Woooo, we're a little behind with this stuff. Game's been out for just over three weeks. Whoops.
Better start with introductions I guess.
Hi, we're Sure Why Not? A new studio based in Northern Ireland. Founded by Shay Truffitt (Me!) & Tom Cuthbertson in August last year, we're a small studio with a goal of making focused experiences with a fun core mechanic, for people to enjoy from the moment they pick it up. Tom is the Lead Programmer and Game Designer, and I'm the Lead Game Designer and Technical Artist, but we switch things up from time to time. We're a company of only two for now, though we worked with some amazing and talented people on this game. Speaking of, let's talk about it and them.
FaceValue is our first game. We started developing it originally for a game jam before we even formed the company. Tom and I met during a games industry course provided by our local screen agency NI Screen about 2 years ago, and after working for a short period with a couple of local companies (Out Of Tune and Brain & Nerd! Look 'em up) we heard about an opportunity with NI Screen to help fund new companies, a platform called MiniGame. Tom asked me if I wanted to join him in forming a company and applying, so we formed Sure Why Not? and we applied. We decided to do the Game Makers Toolkit game jam as a practice run working together, and so that we would have a little demo of some kind ready for our presentation/interview. The theme of the jam was "Roll of the Dice", and FaceValue was born.
We had a small but pretty cool demo (that's still available on Itch in it's jam form by the way) and it helped us get on MiniGame. The initial stages of the platform involved prototyping two new ideas, so we decided to put FaceValue aside and test out some new games (Crazy Taxi-like but you're a bellhop anyone?). Ultimately, we couldn't help but love that little dice rolling demo, so we decided to proceed with it from there. That left us with 4 months.
Our original vision for FaceValue involved a very minimalist art style. Some low poly nature stuff, or maybe a tabletop world with some simple household or board game objects. We decided to get an artist in to concept out a few of those ideas and we knew exactly who we wanted to do it. Someone we had both met on that course a couple of years ago, Niamh Lynn. And she was available! We had a few conversations over the course of a week or so about how we wanted it to look, and settled on "some varied nature stuff and something incorporating the dice" with our goal still being that we wanted to keep it somewhat minimalist due to time and scale, and off she went. With the very first sheet she delivered we decided to change course and involve more detailed models and a little bit of environmental storytelling, and the more she delivered the more we leant towards that. There's a good reason she's now listed as Art Director in the credits! The game now had an original world. And a great looking one at that. Check out some of the original concepts below.
So then we had to build it. I won't fill up this post with a load of technical stuff, we'll probably write up a full Development Log at some point for anyone who is interested. But that meant a load of programming, level design, etc, etc. It also meant a whole tonne of 3D modelling. We'd need help for that. We were pointed in the direction of Peárse McKenna and Sean Matthew Allen, and they delivered excellently from start to finish.
And finally, music. We were contacted during development by an amazing new composer called Grzegorz Drozdowski who had seen some of our in-progress stuff and offered to work on the project, and after listening to his demos, it was hard to refuse. Since we had such a small development, we were only able to get a title theme for the game done, but Grzegorz' work was fantastic. The title theme also covers the whole of the first environment in the game, and Grzegorz made something that fits with the atmosphere of the game world beautifully. The rest of the audio was purchased from music libraries, but we couldn't appreciate having an original theme more.
All in all it's been an intense 5 months of development, but we've enjoyed every minute of it. We're proud of the game we made and so incredibly thankful to everyone who helped us work on it.
More than anything we hope you enjoy playing it.
Looking to the future, we will be updating the game with a few quality of life updates and general improvements, and some stuff we just didn't get a chance to add that we wanted to or only thought of after launch. Another post with an overview of FaceValue and the updates we're planning will be up in the next few weeks. Check back here or on our social media pages for updates. Links to those and to the amazing artists that worked with us below.
Thanks for reading!
Our Links
Twitter : @SureWhyNotGames
Youtube : @SureWhyNotGames
Website : www.surewhynot.co.uk
Niamh Lynn : Instagram
Peárse McKenna : ArtStation
Sean Matthew Allen : Twitter
Grzegorz Drozdowski : Website