HellO valued employees!
It is the season to be spooky 😈 and we wanted to commemorate the occasion with a (OBLIGATORY READING MATERIAL) featuring a brief recap of the most-scary-spooky moments during phase 01 of Hell of an Office’s development.
Throughout the development of the first stage of Early Access, many frightening incidents occurred. To clarify once again, this is our first game ever and there are only six of us, so we often need to improvise a lot. Without any more excuses, here are our top 10 most scary moments from Hell of an Office:
- Removing the Jump Button Yes! Hell of an Office used to have a dedicated button exclusively for jumping on platforms. However, early players were getting confused about when to jump or dash, and after weeks of discussions, we decided to remove it from the game. That's why now you only do rocket jumps and dashes. Remember... gotta be faster than the devil if you want to escape hell! 🏃♂️💨
- 43 Studios didn't exist We signed a publishing deal even before 43 Studios was founded. Yeah, we didn't even have a company when we were negotiating with the publishers…. 📝🤝
- Forbidden Stapley Image 🚭 This mischievous smoking Stapley render, this cosmic horror of an image, would have increased our game’s PEGI rating to the +18 category :
- Phone lost = Project locked Our project repository got locked because our administrator needed to verify the enter code with his phone, but he lost it😱 pd: No need to worry, he's successfully recovered his phone! 😅
- Running out of Hell (of an office beanies) This year, we went to Pax East and, in addition to showcasing our game, we brought exclusive merch: black candles, sacrifice coloring books, HellO mugs, and the crown jewel: Hell of an Office Beanies.🤠 We brought over 300 units, and we ran out of stock by the second day of Pax East 2023.
- Tiktok 3D Community Backlash During our first marketing campaign, we posted a series of videos on TikTok explaining how some parts of the game were made. One of these Tiktoks was the creation of our sushi stapler. Here, we explained the steps to create a skin for the game, from concept, 3d modeling, texturing, to implementation in the game. We decided to skip some of the more boring aspects… The feedback we received?: “43 Studios doesn’t know how to do ‘retopo’ (the process of creating a lower poly version of an asset).” 😤 📱 We received many comments wondering why we didn't optimize our game. Our favorite one was: “This would blow up someone’s laptop.”
- The Haunting Dance of Animated Arms Ever had that spine-chilling moment in our game where things got a little... eerie? Check out this spine-tingling bug where one of our characters decided to break free from the ordinary and twist reality! Witness a bone-chilling glitch where arms take on a life of their own in a bone-afide terrifying yet hilarious twist! 💀🦴
- Office Employee Dialogue System 🗣️ Ok, we’re cheating with this one because it’s something we recently worked on; however, it’s still scary. Nowadays that we are focusing a lot on the narrative aspects of the game, we need characters to tell the story. The Burned Office Workers have always been in the shadows as side characters. They portray all the employees who came before you and got trapped inside HellO, eventually transforming into these things. Usually, you could spot them in the distance, serving as decoration in our hellish arenas, but now you will be able to meet them, talk to them, and interact. This will allow you to discover lore, quests and more details about HellO. Additionally, we’re developing an interactive animation and dialogue system to make this fantasy come alive:
Thanks for paying attention! If you liked our blog, let us know; if not, tell us too.
See you in our next blog and have fun this Halloween season! 👻