Welcome to our Dev Blog!
Welcome to our Dev Blog!
(Cuts ribbon. Patter of applause. Yaaay!)
In the next few weeks and months we'll be updating this blog with info about Shindig – our very first game – and the process of making it.
Who the heck are we?
Peace between sunburnt Dwarves and Elves
We're a happily married couple who've been together since dinosaurs roamed the Earth, who also happen to have been in and around the games industry for about that long. (Truly, 20+ years.) During that time we've variously worked as game designers, voice actors, Quality Assurance technicians, technical testers, writers/editors, marketers, analysts, corporate strategists, team leaders, and business development professionals.
We know what makes great games, and we've helped make plenty of other people's games great as part of our jobs – but we've never made a game from scratch with our own four hands. We've always dreamt of making games together, and putting our own indie creations into the world, but held back from that dream because we've never made a whole game before and...who's gonna draw it? (Neither of us are artists.) Who'll write the code? (Neither of us are coders.) What if it isn't great? Or rather, what if it isn't perfect?
A few years ago, we had the realisation that perfection doesn't exist, and shouldn't be the aim. Fay started something called her 'Imperfection Project' which involves a blog and YouTube Channel – it's called Living With My Mistakes because making mistakes is better than not making anything at all. Learning as you go, and putting something out there, is better than waiting until you're a maestro, and maybe never publishing anything in the end. If you feel like you need to know everything before you can start something, well...everything is a lot of things.
So, we saved up for years, left our stable jobs at a platform-holding giant, moved back to the UK after 10 years abroad, and set up our own little studio.
We want to make games that make people smile, make people think, and make people feel.
There are loads of great video games out there, but we're hoping that the world has enough room for our personal brand of nonsense in it. We'll learn the skills we need as we go, and while not everything we make will be beautiful or perfect, it will exist. It'll be something we've made, that came from the heart, and that hopefully will bring something good to the world.
We've got a bunch of ideas and plans for different types of games in the future, but we settled on Shindig – and the type of game that Shindig is – as the best route for us learning as we go, and making something awesome to boot. We hope you'll join us on this journey.
What is Shindig?
There's a lot that we're keeping under wraps for the moment, but Shindig is a game which is part point-and-click, part visual novel, and part safe space to escape to. We jokingly coined the term “talking simulator” because the animal friends you'll meet are chatty as heck, and it stuck.
Shindig will cost about the price of a London pint, take about an hour or so to play, and aims to be an experience that leaves you feeling warm and cosy. We're hoping that the world we've created is somewhere that feels relaxing, and homely, and welcoming. It's a chillout space, held together loosely as a game with puzzles, conversations, and a boatload of cartoony art. We're aiming for something short and simple, but emotionally honest, and while the art style may seem kiddy, we'll be touching on quite a few mature themes throughout the game.
It's our very first game, and as we said before, neither of us are trained artists or coders, so we're doing the best we can with what we've got – but we think it's gonna be pretty darn fun once it's finished.
We hope you'll come back and see us again! Take care of yourselves 'til next time.
Martyn & Fay
Imaginary Friends Games
