Well well well, the end of 2022 is finally here! It’s been a pretty wild year, but undoubtedly a good one.

We have some little presents for you all, holiday gifts from us to say thank you to our wonderful team and to our fans. Everytime we see people talk about If Found, or draw us art, or write things about it it really means the absolute world.

First, we have a new trailer! With voiceover from Llaura, and animation by Carla Lennon, an amazing 2d animator, based on drawings by our own Liadh Young. And the whole trailer was edited by Kat Foyle, who is themself a wonderful artist (more on that later).

We really wanted a trailer that highlighted some different elements of If Found that hadn’t received as much focus in previous promotion! Obviously If Found is a game that hits pretty hard in places, but we’ve never wanted it to feel like a Sad Trans Game. Ending with something hopeful and giving Kasio a bright future were really important to us, so we want people to know that those feelings are also part of the experience. KASIO LIVES.

But a trailer isn’t the only cool thing we have to show you! You might remember from previous years that Dreamfeel likes to commission art for the team for Christmas, as a little present for ourselves. It’s also a wonderful way to get to work with some great creators! So this year we have not one but two fabulous treats for you!

First is our holiday card, designed by the amazing Kate Escolin, who you can find on her website ([https://www.kateescolin.net/](https://www.kateescolin.net/)) or on twitter at tinygreensart. She does beautiful soft drawings, and we loved her art of Kasio so much. Plus she was amazing and gave us two versions, the one we used for the card and a special bonus version.

And then speaking of talented artists, we also got a fab drawing of the team by Kat Foyle, based on the film shoot we did back in April. There’s nothing as fun as seeing yourself through someone else’s eyes!

As we’re writing this the Steam Winter sale is up and coming, starting on the 22nd. It’s a wonderful chance to pick up If Found if you haven’t already! Or if you know anyone who’s been on the fence about it, this might be a good opportunity. If Found has only had the reach and impact it has because of word of mouth, so every time you tell someone about it it really helps us out.

—

A fun bonus interlude! We had our end of year team party on Thursday, and one of our Dreamfeel traditions is to do a secret santa of digital cards. Everyone gets someone else on the team and makes them a little drawing. It’s absolutely lovely, and the cards are always funny and thoughtful and interesting and we all love them. In fact, they’re so good that I feel like I just have to share them with you! I’ve redacted names and personal messages, so if there are obvious gaps in some of the cards that’s why. Blame me, not the amazing artists who made them!

And then also we played Gartic Phone, which is one of the best team games ever made, and a couple of particularly funny drawings got saved out, so I’m adding those in too. Are they funny even without context? IMO, Yes.

—

Dreamfeel is in the middle of a project that we can’t talk about at all, really, but I do want to take a moment and say that this year has been a really remarkable one. It hasn’t been without struggles, of course. Game development is hard. There’s always the unexpected. You do things, and then sometimes you look back and realise that maybe there was an easier way you could have got to point D, but you’ll never be sure if you would have reached it at all without detours through B and C. If Found itself is a good example of that, that’s art.

I’m so proud and delighted to be working for Dreamfeel, and so incredibly thrilled with what we’re going to have for you next. Part of that is what we’re working on. I think it’s so special, and interesting, and it’s a story that’s really meaningful to me in different but equal ways to If Found. But most of it is the team itself. The people who make up Dreamfeel are amazing, each and every one of them, and I feel so lucky to have colleagues as compassionate and brilliant and thoughtful and generous as I do.

We tend to think of games as products, but as Llaura likes to say, games are also records. An encoded history of the time that the people who worked on them put in. We want our game to shine not just because it’s a good story with beautiful art, but also because the people who worked on it put love and care and labour into it, and were able to do that while being safe and happy. There’s so much joy in being able to shape an experience with your own hands, and I think that we found a lot of that joy working together over this year. So here’s to 2023, and to the hard work and delight that it will bring.

I hope you can all find something that moves you the same way in your lives, and I hope that someday I’ll run across the beautiful and special things you make and be delighted by them.

With best wishes for the upcoming year <3

Eve and The Dream Team

Hey hey!

I hope you’re all doing well. Lots has happened since the last time we posted, so let’s get started!
An old concept of Kasio and Colum at the breakfast table. I still love the idea of Kasio drawing herself in multiple ways, sometimes detailed and beautiful, sometimes a scribbly mess. There's some real emotional truth there!

Announcement Video

A screenshot of the annoucement video with doodles by Liadh drawn on top.

Our biggest news of the year came out at the end of July (as Eve and Bri were on a plane to Washington DC…). As part of the 2022 Annapurna Showcase we released a video about the studio and announcing that we’re working with them again! If you haven’t seen it already, you can check it out here. We’re keeping most of the info about the game itself under wraps for now, the better to surprise you later, but the video is a really fun look at the team itself, and a chance to talk about our overall philosophy and the way we like to work together. Plus the shoot was soooooo much fun! We had a blast making it, including climbing the Dublin Mountains to the HELLFIRE CLUB.

We’re delighted to work with Annapurna again, and you’re gonna flip when we share more details. The game is going to be amazing.

Smithsonian

An image taken by Brianna Chew at the Smithsonian event, showing people playing the game and Eve behind the table.

Back at the end of July two of the team members, Eve and Bri, went over to Washington DC to display If Found as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Arcade Event. It was an absolutely amazing trip, and they had a ton of fun in DC. It was also such a pleasure to get to show the game to lots of new people! And the event was fabulous too. The other games on display were really cool, and there were old arcade cabinets on display as part of a historical exhibit, which was brilliant. If you’re in the DC area and you get the chance, you should absolutely attend next year. We really appreciated everyone who stopped by our table. We got so many wonderful reactions, and it was really really special to see people enjoying the game in person. Thank you so much to the organisers for making it happen, to the other exhibitors for being great company, and to everyone who came by!

Triennale game

A screenshot of CONTACT by Llaura McGee.

And then! A third big thing! Llaura made a game as part of the Milan Triennale collection!

CONTACT was released at the end of September, the final game in a really fabulous group of short interactive experiences. CONTACT will be an absolute treat for all If Found fans, a lovely parallel piece that I think you’ll find very resonant. The whole collection is available on steam AND it’s FREE! How can you cay no to that?

Living Wage Commitment

Dreamfeel has also been working behind the scenes to do the best we can to help make our industry better. Last month we signed an agreement with Game Workers Unite Ireland, promising to commit to a living wage for all our employees, contractors, and anyone we work with. And we can’t wait to work with them further. We want games to be a sustainable industry for everyone working in them, and we hope that being loud and public about our decisions will encourage others to follow our lead. You can read the excellent statement Llaura made at the signing here, it says everything we want to say very clearly.


New Website

With all these new and exciting events happening, we thought we should make sure Dreamfeel had a nice shiny new website to go with them. It’s still a bit of a work in progress, since we need to add some more pages, but what’s there certainly looks good! And given everything that’s happening with social media right now, it’s nice to have a permanent place where you can always find us.

https://dreamfeel.ie/

Future Plans
An old screenshot of a colour test we did for the Break In chapter in If Found.

We’ll probably have another update for you at the end of the year. There are some fun things in the works, and we also want to have a look at issues people have been having with If Found and see if we can get a fix for them. But we’ll talk more about that when we have more to say.

For now, we hope you’re all in good form, and that 2022 has been kind to you!

Talk soon,

The Dream Team

Hey all!

Can’t believe If Found… has been out for two years already! We’re really proud of our little game and everything it’s achieved. Most of all we're super happy that folks are still discovering it and enjoying it! We’ve received so many wonderful reviews and kind words, AND fanart! Did not expect to see our characters created and recreated by others! So we can’t thank you all enough for loving this story as much as we do. :3

(An older drawing of Kasio looking eagerly at a piece of cake with a candle in it.)

Valerie Dusk commission

To celebrate we reached out to an amazing game maker, Valerie Dusk, who built us an really cool and unique commission: A 3D vignette inspired by the astronaut sections of If Found… You can explore it for yourself here[valerie-dusk.itch.io].

(A screenshot of the Valerie Dusk commission.)

Smithsonian

In other exciting news, If Found… is going to be in the Smithsonian! In literal DAYS.

We’re part of this year’s Smithsonian American Art Museum’s Arcade Indie Developer Showcase, which is an amazing opportunity! It’s on Saturday the 30th of July (11:30 a.m. ET to 7 p.m. ET), and you’ll be able to come by and play the game, as well as chat with two of the team, Eve & Bri.

We’d really love to meet any fans who are in the area so please drop on by! There are going to be some other amazing games there too, check them out! https://americanart.si.edu/events/saam-arcade


(An early concept by Liadh with a tiny Kario floating in space looking at a black hole, one of the images that inspired Valerie Dusk.)

Side Project!

Right now Dreamfeel is focused on our next big game after If Found… but Llaura has had the chance to create a littler game on the side recently for the Milan Triennale. And even better, it's free!

The Triennale game collection[www.milanogamefestival.com] is an amazing showcase of small games by really talented designers, and Dreamfeel is absolutely delighted to be a part of that. Our game is called CONTACT and it shares a lot of DNA with If Found. It’s a personal story by Llaura inspired by growing up trans in Donegal in the North West of Ireland with sci-fi elements (hmmm, that sounds familiar….). The art style has a collage vibe and the mechanics are kinda new and strange, so we can’t wait for people to play.
The first game in the collection, Wade, is out now, with the second coming tomorrow and the rest getting updated into the game/app over the coming weeks. Contact is the last game in the collection, and it’s going to be added at the end of September!

(An image of Shans from the original If Found... demo.)


Pride. protest. being seen. seeing others before you can see yourself.

June (and now July) has come and gone, and while Pride might be over in name, it continues to be essential to the lives of LGBTQ+ people around the world. Pride started as a protest, and with current circumstances being what they are, it’s essential to keep that spirit of revolution and activism alive. Trans & Intersect Pride Dublin happened here in Ireland a few weeks ago and it was really awesome to see everyone on, the trans folks and pals.

There are a lot of people in the world who would like LGBTQ+ people to vanish completely, and it’s vital we make sure they never get that opportunity. It’s so important that we get to see ourselves and each other as more than we are sometimes made out to be, to recognise all the wonderful and varied kinds of people that are part of the community, and to give ourselves space to be full and complete. Happy, joyful, furious, grieving, passionate and brilliant. And when we make ourselves seen, when we let other people see us, we give them space to see themselves, too. Sometimes you need to know that a possibility is out there before you can claim it for yourself.


(A very old drawing with the text "If Found Please Return" and a drawing of Kasio.)


Irish Awards
Imirt, the Irish Game Developer’s Association, held an award ceremony for their 2020 awards at the beginning of last December. They were kind enough to give If Found… three awards: for Best Narrative, Best Game Audio, and Game of the Year. It’s a real honour to be recognised by our peers like this. It was also really nice to be able to send the audio award to Eli in the UK & Matt in the States (Imirt graciously made us two awards specially!).

(A photo of the If Found... awards.)

Text bug:

Lastly, we’ve been getting some bug reports of text missing, etc. This seems to be happening on m1 macs most commonly. While we’ve had to focus on our new game, we still love If Found and even more importantly we want to make sure everyone gets the best experience possible, so we hope we can look into this very soon. If this has happened to you, reach out on the forums and we’ll see what we can do.

We hope that you’re all safe and well in these difficult times. Take care of yourselves and keep playing games!!


(A photo of Liadh standing outside the Hellfire Club from 2015 on our first ever research trip for If Found....)

Eve, Llaura & Dreamfeel Team <3

If you’re celebrating the holidays or have time off, I hope you’re enjoying it! Right now this sale is the perfect time to get the game. One thing that really surprised me looking into who buys if found, is that a lot of people gift it to others, which is pretty rad.

So, Dreamfeel is on hiatus over Christmas, but I just wanted to share a piece of If Found new year’s art by @birdf00d:

Before we left the virtual office last week, we did a secret santa where you had to make a card for someone else on the team. Here’s Liadh’s drawing of Alex’s bossy n cute cat, Cagney:

And here’s another one from Liadh, cos I love it:

Last year was a really good year for Dreamfeel and I can’t wait to show you #dreamfeelnext, here’s the team all chatting about it.

There are two more If Found surprises we’re hoping to share in Jan/Feb, so keep an eye out!!

Take care!
Llaura

Hey everyone! We're putting out a little update to fix a few tiny things that had been on our wishlist for ages! None of them were ever game-breaking but we think adjusting them will make for a smoother playthrough.
Here's a list of what we did:
- More info on game controls and options on booting the game for the first time.
- Added a controls screen to options menu
- Both of the above indicate that the 'f' key can erase everything onscreen automatically
- Faster load out of credits
- Credits loads directly into the bonus scene
- Bonus scene says 'thanks for drawing' at the very end

It wasn't possible to do a mac build at the moment, but hopefully we'll get to do it next year.

We might have another cool news post before the end of the year, but until then we hope you all had a good 2021, under the circumstances, and fingers crossed 2022 will be better again.

Oh and before we go, we really excited to share that we won three more awards last week! If Found... received three awards at the Imirt Game Awards, which are for the best games released by Irish developers. We won Best Narrative, Best Audio and Game of the Year. And congrats to Romero Games and Manuel Correia as well, really lovely company! :3

All the best,
The Dream Team :D

PS. Check out Vadim who made the gorgeous art above that we commissioned! You can find on twitter here: https://twitter.com/ChangoPongo and insta: https://www.instagram.com/chango_pongo/

Hey everyone,

Back again with another update video. This time around, we're joined by Bri, who worked with us on If Found... and is back on board for Dreamfeel NEXT. We talk about the development progress as always before letting Bri tell you a bit more about herself and her role on the game, we answer a question about getting into writing for games and Llaura chats about 10 years of A MAZE. Until next month,

Take care,
Team Dreamfeel
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Glossary of Contents:

1) Introductions

2) Development Updates

3) Meet Bri!

4) Writing for Games

5) New video series

6) A MAZE

7) Shoutouts

8) Wrap-Up




Introductions

Llaura:

Hey! welcome to our next update which is our August update on everything we did in July basically. I'm Llaura. I'm the Director, Co-writer at Dreamfeel. Eve, do you want to introduce yourself?

Eve:

I'm Eve, hi yeah. I am the Co-writer and Producer for Dreamfeel and yeah, lovely to be here again!

Llaura:

Bri, do you want to introduce yourself?

Bri:

Hi! I'm Bri. I work on kind of general unity stuff and rigging and posing and stuff like that.

Llaura:

Cool yeah, we'll jump into it in a second. Bri worked on If Found... with us. She came in the summer before we released and had a really awesome impact on the game and then last but not least, we have Alex who does all our video stuff and will edit out all this dead air whenever it happens

Alexandra:

True, true!



Development Updates

Llaura:

So, we will start with what we did and then we'll chat, Bri, about what you do specifically but we'll just have a general chat about what we did this month. We'll just jump right in! So, I think we mentioned in our last update which was only like three weeks ago, maybe it was less, I think we were a bit late with that one that the script had just been finished so that was a huge milestone we hit and actually I think we're gonna start including like little progress bars so like bzzzt, 100% for script draft 1.0 and now script draft 2.0 is at like 15% bzzzt.

but once you have kind of the full picture of a game, that's when you can really start shaping it. So ,I think probably the comparison with If Found for this was, I would say September of 2019, was when we had a full draft that was fairly decent. So, what was working or was not working in script draft 1.0, Eve?

Eve:

Well there was one character who definitely didn't work. The Poochie of our new game.

Llaura:

Yeah that's what I've been calling poor Lorcan. We added this character who had to be in every single scene and then when he wasn't in a scene, everyone had to be asking "Where's Lorcan?". That was because Lorcan was added late because we thought we needed this other character and we had already planned out all the scenes so we just put him in every scene basically but yeah, we don't need him. He's gone, no Poochie.

Eve:

I think his name still exists, maybe for a side character because I quite like the name Lorcan.

Llaura:

Yeah, there'll probably still be a character named Lorcan.

Eve:

Yeah, they will be mostly irrelevant.

Llaura:

The interesting thing about this game as compared to If Found... as a little tidbit is that we have a large main cast. It's not ridiculously big but there's half a dozen main characters whereas If Found, Kasio was the main point of view and you could say Shans/Anú is almost as big but not really whereas in this game, there's six main characters at least right now who have almost equal points of view.

Eve:

It's true!

Llaura:

That's a big reveal!

Eve:

Yeah, I guess it is. Figuring out how to juggle that and how to make sure that all of those characters have time and space to develop has been a really interesting challenge. We are not quite there yet but we get closer and closer.

Llaura:

I think the other thing that this 1.0 draft has let us do is see what areas we need for the game. I think since finishing it over July, one of the big story changes was changing the setting in that we've kind of streamlined it rather than every single scene happening somewhere completely different. We are more gonna be based around a kind of central theme of settings, which means we'll get the game done sooner which is nice but also thematically, it works a lot better than what we've been working on. It goes back to what we planned at the start of the year and the end of last year except now we have a really clear sense of how the story progresses. That's a big thing and then on the development front, we're kind of splitting work into three streams basically because we're all working on Unity which is like part of the reason why Bri is here, to help us with unity and stuff. As well as originally, it was animating and posing but also Bri can just do so many things. It was just like "oh yeah, help us with this".

The trick with having lots of people working in Unity is lots of people stepping on each other's toes and having to redo bits and pieces so with this latest draft of the script, we find all these scenes are being rewritten now, this implementation isn't exactly what we wanted. So, to avoid that going forward, even though our script is fairly tight, besides the writing is going to be changed. We are moving to just having the art be done separately from the whiteboxing. So we've mentioned whiteboxing before. It's where you plan out a level. So, our plan over the rest of this year to whitebox the entire game so we get it done by December and have everything playable, except it's going to look horrid. It's going to be all cubes and then at the same time, our team will be working on on all the environments and we're not going to worry about meshing those together until next year. That's next year's problem but it means the art is gonna be what we expect the environments to work like but we're not gonna be trying to get the mechanics to work essentially yet um. So, that's two streams. The third stream is just polishing the mechanics with one area basically where the art is how it should be and that's a big change. Any thoughts not from a production point of view, Eve?

Eve:

It makes a lot of sense and hopefully it will help to smooth things out. It certainly means that you and I can kind of speed ahead Llaura, which is nice. Just kind of rapidly iterate on various scenes and stuff and check the script and see how it feels to kind of play that, which is really nice because a lot of time when you write something for games, you can write it on the page and it seems fine and then you play it and you're like hmm no!

Llaura:

We finished the build last week actually and I didn't think we were going to finish one because I wasn't happy with how the mechanics were working but we did that thing where "Okay, here's just the environments and you can see them and walk through them", which is really nice and then I just put in the white box as its own little scene and that white box plays really well. You can see how the cameras work and all the different effects but it's just ugly you know and funnily enough that scene, it's not going to exist as it is in game so if we spend time putting art in that and everything would have been just wasted time.

I'm looking forward...we're gonna have the first act done this month so in terms of white box alpha, here's our next progress bar. We're, I'd say, five percent done and hopefully every month we get another 20% done so that by December, we have the whole game done and then next year is working on beta! Programming wise, we have been developing tools and such and effects and everything. Not much we can talk about. We improved the dialogue tool a lot and and I think while we didn't get it done for last week's build, I think we have it going forward and you got all the dialogue into that scene afterwards so quickly or how the speech bubbles work specifically.

Eve:

Yeah, it's it's a really strong improvement. It will make our lives a lot easier so thank you Tim!

Llaura:

So then, that's all our development things. Script 2.0, 15% percent and i don't know... how long do you think that's gonna take? I think like three months or so, we should definitely have that pretty tight.

Eve:

I think the way we're planning to do it is a little bit more like we'll write a scene and then we'll put it into a whitebox and then we'll write another scene and put it in. So, the script itself might take a bit longer but it'll also be more polished because each scene will have at least one immediate revision.



Meet Bri!

Llaura:

So Bri, I thought it was cool to get you on board. We mentioned you last time. You're back with us now about six weeks or so. Maybe two months?

Bri:

Yeah, about that!

Llaura:

You used to be with us. You probably did the colour of the image that's behind you didn't you?

Bri:

Yeah, I did!

Eve:

and for me!

Llaura:

and the colour of Eve's one too. That was awesome.

Bri:

Yes, all of that.

Llaura:

Bri is responsible for a lot of the colouring in the game, specifically scenes that were fully coloured. The house one was really good and then you also did lots of Unity for If Found... What else did you do on If Found...

Bri:

I did nearly pretty much all of the menus and the UI for that.

Llaura:

You did something we posted on Twitter recently, a hundred different versions of the logo that we didn't end up using.

Bri:

Oh so many! So, so many!

Llaura:

I actually really liked some of them. It's a pity we didn't get to use them.

Eve:

They were very stylish.

Llaura:

You were very much a generalist. You can do a bit of everything. I know you through Dublin and through specifically, you went to TUD and did games there. So, you got like a grounding in game design as well as you kind of specialize in art yourself. What kind of stuff are you interested in doing?

Bri:

I kind of really enjoy being a generalist. I kind of just like taking whatever's thrown at me and being able to learn whatever I need to and adapt to different skill sets because I personally believe that nearly every part of game development is very interesting to me. So I like to have a hand in whatever.

Llaura:

The last day you were looking into cloths which is really cool so we have a very realistic looking cloth that looks awesome.

Bri:

Yeah, we got we have some really cool cloth physics right now. So, it adds to the cool movement of the scenes and characters.

Llaura:

I mean, maybe we should just wrap everything in cloth. Go full Journey, have cloth everywhere.

Bri:

Oh god!

Llaura:

You also do loads of commissions online and stuff in between...like you weren't working with us for a bit but we're happy to have you back.

Bri:

Yeah in my personal time I take commissions on Twitter and stuff. I mostly do single image characters or I kind of bounce around and I've been doing a lot of Twitch commissions and stuff for people. which is really cool.

Llaura:

Is that profile pics and emojis or what?

Bri:

Emotes, overlays, any assets needed for Twitch stuff. Stuff like that.

Llaura:

Cool!

Bri:

It's been really fun!



Writing for Games

Llaura:

I think that's the main things. We had one question to talk about, I guess. It was about how to get into writing in games. Alex, is that correct?

Alexandra:

Yeah, that was a question I didn't see in time for our question time last time around.

Llaura:

Eve, you probably have a lot of good insight on this one.

Eve:

Oh boy, it's hard is the first thing and it can be very discouraging. There are a lot more talented writers than there are decent paying jobs in games. So, the main things I would say are make your own games and they don't have to be fancy. Use Twine or Ren'Py or Bitsy. Bitsy is really good, highly recommend it and just try writing little stories because you'll learn a lot as well about pacing and stuff. Pacing in games works super differently to other mediums so it's it's definitely good practice and then send your C.V. out a lot. Oh god, sorry I have so many friends who are game writers and who are...I don't know

Llaura:

Underemployed?

Eve:

So talented and so underemployed and I'm just like "Please, I want all of these people to have lovely jobs".

Llaura:

You talked about something there. I think to get the job, you need to have the material to show for it. There's not necessarily a games writing degree you can do or anything and even if you did, what would matter is still what you can show off it. So, it really is what you create but I think if you are into games and care about games and writing and such, I think the most important thing is you creating anyway so rather than go and work for some AAA company where you write one character's backstory or something, just make your own games and put them out there. It's hard to make a living at it. It's hard to make a living in the 21st century but you don't have to make a living at it to do it. If you can because it also doesn't pay very well unfortunately. So if you do it at all, that's a success.

Eve:

There was a good thread on Twitter recently of writers talking about where they get their income from and some quite famous writers, writers who win awards and stuff were like "Yeah, writing's not my day job. I write novels in my free time and I also do this other thing and it can be a bit startling if you're just kind of a fan you think "Oh, I assumed you were making money" and it turns out no because writers don't make any money.

Llaura:

My favourite gamemaker and potentially my favourite writer is Stephen Murphy (thecatamites) and he's making the ...of the Killer games at the moment. They're so good! He sells his games but he doesn't make a living at it and he very self-consciously doesn't want to join the industry and make a living at it in that way. So, there are other avenues. Obviously maybe not as many people are playing his games as are playing Apex Legends, I don't know, I mean obviously but yeah I think if you make art, it's like it's cool to have a big impact on fewer people.

Eve:

Capitalism and our culture in general tends to devalue stuff that is not done for money and that doesn't make a profit, that isn't seen by tons of people but there's so much value in all art and community-based art is the much more historical and traditional version of art. Art that you make for your friends, for your family, that's how most people in generations past made art. So, there's nothing to be ashamed of if that's what you can do to tell the stories that you want to tell. You should absolutely do that and it's very beautiful.

Llaura:

Even if you do want to make a living out of it, you still have to start with doing it for free.

Eve:

It's true, it's true!

Llaura:

I saw someone on Twitter talk recently about how you shouldn't work for someone who's kind of self-financing and that's a pretty hot take but in a lot of ways...

Eve:

It's amazing!

Llaura:

I think "be careful about it" because it's very easy to guilt trip and to get people to work extra hours and do all this extra stuff and not pay for it or "Oh, we'll do revenue share!" or something and it's like right yeah... just if you're going to do it, do it that you own it yourself. So, rather than doing it for Joe Schmo, if Joe Schmo is sharing it equal with you, okay cool!

but if they're saying "Oh, I'll pay you five percent of what we make". I'll just make my own thing.

Eve:

Yeah, that is good advice.

Llaura:

Ok!

Eve:

I thought it was going to be a much spicier take than it actually was. Just don't fall for scammers who say "Please do all my work for me".

Llaura:

They don't think of themselves as scammers but...

Eve:

No, it's true.

Alexandra:

I was also going to say as well we shared a Twitter thread a couple weeks back of writing resources.

Llaura:

Oh really?

Alexandra:

Stuff to get started in the industry so I will put those in the show notes.

Llaura:

Yeah, awesome!

Alexandra:

...for anyone who's interested.



New video series

Llaura:

So Alex, what's up with you this weather?

Alexandra:

New series potentially starting very soon as well. Kind of an interview or chat series that we're hoping to get the first episode out next week or the week afterwards. Yeah, it's really exciting to add another new format to the YouTube stuff and hopefully you'll all enjoy it.



A MAZE

Llaura:

A MAZE was 10 years old, the berlin festival, so they had on past winners such as myself. I won the Grand Prize for Curtain so it was really cool to chat with everyone and what's really neat about that is the person who wins comes back the next year and judges the the following year's games so there's a real through line and they definitely pick games outside the norm, often indie games space can be very American-centric. A MAZE, one of the big focuses is getting just the sheer highest number of different countries involved as possible. They do great stuff reaching out to various countries. They have a really strong connection with South Africa in particular but they reach out across the globe to get developers from different kind of communities which is cool.

There's obviously a big European focus as well, continental Europe, and then we're nominated for the IGDA awards this month and we were nominated for the GDC awards which is very fancy. We didn't get to sit at the fancy dining tables as it was in San Francisco. I did that once, I sat with a friend who was nominated for the IGFs. It's so strange and then all the plebs are in the seats at the back. It's so silly!

but it's fun, it's like it's a celebration of cool indie games stuff and speaking of which, Annapurna had their direct last week. It was a really cool celebration, they had a really good line-up so I'm very excited to see what comes from Annapurna. It's a interesting startup!

Alexandra:

Ragtag publisher! (what I meant to say but word soup just came out instead - editor)



Shoutouts

Eve:

I wanted to shout out that I was part of a game jam that ran for a couple months and it finished last month. It was for the Otome game jam and so you can go play it. It is a cute little game called Fated about working in a café and dating Shakespeare characters. I had a lot of fun working on it.

Llaura:

You did the art for it, right?

Eve:

I did some of the background art, my friend AK did the character sprites. They are really, really good and I also wrote one of the characters.

Llaura:

Cool, that's awesome!

Eve:

Yeah!

Llaura:

and that's with the the Vow Together people, right?

Eve:

Yeah.

Llaura:

Sweet! Bri, do you have any last shout outs?

Bri:

Go support No Longer Home.

Eve:

Yeah!

Alexandra:

Yeah, there we go!

Llaura:

No Longer Home is out now. I'm excited to play it. I mean I love all of Cel's and Hana's games and Eli worked on If Found. They also do great stuff so three really awesome non-binary game devs and they also worked with a bunch of other really rad people and made No Longer Home. I played the demo and it was really good so I am excited to play the full thing and it's so cool to see it come together.

Eve:

It's been a really nice journey following the Kickstarter and stuff so yeah i'm just proud of them for getting it out.

Llaura:

If you like queer games, if you like narrative games, if you love Kentucky Route Zero there's a lot of Kentucky Route Zero influence in it but it's definitely its own thing. It's such a unique sense of space and world and the characters are just so real. It's two non-binary characters after college being like "What the hell do we do with our lives?" or "What happens now?".

Eve:

If you have any answers, I'd like them please.

Llaura:

I mean, college must be a while ago for you, Eve. I know we're the Millennial generation. We're still dealing with it.

Eve:

yeah no, college was ten years ago. Let's not talk about it.

Llaura:

Can i go invisible? oh my god! Whoosh!



Wrap-Up

Llaura:

Take care everybody, we'll see you soon. We'll see you in four or five weeks for the next one!

Eve:

Sounds good! Bye everybody!

Bri:

Bye!

Hey again,

Another month, another update video! This time around, we have a few new faces to introduce you to as celebrating the completion of script 1.0, creating videos for TikTok and even answer some of your questions. What follows is an edited transcript of the video posted above. There are also captions available on the video if you prefer to use those instead. We'll be back again with another update next month. Until then, have a good one <3

All the best,
Team Dreamfeel

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Glossary of Contents

1) Introductions

2) Monthly Progress

3) Script 1.0

4) Pride Month

5) TikTok

6) Poll & Questions

7) Wrap-Up



Introductions

Llaura:

Hey everyone! Welcome to the second Dreamfeel update, for June? We have a larger cast of characters and people with us here today. I am joined by Eve-Golden Woods. Eve: Hi!

Llaura:

There is myself, Llaura and over here on the right, we’ve got Adriel. Karen.

Karen:

Hey!

Llaura:

and Alex.

Alex:

Hi, how’s it going?

Llaura:

So, we’ll get to a proper intro to these new faces so y’all can know who everybody is. So yeah, the first point on my bullet point is reception to the first video. It seemed people liked it!

Alex:

Mhm

Llaura:

We are definitely a bit late with this one, for reasons you’ll find out. Mostly that we were a bit late finishing the build this month. That’s the reason, you found out.

Everyone:

*Laughs*

Llaura:

But yeah, things have gone really well and yeah, I think it’s probably good to start off with introductions then.



Karen and Adriel

Llaura:

So, our new game has a bunch of new faces on the team., particularly these two people!, and we have some old faces returning. Bri Chew is back with us, who worked on If Found… So, we’ll have to have to get Bri and Liadh in on the next call but it’s really nice to have Bri back and they’ve been helping out with some animations for characters and Unity bits and pieces. But a lot of the new look of the art comes from our new 3D artists, who I will let introduce themselves! We’ll go alphabetically, with Adriel then.

Adriel:

Hi, I’m Adriel. I’m a 3D artist, I’ve been working freelance for a few years maybe and I also do translation on the side.

Llaura:

Yeah, like you’re living… You are French. I mean, you’re not even just living in France!

Adriel:

*laughs*

Llaura:

I mean, specific to which language you did translation for.

Adriel:

English to French, yes.

Llaura:

Cool! And Karen?

Karen:

Hi. Ok, so, I’m a 2D and 3D artist that usually does character art. Been making games for ten years now! So, yeah *Laughs*

Llaura:

What are some games that you both have worked on then?

Karen:

Recently worked on I Am Dead, that was released by Hollow Ponds. Also, The Wolf’s Bite, which is an indie game.

Llaura:

Which is coming out, right?

Karen:

That was released a while ago. Right now, I’m working on Seasonspree.

Llaura:

Right, yeah. Of course!

Karen:

Which is another small, cute game.

Llaura:

Adriel, any projects you want to shout out or anything?

Adriel:

I think one of my favorite recent games was Bird Alone, which I did the translation for.

Llaura:

Oh yeah and Eli, who we worked with on If Found, lots of great trans folks! Eli worked on the music for that game as well, which is cool.



Monthly progress

Llaura:

So, Adriel and Karen have been working with us since February, March? And the game kind of underwent an aesthetic shift at that point to quite a different direction, which we mentioned last month. Over March, April, May, we were just nailing down that art style. Then this month, we were putting that art directly into the game for the first time for playable sections, which was really, really fun.

So, the big milestone we reached this week, what was in our build, was what we had last month except with nice art. Not even everything we had last month because nice art takes a while but most of what we had last month plus nice art and some improved mechanics and everything. Yeah, how have ye found working on the project? How does it compare to other games?

Adriel:

Wanna start, Karen? *laughs*

Karen:

Yeah sure. Well, it's pretty chilled, right? It's very experimental and fun so I've been getting the chance to do a bunch of different things and learn different bits which is really nice. It's always nice to have a smaller team because you get to do a bunch of, you get your own bit on each single aspect of the game because it's very collaborative in that regard so yeah, been having a great time!

Llaura:

Cool!

Adriel:

Yeah, same! I think for me, it's the longest project I've been working on since I've been freelance and also it's the one in which I'm the most integrated in the team and it really makes a difference because we're really working together with the other artists and it's really cool.

Llaura:

Yeah, I really like that we have this pipeline now that largely starts with Liadh doing the illustrations and then Adriel is taking that and making the first models and creating out the areas, Bri integrating it into Unity and then Karen who I guess, we haven't specified this. Adriel's largely doing the environment right now and Karen, you're doing characters but then you're also doing the kind of finishing touches on the environment and colors so I mean you have a lot of hats right now but you seem to like having lots of hats anyway I think.

Everyone:

*laughs*

Llaura:

Yeah, it's going well. I'm really happy with how it's coming together and yeah, we've got some nice environments and we've been trying out...it's definitely a unique art style. We can't...again, we don't want to give too many specifics away but it's definitely a unique art style. So, part of this is also the shaders and everything. This morning we had a big conversation with Tim like "How do we optimize this? “Why can't we just release this only for beefy 2060 graphics cards?” and then they're like why? It's simple looking graphics. Why does it need a graphics card? Well, there's all these tricks and things.

So, the art has been one big thing we've done this month. Also in the scene, we've been working on mechanics. So, for example, one that we probably can talk about is...we've had a system of dialogue boxes in the game since we started in October or so and we got rid of that this month because they were just looking a bit ugly and a bit didn't really fit and it was just kind of gamey...replace them with speech bubbles which yeah, it looks really nice. I mean, Eve, what do you think?

Eve:

Yeah, I'm really happy with the speech bubbles and the version we have now is placeholder but even so, it already looks really good and it feels much more kind of interesting because it pulls you into the world rather than placing a layer between you and the world, which is always the frustrating thing. I think there's ways of doing that where it's aesthetically interesting. People will always shout out Persona 5, which has this incredibly distinctive style for its dialog boxes but I really do love the way speech bubbles become part of the space in a kind of interesting way.

Llaura:

Yeah, I think we were trying to rip off Persona 5 for a bit but ultimately, we found the speech bubbles in the world felt more integrated and there's some kind of design-y things where they pull you through the world as well as you try to reach the next speech bubble

And the thing about the speech bubbles as well is that any kind of screenshot looks really nice. It doesn't look artificial, it looks like a nice piece of art and when the speech bubble is in-world and in place on the screen, there's a nice combination there and then there's two other mechanics that kind of got fleshed out. We made them a bit like juicier, with a flash and a shake and it's definitely getting there! We finished that on Monday and then the last few days, we have been going over the story which I'll get to in a second but also we have some great thoughts about mechanics which I think is kind of the last piece of the puzzle for us.

What's going to happen in the finale, possibly if it all works out and yeah, I think I feel really happy with where the mechanics are going now. There's a unique mechanic. It's not as obvious from the get-go as If Found... probably but there are some unique mechanics and that's still our ethos of putting the narrative and the flow first rather than shooting things. There's no shooting, well maybe they're shooting things who knows. Let's find out!



Script 1.0

Llaura:

And then the other big thing we finished this month and credit goes to Eve, I think, is version 1.0 of the script!

Eve:

Yeah, which has immediately been scrapped in favor of planning version 2.0.

Llaura:

That was great though. We had a lot of conversations, a lot of detail but then you went and actually wrote the scenes.

Eve:

It's interesting that I was thinking having script 1.0 and having the playable build that we have now would be it. But both of those things were kind of really the catalyst for "oh, this is the last mechanic we need!" and "this is how we're going to change the script for version 2.0 because now we know the mechanics better"

Llaura:

Yeah.

Eve:

So it's really nice how that stuff integrates where you build something and then you're like "oh now that I can see how this plays, I know how the narrative should help to make that deeper and richer" and vice versa.

Llaura:

Yeah and until you have a draft, you can't tell what the script is missing or what parts work or not. So hopefully, we can start sharing that slightly more widely, not publicly obviously but we can start sharing that with people so we get feedback on it which would be really great.



Pride Month

Llaura:

And then because it's pride month or it was pride month, which is coo,l you have all these extra commitments. *Laughs*

But it was fun. There was a really cool Apple article and a bunch of panels like the Microsoft one, we were on Twitch which was wild, that was fun.



TikTok

Also, one big thing last month that we started was TikTok. So, how's that going Alex?

Alex:

It's going pretty well at the moment. People have seemed very receptive to it and we've had- I mean the first video did particularly well but the other ones seem to be kind of pretty solid.

Llaura:

I think it's just nice as well. I think stuff like Twitter is so disposable and you can become a Twitter personality but it's no one really cares except for getting your serotonin burst or seeing some snarky funny person on twitter? I don't think we need Dreamfeel adding to that whereas making videos, hopefully this one and the TikTok ones which are super short little videos I think is actually stuff that sticks around. It can be referenced in the future and it's a bit meatier. That's my theory.

Alex:

Yeah totally, I think-

Llaura:

It's a Llaura theory!

Alex:

It's a game theory! It's also nice to just work on smaller videos as well and to be able to take these little moments from bigger stuff or for example, the first video was a cut together version of our two trailers for If Found but yeah to be able to play around with that stuff a bit more and be a bit more experimental, a bit more kind of interesting with the editing *laughs*

Because this stuff is pretty standard in terms of everything. It's just kind of "yeah, cut out the dead air” and stuff like that or like our pauses and um's and stuff like that whereas the TikTok stuff you kind of have to think of what's gonna grab someone's attention and maintain it for about 30 or 40 seconds so yeah it's been really cool!



Poll and Questions

Llaura:

Cool! That's our update for the month, let's jump into- we had a little poll question and there's a couple other questions from people on Instagram and Twitter, I think. Eve, do you have the poll question?

Eve:

I do! So, for this month's poll question, we asked people what their favorite section of If Found was and we had three options plus leave others in the comments. Number one by a decent margin was Gig & Attic, which got almost 50% of the votes then the end of the world and the epilogue and then break-in and chipper. I'm not particularly surprised that the gig and attic were the most popular because it's very fun and high energy and then very sweet and tender and I think those are moments that stick with people.

Llaura:

Yeah, it was kind of hard. We had four options so one of them we threw away almost because no one wants to be typing a comment to vote for other and then end of the world and epilogue being the climax with finally burning the book and then you're going into space or whatever and the reunion and the drawing and everything. That was initially out in front actually when I looked last night so it was a surprise comeback from the gig and I struggled, I didn't know what I was gonna put for the third one so those are the two options I was definitely gonna pick. Eve, do you have a favorite chapter?

Eve:

I do really like Christmas

Llaura:

I thought so, yeah!

Eve:

it's so, i mean- it's one of the chapters that I really pushed to get into the game. I was like "No, there must be a Christmas scene. We're doing Christmas."

Llaura:

That's because it was actually Christmas time or it was January and we thought "The game is supposed to be out in three months. We can't add a whole other chapter!" but you were very adamant and I'm glad we did. It really worked.

Eve:

Yes, I think this is true for me and it's probably true for a lot of other people too. For some reason Christmas is always when messy family conversations happen because you're kind of in this pressure cooker. Everyone's supposed to be having a good time and celebrating and so, of course, all of the things that are wrong immediately come to the surface and I thought that was a really good fit for where Kasio was at as well.

Llaura:

Adriel, do you have a favorite chapter and Karen being two people who didn't work on the game and untainted by his development.

Adriel:

*Laughs* I think it's Christmas too for me. I've always had weird Christmases so, that hit close to home *laughs*

Karen:

Yeah, I think for me, it's the gig. That was so fun!

Llaura:

Yeah, for me, it's either the bonus post credits scene or it is probably the gig. because that's one of the first scenes that was done and it kind of just, you know, while obviously it got adapted while the story changed, it was always a fun chapter. Alex, do you have one?

Alex:

Yeah, I would actually say the moving in chapter. I really like- I think it captures that feeling of being in somebody's house that you're not- like you know them but you're not like overly familiar with them and then waking up and basically being like, it's kind of strange, you're going to the motions of having breakfast and that sort of thing.

Llaura:

Do you know what-

Alex:

but yeah, I just really like that.

Llaura:

Do you know what's wild? I was talking to someone recently who...she spent lots of summers in Achill as a kid growing up and she said "yeah, there's literally a gaff, a house that people used to squat in and go there and there's one thing we didn't get to show in the game was all the broken bottles and the floor and stuff, you know, which we had planned for but I think because Colum and Jack and Shans were in there already. They would have already cleared it up. Here's our lovely friend, the running out of time timer, so the Dreamfeel logo will go on top of this.

Alright, so then there's a couple questions which are "How is the sheep doing from that one scene doing? I hope they're fine.

Eve:

Which scene has a sheep?

Llaura:

Well, I mean that the key art has a sheep in the background but then there's also the diary that has the farmer looking after her sheep and stuff. I'm sure the sheep is doing good, you know just chilling grazing come come rain or shine.

Everyone:

*Laughs*

Llaura:

I hope the person who sent this picture in, it's a dog, their profile picture is a dog. I hope the doggo is doing good too.

then Sailor Moon asks "how are y'all doing?"

Everyone:

*Laughs*

Llaura:
Good!

Eve:
Pretty good!

Llaura:

Yeah, it's nice finishing a milestone. It's always a bit of relief because we delayed finishing it by a few days because we didn't want it- there was no point crunching for a random end of month thing so we delayed it until the start of this week and I'm glad we did that but even still, it's nice to have it "oh it's sent off now". We don't have to worry about it but otherwise yeah, doing good, I got a doggo recently. We adopted a four-year-old French bulldog and she is really stupid but very lovable.

Eve:

Frankly, that's the best kind of pet. Yeah, my dad's dog is also very- He is all heart, no brain.

Llaura:

One last question from someone who wants to hear news about our next project. Well, ye got some news and then Camille also wants to know "was there anything that needed to be cut out from the game”, I guess? Anything that we wanted to do by the end, I don't know.

Eve:

I think-

Llaura:

There's lots of fun-

Eve:

Yeah sorry you go ahead, Llaura.

Llaura:

There's lots of parts that didn't make it but yeah, is there anything that we specifically cut that we wanted to get in?

Eve:

The only thing I can think of is that in the original demo there was- the zooming was a very kind of a vocal mechanic as well as the erasing

Llaura:

Yeah!

Eve:

Even though there is a lot of zooming in If Found, now it's done more automatically so you don't really see it in the same way.

Llaura:

Yeah

Eve:

and I think we have talked about wanting to take that and do a different game that really focuses on the zooming part.

Llaura:

Yeah, there was a big decision made about it a year out from a release, I'd say and kind of the complexity of the game with free control and it just didn't- it didn't flow very well and maybe there were solutions but at the point, we were just more focused on figuring out the story

and so we kind of simplified the movement mechanic and everything, which has pros and cons. Some people say "All I'm doing is clicking". So, I think there's definitely another game there where we can make zooming and free movement more of a thing. So, that's probably the biggest thing and maybe if we ever got to do like a super special edition, we might include other control mechanics which might tweak it a little bit. Actually one thing that I realized afterwards was because there are moments where we can move freely. I don't know why we didn't make the diary sections free moving especially when we tweaked them after release so maybe that's one thing that I would have liked to have changed. Yeah but otherwise you know it's the result of the time that went into it and the limitations and, we come up with solutions because "oh crap we have only this much time" or we got to do x, y and z and for the most part that all worked out really well yeah so...Oh look at the cute cat in the background aaaaaaah! Staring at the wall, does she do that often?

Karen:

She does! The other co-worker.



Wrap-Up

Llaura:

Alright, we'll wrap it up there then. Thanks for watching update number two. Thanks to Adriel and Karen for joining us and hopefully you guys can hop on in the future

And sometime soon we'll show off all the lovely art that we've been making and people's minds will explode! Bye, thanks everyone!

Everyone:

Bye!

Hey! So, it's been a while since we've done an update on here...

We've been quietly been working away in the background for much of the last 12 months but before moving forward, we wanted to reflect on 2020/early 2021 for Dreamfeel. These update videos are the beginning of an experiment by us to keep all of you informed of what we're doing and how things are progressing with our new project rather than the newsletters you might have become accustomed to receiving every now and then. We hope you enjoy it and let us know in the comments below or via our social media accounts (We're @dreamfeelx pretty much everywhere)

Under this is a transcription of the full video, with some edits made to tidy it up, for anyone who's pining for the return of the newsletter or just find it easier to process and take in information that way. Hopefully we'll be back in just over 3 weeks with another update but until then, enjoy! (Also, if we don't update again, this can act as a neat bit of environmental storytelling).

All the best,
Team Dreamfeel
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Glossary of Contents

1. Introductions
2. If Found 1st Anniversary
3. Switch Version
4. Tweaked Ending
5. Awards
6. Unionization
7. What’s next?
8. The Quiet Year
9. Working With The Team
10. Conclusion


Introductions

Llaura:

Hey, welcome to our first news update stream thing. I'm Llaura McGee! I'm the director of Dreamfeel. I'm here joined by Eve.

Eve:

Hello I'm Eve, I'm the Writer Producer, Co-Writer Producer! it's...I don't know? It's multiple roles!

Llaura:

Tim, down there!

Tim:

Hello I'm Tim Sabo, the Programmer here for Dreamfeel.

Llaura:

And we've all got lovely like Dreamfeel-y backgrounds. This one is our key art that we had at one point, which is like a scene from Achill all weirdly colored. Eve, you're floating in space.

Eve:

Yeah, I have one of the astronaut backgrounds. I think this is a chapter image.

Llaura:

Oh yeah, it is yes like a chapter you can click on and Tim, you're in some like unused concept art.

Tim:

Yes, I just quickly chose something.

Llaura:

(Laughs) That is nice! This one was supposed to be the walk after Kasio and Shans' fight in the house and it's Kasio walking alongside the moon, it's gonna be reflected and stuff. We went in a slightly different direction for the final result. Basically today, yeah we're just gonna, we want to do these monthly maybe. You know if people like this and if it goes well. So yeah, let us know if you enjoy this and we'll basically just say what we've been up to the past month without like NDA giving everything away…

We're working on a new game. It's gonna be awesome and we can talk about it in generalities but we can't give too many specifics because you know, we want to announce it and reveal it in one go!

But at the same time, I think you'll enjoy following our process and seeing what we're up to.

Today, I think we should go back 12 months because it is one year since If Found came out! Which is wild, now one year and almost a week!



If Found 1st Anniversary

Llaura:

This is our second attempt to record this because we recorded on the anniversary day except I forgot to record my own audio! So it was a one-sided conversation, it was just me and Eve and thankfully, Tim can join us this time. Liadh can't make it because she got her wisdom teeth out, so she is in agony, but the rest of us are here and hopefully next time we'll be able to introduce some new people from the team as well such as Adriel and Karen specifically. who are new 3d artists. So yeah...

Tim:

That already spoiled something, right?

Llaura:

How does it feel to be a year on from release then?

Eve:

It's great! I mean, it's kind of cool thinking back over the past year and everything that happened and everything that we achieved and then, also cool things that we didn't really achieve but were just given to us, which was nice like wonderful fan reactions!

Llaura:

Yeah, I mean that was like the best thing honestly. We were working on the game and I wasn't, I was just trying to make a good game, I guess. I never would have expected that it would be out there and people will be playing it and have their own reactions to it and yeah, some of them were so amazing. It really makes it worth it.

People who cried and stuff which is unbelievable, oh yeah people who really liked the game. It was just cool. I think a year ago, we weren't really able to, you know, celebrate in a big way. Not least because we were all now working remotely but also because we were still working on the game. Which is how modern game development goes, you're still fixing bugs and stuff for a few weeks. Yeah, what was that experience like, Tim?

Tim:

Yeah, it's a bit nerve-wracking because you release a game and then you know, we did a lot of QA. So, making sure there's no game breaking bugs or anything but still, you know, there might be something wrong with it and then you kind of have to wait and look at the reviews, look at the feedback, see if people start complaining or not and then, you know, grab all those bugs. Hopefully get time to fix them and yeah and there's always of course, that one bug at the very end that crashes your game for some reason that we could not find until the very end!

Llaura:

I like it, I see Eve is trying to fix her camera because she's currently being directed by David lynch but I like it, I think it's cool.

Everyone:

(Laughs)

Llaura:

So yeah, the game came out a year ago. So yeah, we'll go through month by month, kind of what we were up to the first couple months. We were fixing bugs, we put out a patch a few weeks later and then on Mac and stuff the following month and it was fixing achievements and some small technical things.

But, I think the first big improvement was probably the Japanese translation. You know, we had a lot of early feedback that it wasn't kind of up to what people expected and I think the translator was just dealing with a lot of stuff at the time.

It was just kind of bad timing and we probably could have had more checks on it but once that got out there and people gave us feedback I think we were able to improve the localization a bunch more and that was like one of the big things we fixed.

And then we kind of moved into, last summer, we moved into two different directions. One was our fancy Switch version which was kind of the main focus of the studio up until October and we got lots of things in that and then the second focus, which I'll get to in a second was working on some new game ideas which we were thinking about as early as last summer...but yeah the Switch version, what was it like in the Switch dev kits and stuff?



Switch Version

Tim:

Yeah, I mean it's always exciting as a game developer to get a dev kit because it means that you know, first of all you are worthy and second of all, you get to like see how...how you get to work on the console from the other side. You know, not just playing it! Yeah but of course, If Found being a very experimental gameplay game, makes it a bit harder to port to a console in my opinion. So, we had to do some...


Llaura:

You had to... we had to change the controls a bunch, we had to go from...we weren't just remapping shoot on spacebar to shoot on a button. We had to rethink "how do you erase and everything?"

Tim:

Yeah that was really because the cursor that we have with the mouse is very precise compared to a joystick, so we had to basically redesign the system. (Laughs)

Llaura:

It's kind of cool though! I like that we have in the Switch version, there's two different sizes of erasers which is nice. There's a normal one but then there's like a bigger one which people really like being able to erase bigger but then we also have an auto erase button for when you're just like" I want to speed through this", which is technically in the pc version now as well. If you press F but it is kind of more like a secret password that's one letter long because there's nothing telling people

but yeah the controls were a big thing with Switch. We improved some of the levels and stuff. I think we tweaked the writing here and there, added a few things and we also worked on the art for a couple of the scenes. Particularly, I guess, Maggie on the cliff and we added in some more movie sections. Do you remember which ones those were, Eve? I guess the start of, before the chipper scene. That section got redone to be a movie section which was nice.

Eve:

We also...was that when we reworked the two books?

Llaura:

Yeah, that was a later thing as well. These two books, we kind of changed the graphical thing. So you were kind of burning the background up. Like, I think in retrospect I wish we added movies to the books rather than that, maybe for the super special edition but it still worked, you know? I think I wanted to add more movie sections in general.

Tim:

That's a good idea. We should have used that more. (Laughs)

Llaura:

Yeah!

Eve:

Yeah! (Laughs) The things you think about in retrospect, right?

Llaura:

(Laughs) I mean, that's the thing about working on games. The big challenge was like okay, port it to the Switch, make sure it ran okay... controls and then all this other stuff we were trying to sneak in while we were working on it, which was not stuff you're technically supposed to do with a port but we were like “we want to make it better!”. Yeah so, the ending was a big thing we tweaked a lot as well.

Tim:

Yeah...

Llaura:

If you hear like banging by the way that's eve's neighbors currently so she's like muting/unmuting (Laughs)

Eve:

Yes, no notice that they were going to be doing this today. Thank you neighbors, very kind!

Llaura:

It feels like whenever one of your neighbors stops working another neighbor has to start.

Eve:

It's true and I hate it.



Tweaked Ending

Llaura:

(Laughs)

So, we also worked on the ending because we felt it wasn't clear enough. Specifically the thing we changed most was the diary scene before the credits where originally, you'd be overwhelmed with lots of choices but in this one we give you two specific ones.

One of Kasio waking up and one of Mac and Cassiopeia saying bye or saying hello whichever way it goes and it kind of simplified it. It got people to the character creator quicker and to the credits and then we pushed all of the rest of the interactive kind of epilogue-y stuff to a bonus scene, which a lot of people miss, I think.

You know, I think we probably could have triggered it automatically or something but it's really nice and you get to play through all of them in one go and we did loads of new art for that actually... and there's some new art through the rest of it so you know, this was a big focus of our work last year, the Switch port. Awards Llaura:

You know and also all the normal press stuff of doing interviews and reviews and stuff. We got a bunch of game of the year nominations for awards and things which are just really cool. Yeah, even the Pégases awards, which were French games industry. We were in The Game Awards, so Eve you know, I don't know. It was half a million people watching, that was wild. It was very very surreal but it was cool to see such a strange queer LGBT experimental game up there, you know?

Eve:

It's funny, I have a writing Discord that I'm on and I hadn't told my friends that I was going to be on The Game Awards so I was feeling shy about it and then they saw me on the screen like "Eve, what are you doing?!" (Laughs)

So, that was a good experience and then they were all extremely sweet and yeah.



Unionization

Llaura:

Oh that's awesome. You also unionized last year, didn't you?

Eve:

Hell yeah.

Llaura:

Because Eve, as well as working with Dreamfeel, you used to work with Vow, is that what they're called?

Eve:

Yeah, Voltage is the company, that is the union that came out of it.

Llaura:

Yeah, that was awesome, that's a huge achievement. Ireland is moving towards...IMIRT is gonna be, “everyone's involved”, all the companies sign up to and all your employees but as well as IMIRT, which is the group for representing studios in Ireland, we also have Game Workers Unite in Ireland which is cool and yeah I know they're probably talking to each other but it's definitely getting better.

Yeah, there's a lot of marginalized writers on that team who just weren't getting the respect that they deserve for creating the content that people cared about you know...so I'm glad like there are some victories in that though obviously, it's an ongoing thing always.

Eve:

Yes!



What’s next?

Llaura:

So yeah If Found was our big thing last year and we got the game out there, loads of nice feedback from everyone which is really cool. I have a bunch of reviews I'm looking at here and i was really taken by surprise, you know, and it's just nice when you make a personal and experimental and strange thing and it works but the next question as soon as you finish something, people are always like "yeah and what's next?"

(Laughs)

And I think for me the best thing was the team we had built by the end of it. It was really just rolling into working on a new game so we've been busy with that. Again, I can't give too many details but last summer we basically started pitching two different ideas and we developed a prototype for a third which is really cool. That prototype was too similar to If Found so we didn't kind of want to pursue it at the time and we wanted to do something very, very different. So, it's a 3d game which is not something that we've done on the scale before and yeah how's it going, Eve?

Eve:

Yeah, it's going great, I mean, it's been really exciting! I think with any game, and this is true with If Found, and it's true of the current project. There's a whole period of experimentation and testing things out and getting closer to the end of that phase and being like "oh we have a direction now" and it's really exciting. So yeah, it feels really good.

Llaura:

So, in the summer, we basically had very high level ideas, we had concept art, we had pitches, this is like how the game will play. We went forward with one of those ideas. We started in October, as the Switch version was winding down. Tim was coding the Switch version while the rest of us were working on the game

And basically we finished kind of our first prototype by January I'd say of this new game and...it was really cool but we realized it also wasn't the game we wanted to make so we kind of...it's something that i do a lot but we changed direction radically. It's still a similar-ish genre if genre can even apply, but we changed the art style completely and we changed the story completely and started making something very different and probably as of April, we had a really nice demo of that you know? Specifically showing how the art process and the art style would work and now that we have that. So, that was up until April and I'm really happy with what we did with the art, because I want to do something that was true to Liadh's art because Liadh is still our lead artist but you know was in 3d and also was quite unique. Since this past month, we've moved on to blocking out one of the first areas of the game, you know, getting it white boxed properly.

We've had a few kinds of white boxy experiments, trying to figure stuff out over the first third of the year but this is the first one that I think is..."yeah this scene will very directly be in the game". So, in terms of implementation that's where we're at. We're gonna be moving into getting nice art into that scene now and then, it's just yeah going from here, seeing how quickly that takes and then we can decide from that how long the game is. Although we've also been doing a lot of work on the story, haven't we?



The Quiet Year

Eve:

Yeah I mean, I think last week we...we have done a lot of work on the story in a very exploratory way. Actually, we spent some of April playing The Quiet Year (https://buriedwithoutceremony.com/the-quiet-year​). Llaura and Liadh and I did a game and then I did a game with Tim and-

Llaura:

What's The Quiet Year?

Eve:

Oh yes, that's a valid question. The Quiet Year is a game by Avery Alder, which is a world building game based on a deck of cards where you go through the seasons

Llaura:

Also she's a really cool trans tabletop creator.

Eve:

Yeah, I mean her work is incredible in general and The Quiet Year, you've probably seen it on a podcast. It's now on The Adventure Zone so, probably everyone knows it now but it's a wonderful game and it's really good for making space and thinking about what are possible ideas that you can have about this place and this community and directions it could go. So, that was this incredible foundation and then Llaura and I took that and narrowed in on it and we're thinking okay "which of these ideas do we like?", "How are we gonna use them?" and so now, we have a plan. Will it stay the same? Probably not. (Laughs)

Llaura:

I think it's a process of when you make changes at the start like big things change, slightly smaller things change, slightly smaller things change. I think we're really in this process of honing down. I think with If Found, like you know we started working on it full time in 2018 and I think that first year, we didn't have that direction, you know? We were just kind of making individual scenes which were, you know, quite good but we didn't know where it was all going and we had a version of the gig then but it wasn't until you know spring 2019, I think that If Found really started coming together with okay "this is where we're going to" and it's nice to be past that point with our new game now. We were talking about story stuff, you know, we've been talking about it obviously since last summer. We've been with this new direction since January/February but yeah, as of last Thursday, I think we kind of have a plan for the different main story beats and yeah, the cool thing about The Quiet Year was also just because sometimes the game development is so much, at least story wise, is me and Eve, you know? So, it was nice to get other people's thoughts "Hey! What are you guys into?". So we can incorporate that some more.

Tim:

Yeah, it was nice to be involved for once with the story, you know? Not game design!

(Everyone Laughs)

Tim:

Oh, by the way Llaura, you should maybe explain what white boxing means.

Llaura:

Oh yeah sure! So, white boxing is basically...it's your first pass at developing a level or an area and it's basically, it should be playable but without any nice art, so it kind of comes as white boxes or a white cube. So you know, typically lots of lots of white cubes or flat cubes that you're walking around and for how the game works, without giving too much away...it lets us get a sense of the pacing and how it flows and we can then determine when the dialogue should happen, what kind of story there is and just what the shape of the areas is so then Liadh can come in and do better concepts and better art for the actual game.



Working with the team

Llaura:

So now, hopefully every month me and Eve will be making more progress on those and then the rest of the team will be like...it's kind of like laying the track in front of the train as we're going...which isn't how film works but I think it's not unlike how some animation works. At least Hayao Miyazaki was still writing films while the rest of his team were animating them. He didn't even know how the films were going to end, which is wild.

Tim:

Wow.

Llaura:

Yeah, yeah. I remember there was some documentary I was watching where, yeah, he puts the final touches I think on The Wind Rises and then goes, it leaves his office and he tells everyone else he's working on some early part of the movie "It's finished i know where it goes!" and everyone's like "Woo, thank god!" So games aren't completely unique in that.

Eve:

I think we're able to do it very successfully because we have a small team who work very well together.

Llaura:

Yeah.

Eve:

I know that with bigger and more corporate projects, you probably wouldn't be able to do that just because of the number of people involved and all the juggling that has to happen.

Llaura:

Although with bigger-

Yeah, you go on, sorry.

Eve:

I was just saying that I've been listening to a podcast that's partially about the production of a tv show and they're talking about how you know the order that you watch things in, when it gets released. This is for a kid's animated show, it isn't the order that it gets written in because there's the production order and then the release order and they're completely different and it's all shuffled around. It's really interesting.

Llaura:

I think with games what typically happens though isthe Game Director/Designer will decide the levels and what areas it would be cool to go to and then someone, a writer comes in halfway and is like "make this make sense please!" (Laughs). There's some degree of "we would like these kinds of scenes" but the story is driving the rest of it for us instead. There's a bit of a difference.



Conclusion

Llaura:

So, I think we covered a lot of stuff there. Lots of tidbits about the new game, you can probably guess some of it. I don't know how much more covert we'll have to be in the future, if we ever have lots of people watching this...but yeah, that's what we've been up to this past year anyway.

Hopefully we keep this going like every month and yeah if you like this, let us know. We did those videos for LudoNarraCon and some talks I did recently and thought "Hey! This would be a nice way to do this without having to type out a blog post" (Laughs) And we'll get someone else to transcribe them (Laughs).

Is there anything that I missed? Anything worth touching on? Oh actually, one other thing that we did was that I released a small game at Christmas which was cool, which was with Sarah Maria Griffin, a cool novelist.

We released a game called Pixels at Solstice (https://dreamfeel.itch.io/solstice​), which was in Unity and it's kind of a zine-like game. We wanted to try out the flatgame stuff I've been playing around with. We developed this tool called the Flat Game Maker which is really rad but I think it's still pretty inaccessible.

I think you need to know Unity to be able to use it. There's some things that I would like to do with it, so that anyone can make games with it... but you can get really nice effects to art and specifically, the way that it works is you hold up a piece of paper to your webcam and it takes a picture of it and you can cut out the art in the program and change the colors and do all kinds of cool things and it's really powerful but it's not quite hitting its achieved target of being usable by just anyone yet...but we had a jam and we've got a bunch of games in it which is really cool and yeah, I'll do some work on it sometime this year i think. Yeah, that's everything really! That's what we've been up to.

We might run a poll before the next one of these so we have something else to talk about and we might in the future have some more just chill chats about anything interesting we've been playing or watching or reading. We were talking about Brandon Sanderson in the last one and earlier today because this whole format was inspired by his weekly updates on Youtube, which are wild! He's a really cool fantasy author that I've recently become obsessed with and Tim, it turns out, had read ages ago. I had no idea, I've been talking to Eve about him for the last like four months, i won't shut up. (Laughs)

Cool thanks for watching, I'm Llaura signing out (Laughs)

Tim:

Like and subscribe!

Eve:

Yeah, come back next month, we'll do it again.

Llaura:

Yeah and you can find all our stuff on Dreamfeel. Thanks to Alexandra Day, who's probably going to edit this video and put it out there...

Eve:

Thanks Alex!

Llaura:

Thank you for watching it. If you found this interesting, let us know! Bye!

Eve:

Bye guys!

Llaura, Liadh, Tim and Eve answer questions sent in by fans on social media.

Last event of the festival!!! <3 <3 <3 Thanks for hanging out.