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Flatwoods - A Post-mortem Pt01



Well, its been a little over a week since Flatwoods was released, and for the most part I couldn’t be happier with how things turned out. Things didn’t go perfectly, and I definitely had some things pointed out to me that I will take on board in future projects, but on the whole I feel like Flatwoods release (more so than its development in a lot of ways) was a great experience.

That being the case, I thought it was time to do a Post-mortem on the game, and the experience of actually making the game. This would be one hell of a huge post, so instead I will be releasing it in small chunks over the next… however many days it takes to write it…

So where to begin. Well, I guess the best place to start would be the games development itself.

DEVELOPMENT Pt01 - Seeds of an Idea
Flatwoods was originally intended to be a short film, but I think its origins go back further than that. Back in 2012 I had started work on preproduction on an animated series called “Shooty and the Catfish” for the youtube channel Happy Hour, this was eventually dropped and picked up by Cartoon Hangover who developed it for a number of months with me before the whole thing was dropped due to changes in the Youtube landscape. You might be wondering what that has to do with a game like Flatwoods, but in essence, the project had an episode dedicated to the Flatwoods Monster. Not just as a tribute to the cryptid, but it also dealt with similar themes to the sequence in The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask which also happened to feature the Flatwoods Monster (or something very much inspired by it). I wouldn’t say it was intended to be a parody so much as a homage or tribute, as the monsters design is iconic and has been referenced in a tonne of media over the years.

Fast forward to 2015 and I am trying to work a lot of these Flatwoods Monster ideas from Shooty and the Catfish into a standalone short, and thus Flatwoods was born.

Not long after work had started on the short RPG Maker MV was announced, not only that BUT it was coming out soon, and for Mac OSX as well! I had dabbled with running RPG Maker VX Ace in wineskin but it had always been a nightmare. Now however, with MV heading to OSX I could finally make games as I had always wanted. I dabbled in RPG Maker back in 2003 when I was in high school, but had not really good the chance to experiment with it since.

The timing of starting Flatwoods as a short film and RPG Maker MV hitting at the same time was what eventually lead to a merge of the two passions of mine, animation, and game development. As I was new to game development (I spend a lot of time watching videos on breaking down gameplay and game design elements but I don’t believe that’s the same as putting that information into practice) I wanted to make something small. I know a lot of indie developers (especially in the RPG Maker community) want to start with a big Final Fantasy tribute, but having the experience of over 10 years animation behind me, I knew that scale is the key to the success of any project. Making a game was new to me, and no amount of passion would save it if I bit off more than I could chew, and so it was decided, Flatwoods would be my first game project, I would aim to make it an hour long, and I would have it out by Halloween. Its only a short game, so that would be easy right? Wrong…

Posts

Pages: 1
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Please continue with these. Also this game should be spotted.

The cartridge is great btw. Where can I get one?
author=Cap_H
Please continue with these. Also this game should be spotted.

The cartridge is great btw. Where can I get one?


I have 2 more of these written up, I need to move them over here at some point. Been too caught up lately. T_T
Pages: 1