spooky horror ambiance. I'm talking to the developer here. We need some spooky horror ambiance and

spooky horror music like this. It's just I feel like it's a no-brainer. I'm going to turn on some some music here from Epidemic. Hopefully you guys can see why why I feel like we need some music and ambiance. So, that's with it with ambiance. And then again, this is no ambiance.

Most expired stuff kills you. This gets expensive. Hm? Okay. Yeah, something about about pressing left and right is kind of difficult in this game. It's easy to get stuck on stuff like that. I should really slide along it, but I get stuck. So, we need to be careful about that. Can't go outside. I got stuck I just keep getting stuck on stuff. Um yeah, the camera should move much quicker. Let's see if we can speed it up. Yeah, I would make the default much faster.

Oh, cool. For real though, I love the atmosphere. I love the I love the graphics and I love the it seems like a lot of the models are custom. Um I like the style of the game. I like the the the setting. I like the setting. Um but yeah, I think we need we need to give a little bit more motive, remind the player why we're doing what we're doing. And potentially make this first little puzzle box a little simpler and give me give me a reward quicker. Because right now, I've I've explored a lot and I'm not really sure what to do. A bathtub filled with what looks like blood. I'm definitely not sticking my hand in there, but if I had a hook of some kind, I could probably drain it. Okay. So, I need to find a hook. Sorry, I'm seeing a little call out there.

I keep getting stuck. Yeah, okay. I feel like if I was the developer, I would change it so that she always faces where I'm pointed the camera. And the reason why is because I'm holding a flashlight. That's the only way I can see. I can't see over there. So, I feel like we need to let the player have full control over what they want to look at. So, if I'm moving my mouse over here, I should I should rotate and look over there. It isn't this true of Resident Evil guys in um Isn't this true of Resident Evil on PC? When you rotate, Leon will move. Yeah, he'll he'll point his his uh his camera in that direction. So, man, yeah, sometimes when I'm pressing left, nothing happens. But yeah, graphically, I like the graphics. Yeah, getting stuck on a lot of stuff.

I could switch kids, apparently. What? That should have been taught to me immediately. What? Did I miss that? So, this whole time, that's a mechanic that I So, I feel like this game isn't teaching me well. We need to teach every little thing, including how to open a door, how to move forward, how to how how to collect an item. All of that stuff we need it needs to be taught and you're probably thinking, "Well, Thomas, it's intuitive. Just press E or whatever." Yes, it's one thing to teach how to do something. It's another thing to teach why we do something. And so, yes, it might be easy to do all this stuff like press space to switch kids, but I don't know why I want to switch

kids or when to do it. When is an appropriate time? But this is cool. I love the concept. That is a good concept. Switching between one kid versus another. I would make the contrast stronger. Okay, this is cool. I would make the contrast stronger. A lot of ideas flooded in my head, which to me is always an indicator if a game idea is good. If you present an idea to your friends and they come up with a lot of fun ideas, it means that it's a potentially a good idea. I love this idea of the one friend who can traverse spiritually through the house and the one friend who can traverse physically. I would make it so that the the the house is happy or at bare minimum like

midday on a stormy day and then you it's well-lit and it's maybe got a TV playing in the background or there's music playing and it's like happy in in the same way that like a toy box playing a lullaby is happy, but kind of creepy. Then when you transition to the kid, it's so much darker. That's what I would do cuz right now, there's not really a big difference between the two, are there? Give me a contrast, man. Let's Let's go from like normal world to like nightmare under uh what do you call it? The uh the um the upside down. That's cool. That's a really fun mechanic. So, overall, yeah, I think it's a pretty sweet idea. I think that pretty sweet idea. So, let's think here. What what What did we like about the game? What did we not like about the game? Um and then we're going to vote, guys. We're going to vote um on our favorite game. What I really liked about that game is the hook. I

thought that was really cool, the ability to to switch between basically the upside down in the normal world. I liked the graphics. I thought they were fun and pleasant to look at. Uh I liked the UI. It was very punchy and juicy. What I didn't like is I didn't like the presentation of like all of the mechanics at once or like three or four mechanics even at once. I didn't like how switching between characters was almost like a side note. It wasn't even taught unless I missed something. Um I also didn't like how you can go into like every single room at once. I would give me one or two rooms that I can unlock and get a key and teach me the loop of what it means to explore. Is it a lock and key game where you get a lock and then you open a door and then you open a door and then it expands? Is it ability focused? Do you get little gems? Do you pull levers? Um it was all sort of presented to me and it felt like pretty vague. Um for the first the immediate first part of the game.

Um also give me a motive. And I understand that that may have been presented at the beginning. But players have ADD including me so you're going to have players forget why they're doing what they're doing. So you have to reiterate and remind and remind and remind why they're doing what they're doing as it pertains to the characters in the story. All right, let's go ahead and vote here guys. Um I'm going to head on over to YouTube and get the vote started. Um and we're going to see what you guys think. Which game do you think is going to win? Let's go ahead and add all these games. We've got What are they called here? One sec, guys. We've got I'm going to start a poll here. Which game was best? All right, we've got um Always in mind. We've got The In-Between.

And then we've got Which game was Nightmare on Maple Road. Now Nightmare on Maple Road, I'm going to just call it the RE game. Resident Evil game. And then we've got Just so you guys remember. Uh The In-Between was that 2D side scroller. [Music] Always in mind was that 3D pl- uh 3D platformer about the grandfather. So let's hit uh let's let's go ahead and start the poll. Always in mind was that 3D pl- uh 3D platformer about the grandfather. And we're going to go ahead and start the poll here. Um So let's hit I don't know why but I

can't start the poll. Give me a sec here. All right, here we go. And we're going to go ahead and start the poll here. Um Boom. There's the poll. Start the poll. Give me a sec here. You can hear me twice? How? Um guys, while we wait for those polls to come in, one final ad read here. If you want to join Full Time Game Dev, we've got two days actually less than two days left to join Full Time Game Dev and get 50% off my massive program. It's taught by an actual indie game dev uh in the trenches making his third commercial release. These are my first two games released on Switch and Xbox and PlayStation. This is the collector's edition. Um but my game Twisted Tower, that is coming out soon this year. That's published by 3D Realms. So if you want to learn from an actual indie game dev, check out the link below. 50% off you're going to learn how to make games in

Unity or Godot or Unreal. You can take your pick. Uh you're going to learn how to code, you're going to learn how to hit the Steam front page, how to market your game on social media, build a brand, how to pitch your game to publishers, how to do a crowdfunding campaign, uh how to go full time with just a demo. Uh you also get my 2D art program and my 3D art programs completely free. But only for this sale event. There are only 30 seats left. These are definitely going to sell out. And by the way, these are real students here on the website who actually went full time with the help of the program. So check it out below. 30-day money-back guarantee so there really is no risk for you in the sense that you got 30 days to figure out if this is for you. So if it's not for you, you just email Hector. Um he's my assistant. You don't even have to talk to me cuz a lot of people get embarrassed by that. You don't have to talk to me and you can say, "Hey, it's not working for me." Hector's not even going to ask you a question. He'll just shoot you a refund. Just so you know, there's no real risk here, okay? To enroll. Join 4,500 students worldwide

and let's go ahead now and check at the final results. My guess is going to be the survival horror game. Um that's going to be number one at like 60% maybe 50%. The second one is going to be In My Mind or On My Mind, Always On Mind or Always In Mind. And then third place is going to be the 2D platformer. Um Always In Mind is going to be something like maybe 30%. Um and then the platformer will be like 10. 40 50 60 70 60 70 80 90 Yeah. Something like that. So let's take a look. [Music] That's crazy. Extra audio's coming through. I can't even hear it. That's what's so weird. Um Sorry, guys. How's that? Is that better? That's so weird. I couldn't even hear it myself. So it wasn't playing through my headphones. Oh well.

Let me do that ad read one more time. Uh really quick. Cuz this does help. Um help me help me fund the last leg of development for Twisted Tower. Check out the course below if you want to learn how to make a game in Unity, Godot or Unreal. Learn how to publish your game with publishers, how to get funding from Kickstarter, how to hit the Steam front page, how to make a game, how to code games, how to do 2D art, how to do 3D art. Check it out below. Check out what the students have to say. That's all I wanted to say. Okay, let's let's jump in here and take a look at the results of the poll, my ladies and gentlemen. We've got Nightmare on Maple Street at 50% or I'm sorry, 46%. We've got um Always In Mind at 35% and then The In-Between at 19%. Checks out. Makes sense. All righty, guys. I love you. This was fun. If you want to get a shoutout tomorrow's live stream, check out the link below. See if it's

something you're interested in. But otherwise, I'm going to see you guys tomorrow in another live stream. We're probably going to review some more games. And then on Wednesday, we'll probably do another workshop. So I can't wait to see