So my girlfriend and I have always wanted to do game development. We had both done our own solo projects and got experience separately over our lives, but about a year ago we finally started working together, doing a couple smaller game jam projects.
The last one we did looked like this:
It's called Look: A Game! and is up on our itch.
We challenged ourselves in so many ways to finish that game. It was our first 3d project, and that in itself was intimidating. In the end, we had a short concept piece in which you explored your apartment, collecting items to get ready for a party. And that was about what it was.
But we had more ambitious plans, so when we completed the game jam, we didn't feel done. It wasn't everything we knew it was supposed to be.
So we continued where we left off, and started development on Striatum:
We spent over half a year pushing ourselves to learn and grow our skills, and keep coming back to this project everyday (as two ladies with adhd, that is especially challenging). We are getting close to it being fully complete, and there will be a demo up in time for Summer Next Fest on steam.
We now have a fully explorable apartment full of hundreds of items to find, collect, and interact with. There are multiple npcs each with their own branching dialogue paths, accessed through the medium of an in-game cell phone interface. The cell phone outputs notifications to the game screen and has additional apps inside.
We've challenged ourselves to make as polished an experience as we can, and I don't think either of us imagined we would have come so far at the start of the project. We've made something we think is good, and is special to us, and no matter what, is very us.
If you have at least 15 minutes, and a love for strange point and click adventures, please consider checking out the demo when it's out, and if you enjoy it, we hope you will wishlist and return for the full experience.
~ Mia Malaise