November 10, 2014 – 5:59 pm
Hey Peoples!
After returning from GDCNext (a gaming convention) last week, we jumped right back into work. As you can see from the screenshots on the site – A Quiver Of Crows ™ – we’ve got a morning-time scene set in a valley. We also have an afternoon scene set in a desert junkyard. Over the past week, we’ve been finalizing a new evening scene filled spooky skulls and bones! We’re not ready to show a screencap of that yet, but do check out a sneak peak of some newly revealed enemies: the skelebat and the wasp!
The crow doing battle with skelebats and wasps! Featured weapon is the three-way spread small bullet fire.
On the tech side, we’ve been working on fixing up the parallax layers to include stars and a sun or moon. Also, we got a discussion going over on the Esoteric Software forums regarding how we are incorporating physics into our animations. If you’re a dev or just interested in this sort of thing, check it out here.
Speaking of animations – we use the Spine tool by Esoteric Software for editing all of the enemy and environment animations in our game. It’s quite a lovely tool – we highly recommend it!
Okay! That’s it for now.
Don’t forget to follow us @AQuiverOfCrows
November 5, 2014 – 1:46 pm
We were at GDCNext (a game development convention) this week, and it was very fun! After months of secluded work on A Quiver of Crows, it’s nice to be social with other developers. We got to play their upcoming or recently released games, chit-chatted about game development, and got lots of handy advice! Here’s a shout out to the devs at Neverending Nightmares, The Masterplan, and Reassembly. Follow the links and check out their awesome games!
As our development updates go – check out our new screenshot. We showcase an example of multiple environments in a single level. The crow is leaving the meadow and entering a spooky cave which is full of twists and turns in every direction.
Wait, Crow, are you sure you want to go in??
We’re discussing future plans of video-recording the process of art creation as well as level design, giving you a peek behind the scenes. Remember to follow us @AQuiverOfCrows if you don’t want to miss these updates.
Thanks! Stay tuned!
October 27, 2014 – 8:19 pm
The new website for our 3rd game is up! Please check out http://www.AQuiverOfCrows.com to learn more about A Quiver of Crows.
And while you’re here – check out our latest gameplay screenshot.
Dry winds blowing through the desert sky. Windmills spinning in the background. A blurry bulldozer in the foreground demonstrating the multiple parallax layers. Deep colors evoking a sense of baking in the desert heat.
That’s it for now. Don’t forget to check back with us soon for more development info and screenshots!
October 20, 2014 – 2:15 pm
Check out the first action screenshot from our next game! This screenshot demonstrates the twin-stick shmup/shooter gameplay. The crow freely flies around defending itself from demon mouths.
Also – see that seesaw? It will teeter/totter in the game if crows or enemies interact with it.
The seesaw, like most of the environment in A Quiver of Crows, is physics simulated. This means all things in the foreground can be bumped into, rotated, etc. – all adding a bit more life to the world.
Thanks for checking in on our latest progress. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @AQuiverOfCrows for all the latest news!
October 10, 2014 – 2:17 pm
Hello everyone!
The official name for Game #3 is A Quiver of Crows™!
It is a free-roaming shooter/shmup where you play as a crow. We are excited to share with you our first public screenshot:
We’ll update each week with more screenshots and progress. Please follow us @AQuiverOfCrows to stay updated!
Don’t forget to check out our Steam Curation List. Currently, it’s a list of shooters/shmups that are enjoyable and relevant to us.
October 7, 2014 – 5:54 pm
Hi Everybody!
As you may already know, our next game is going to be a shooter (a shmup-like) set in a unique environment for the genre. We’ve been playing these types of games since the days of the Atari! Many of the designs going into Game 3 are influenced by awesome shmups (short for shoot’em ups) and twin-stick shooters.
To give you an idea of what type of games we’re yammering about, we went ahead and made a Steam Curation List of some of our favorites. Check it out and follow the list if you have a Steam account!
Please follow us @SheadoNet for updates.
After a few creative round tables we’ve finally narrowed the main character for Game 3. This design didn’t make it through the voting rounds because we wanted something more organic that would fit into the environment that we chose. A lot of the games in the genre we’re choosing have a technological theme. Part of our design choices are going against the most used themes, this is partly why we’re going with organic v.s. technological. Now that we have the environment and characters narrowed down we are focussing on refining the story line, enemies, and level design. Stay tuned, we’ll be sharing more of our progress as things develop.
After some further thought and discussion we’ve narrowed our style down to something we all agreed on. We decided not to go with a space-age theme because so many shooters are already coming out in that style. To stand apart we want a moodier setting for all the action to take place. Take a look below at another style we decided not to go with. Although the futuristic look has a pretty cool vibe, it didn’t inspire us enough in setting our game apart from the crowd.
Now that we have an environment selected we’re moving on to narrowing down the main character. A lot of factors are going into this, we’ll be sharing some of those ideas soon as well.
Last week we narrowed down the environment concepts to 3 different styles, and after meeting today we are starting to get close to what we want the final look and feel to be like. This part is important because it can influence everything from the story to characters, so we want make sure we’re going down the right path from the start.
This is another theme that we decided not to go with, although we liked the middle eastern setting we decided to go with a theme that could easily convey a story just through the gameplay itself. Take a look.
Today we had started narrowing down the style, theme, and environment for Game 3. Out of 6 different concepts we’ve narrowed it down to 3 which we’ll be fleshing out in the next week. The designs vary a lot from science fiction settings to more rustic landscapes. We’ll also be working on the character designs to help us make the best decision, making sure that we create an environment that compliments the character designs. We’re looking for an environment that spurs the gamer’s imagination while making sure that the structures are clear and navigable.
This is one of our rejected concepts, although it’s intriguing we wanted a style that is seen less often. Take a look!
