We are very excited to share with you our first devlog which tells the story of Follow the meaning, our debut game!
Our puzzle design journey began in 2018 when we decided to open an escape room in our hometown, Toruń, Poland, using a property owned by my parents that they were planning to sell. In the meantime, we launched an escape room business called "Clock." We designed two rooms: "The Mad Artist," aimed at a more mature audience, and "The Child’s Birthday," which catered to families. Running the business after our regular work hours, we quickly realized how rewarding it was to provide entertainment and receive direct feedback from the people who enjoyed our creations.
Our desire to create thoughtful and engaging experiences for a wider audience was born there. Video games, however, allow us to do even more—tell complex stories and present unique worlds that players can explore at their own pace.
The idea for Follow the meaning came about while we lived together. We’re two brothers—a programmer and an artist—who have always enjoyed creating together. Growing up, we worked on small projects, from websites to early game prototypes. One of us went into software development, the other into graphic design, but we always gravitated back to collaboration. Opening an escape room was our first real chance to combine our skills, and its success showed us how much we loved designing experiences. Now, as HiKing Mind Studio, we're channelling that creativity into game development, blending our talents to create visually engaging and interactive games. During our daily walks, while doing routine tasks like grocery shopping, we often talked about our thoughts, experiences, and movies that had a significant impact on us. It was during these conversations that we started exploring the boundaries of human consciousness and the possibility of its exploration, which seemed like the perfect starting point for creating a game.
(The first draft of the concept for Follow the meaning)
We decided to create something unique but also concise, focusing on our strengths to increase our chances of success. Our experience with escape rooms led us to choose the point-and-click format, which allows us to best combine storytelling with puzzle-solving elements.
(A few concepts for one puzzle)
Once we had a working prototype, we decided to find a publisher to help us take our first steps. We wanted a publisher who understood the point-and-click genre so we could develop the game under their guidance and align our production with their portfolio. While playing Rusty Lake games, we discovered that The White Door wasn’t published by Rusty Lake like their other titles. This led us to learn that they created a platform for publishing external games under the name Second Maze, which prompted us to reach out and establish contact.
We participated in the Indie Showcase in Amsterdam, and several meetings resulted in a longer partnership.
(Indie Showcase Amsterdam 2023)
With their support and the opportunity to analyze our game with a larger audience, we made many changes and improvements to our prototype, raising the game's quality. Among other things, we added custom sound effects (Jorick and Giliam from Driftwood Audio) and music (Victor Butzelaar) to our game, thanks to our collaboration with Second Maze.
Apart from our debut showcase in Amsterdam, we also participated in three other events where we showcased our game demo. At the second festival, Digital Dragons in Kraków, our game was warmly received, earning us two awards: the 'Audience Award' and '2nd Place for Best Indie Game'. We also took part in the CD-Action Expo and this year's Gamescom at the Indie Arena Booth. During these events, we met many wonderful people from the industry and received valuable feedback on the game.
The inspiration for creating the game comes from various sources, ranging from films like Shutter Island to point-and-click games, from old-school titles like Neverhood and Machinarium to modern games such as the Rusty Lake series.
We are seeking a balance between abstract thinking and logic, while also trying to weave in a bit of humor.
As for the visual design, we focused on originality. There is no clear-cut inspiration for the drawing style; it’s more of a reminiscence of illustrations from old children's books we used to look at when we were little kids. This, combined with a slightly unsettling storyline, creates a distinctive atmosphere.
On the technical side, we’re using Unity as our game engine, as it’s well-suited for 2D game development and more approachable for our needs than Unreal Engine. Our artwork is hand-drawn in Photoshop, and we use a combination of Unity's tools and custom scripts to translate those drawings into smooth animations. This process allows us to maintain the hand-crafted feel while bringing the illustrations to life in an interactive space.
The final stretch! We're almost there. Currently, we are working intensively to bring the game to its final form. Here’s what we are currently working on:
- Final testing: We want every puzzle to be unique, providing players with challenges and the satisfaction of solving them.
- Localization: We’re currently working on localizing the game into 21 languages: English, Dutch, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Czech, Danish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil), Romanian, Russian, Spanish (Spain), Swedish, Turkish, Vietnamese, Ukrainian, and Finnish. This involves a lot of testing and adjustments, as we carefully adapt each hand-drawn element to accommodate varying text lengths and ensure everything fits smoothly across different languages.
- Optimization: We are working to make the game run as smoothly as possible and take up as little space as possible (we’ve managed to reduce its size by over 50%).
(how we work :D)
We hope you've enjoyed peaking behind the curtain of Follow the meaning and HiKing Mind Studio! Please consider wishlisting Follow the meaning for more devlogs and general updates!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2720280/Follow_the_meaning/
Ps. We have some big news to share with you all very soon! Stay tuned... 🕵️