- Making of The Fresno Nightcrawlers - 22 September 2026
It feels like there's not too much to say about making a cryptid whose design is ultimately just a pair of legs. Once again the final design here ended up not being very different from the first sketch I did.One thing I remember keeping in mind was that I wanted the tall one and the small one to feel distinct. When you watch the original footage of them I feel like they have pretty different gaits, in a way that almost implies different personalities. Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the tall one has a more leisurely vibe, while the small one feels more uncertain. So the tall one has rounder eyes, and forward bending knees, while the small one has downturned eyes, and backwards bending knees.It's probably also no huge surprise that these are my two lowest poly cryptids, with the lowest number of bones. The small one comes in at 428 tris, with the tall one just ahead at 528 tris. That…
- Version .051 Update - 10 September 2026
Version .051 UpdatePatch notes:Fixed issue where Frogman would get up and move around before being triggered by player movementFixed issue where Frogman would stop swimming away from carrot prematurelyFixed issue where invisible colliders were effecting Fresno's visibility calculationsFixed issue where Jackalope could clip through the terrain when fleeing
- Release Date Announcement! - 7 September 2026
Thank you everyone for your patience! I'm excited to finally announce CryptidCam's official release date. The game will be coming out on Thursday, October 29th, just in time for Halloween. The release date should also now be publicly displayed in the store page.I hope you're looking forward to trying the full version!
- Version .050 Update - 5 September 2026
Version .050 UpdatePatch notes:Fixed issue where Ted would not recognize a photo of the Loveland Frogman if his feet were not in the frameFixed issue where the Loveland Frogman would get up and walk off immediately after sitting on a lilypadUpdated credits sequence in compliance with Freesound.org's attribution recommendations
- Version .049 Update - 18 August 2026
Version .049 UpdatePatch notes:New interaction with Fresno NightcrawlersNew interaction with Loveland Frogman and NessieFixed issue where Loveland Frogman did not react to being hit with a carrot in certain statesFixed issue where Loveland Frogman did not play croak sound effects correctlyCarrots can now land on lilypads
- Version .048 Update - 21 July 2026
Version .048 UpdatePatch notes:Jackalopes poof when chased into the waterFixed issue where unfilled entries in the Cryptid-Nomicon would disappear after a saveIncreased the range on the field of view slider in optionsAdjusted the default volume of sound effects and background musicShortened the maximum distance from the camera that a cryptid is still considered visible (I'd been seeing a lot of false positives on the double cryptid bonus)
- Making of Tsuchinoko - 30 April 2026
Tsuchinoko is the second cryptid I added to CryptidCam. His design is pretty simple, so it didn't take a lot of sketch iteration to feel like I had it. There's a little more Pokemon inspiration here, since I like the kind of dopey closed eye look they give to Dunsparce, and I wanted my Tsuchinoko to have a bit of a lazy vibe as well.He does win the award for silliest T pose in my game though:Modeling Tsuchi was really straightforward. He's another pretty resource light model, coming in at 664 tris total. Less than the Jackalope by almost half, but still not the lowest poly model in the game. Any guesses who that honor goes to?I remember the real struggle with Tsuchinoko came when it was time to animate him. There are probably better ways to animate snake movement so the bones programmatically follow a sine wave or something, but I didn't know how to do that or even how to find out at th…
- Playtest Ending April 10th - 27 March 2026
Hi Folks, thank you so much to everyone who participated in the first CryptidCam Steam playtest! I was able to gather a lot of helpful feedback and identify and fix quite a few issues thanks to all of your help.I wanted to let you know that I'll be closing this playtest in two weeks, on April 10th, in preparation for the release of the public demo. If you haven't had a chance to play it and give feedback, you still have time! But if you miss this chance, the next chance to play when the demo releases won't be far off.Thanks again!
- Now Playtesting! - 3 March 2026
CryptidCam's first public Steam Playtest is now live! If you've been looking forward to CryptidCam, this is a great chance to get in early, give it a try, and help shape development with your feedback. There should be a nice juicy "Join the Playtest" button visible on the store page that you can click to get started.I don't expect this first playtest to be bug free, but I do think it should be playable and fairly representative of the mechanics you'll see in the final game. I think the biggest known issue is I'm still having some trouble with controller input on Linux, but keyboard and mouse should be fine. If you run into issues, major or minor, definitely let me know, either with this feedback form (https://forms.gle/TTNtVqNbBSVfdTrU7) or feel free to discuss in the comments of this post.Thanks so much, I'm really looking forward to hearing your thoughts!
- Making of The Jackalope - 20 February 2026
I already shared my first sketch of the Jackalope for CryptidCam back in my post about early CryptidCam sketches, but here's his dopey little face again before we get into it.I knew pretty early on I wanted Jackalope to be the main mascot of my game, so in subsequent sketches I really tried to emphasize his roundness and cuteness. He ended up with kind of a Pikachu feel, which felt appropriate to me.The 3D model for the Jackalope was the first model I did for CryptidCam, and the most complicated 3D model I had made up to that point. I had enough 3D modeling experience to know you need to draw a front and side view for reference, but not enough experience to notice the places where my front and side view didn't quite line up or gave mixed messages about what the final form would be. I ended up having to solve a lot of problems on the fly with this design, but it was a really helpful lear…
- A Closer Look at Ted's Bookshelf - 14 February 2026
Happy Valentine's Day! I thought it'd be fun if today we put Dr. Ted Krupp on blast a little bit for his tastes and preferences, so let's take a closer look at the bookshelf in his cabin. All of these titles are based on either real books or fictional books from other media.On the top shelf here we have mostly books that are just for fun flavor. There's one actual cryptozoology book, The Weiser Field Guide to Cryptozoology. My college's game lab had a copy of this book for some reason, and I have fond memories of looking through it with my friends when we were supposed to be working on homework, so obviously I had to include it. The rest of these books are mostly there to suggest Ted's interest in cryptids expands into other supernatural phenomenon, mythical creatures, and monsters, like Dragonology, the D&D Monster Manual, and volumes 1 through 3 of Lumberjanes.But since it's Valentine…
- Early Ted Sketches - 3 February 2026
Every Pokemon Snap-like needs its Professor Oak-type for grading photos, so let's take a look at some of the early work to find CryptidCam's answer: Dr. Ted Krupp. There's also some Wandersong doodles here, since that's what I was playing at the time.I could've sworn I went through more iterations for his design, but this was the first page of sketches I found for him, and it looks like I landed on something pretty close to his final design right away. I played with having him be more obviously nonhuman, but at the end of the day I think I still wanted to maintain some plausible deniability that he might just be a normal guy. I'll admit I'm still a little tickled by idea of the second set of eyes occasionally peeking out, implying that he's actually multiple creatures stacked under the trenchcoat, though. You can see on this page that I also workshopped a couple other possible names for…
- Early CryptidCam Sketches - 23 January 2026
These are some of the earliest cryptid sketches I have for CryptidCam, back when I was first toying around with the idea of making a game by myself. I was a college student studying game development at the time, so I'd made a lot of games as group projects for class, but group projects require a lot of compromise and back and forth. I was starting to think things like "if I made a game by myself, I could make it whatever I want, and fill it with only the things I like". CryptidCam is a pretty self indulgent project in that way. I've always been fond of "weird" creatures, so cryptids were a common motif for me. I drew Mothman, Bigfoot, and Jackalopes all the time, but this was the first doodle where I started to hammer out some designs with the intent of making a cast of characters I could put in a game. I even toyed with the idea of making Nessie some kind of large mollusk. Also Sailor…
