- Some New Screenshots. - 19 April 2023
Alright, we're going to actually start posting some updates now! A lot of the time of recent has been spent moving the project from unity's built in render pipeline to the HDRP pipeline which will give us much more control over lighting, which realistically for a horror game is a critical aspect. Here some screenshots of this weeks work; and I promise we'll keep you updated a lot more now we can refocus 100% on the games development! Sarah has been scouting out more English props to make and we've got the production pipeline sorted now. Who said game dev was easy?.. oh right, no one.
- Demo Patch 1.1 / Thanks to Your Feedback - 6 January 2021
Demo 1.1 Patch Notes -------------------- We decided to do a quick update today after reading player feedback. We can't act on every bit of feedback for the demo as we're working hard on the main game, but we're hoping this fixes a few of the larger problems that people have been having. A big thanks to everyone who has provided feedback so far. We're offering a chance to win a copy of the game AND money in Steam vouchers for everyone who plays the demo and provides us feedback in January. We'll be providing a more in depth response to the feedback received towards the end of the month. Provide Feedback, Win Prizes Patch Notes: - Added the ability to rebind the run and reload keys for keyboards and controllers - Set 'R' as the default gun reload key - Added tutorial messages for using weapons and items - Added UI for the gun showing bullets in the magazine and total amount of bullets -…
- Download demo, submit feedback, win prizes. - 4 January 2021
Hello! We've had our demo out for a few weeks now and we've received an overwealming number of downloads - so thank you for that. To be able to shape the game going forward and ensure the final release meets your expectations we're now looking for feedback from those who have played the demo. As a small team we're going to be using this feedback to direct our resources and ensure we make a game we can be proud of. If you've not played the demo yet please do so before completing the survey form. Download the Demo We are looking for feedback on the Winter Demo if you've previously played the halloween demo please ensure you've tried the Winter Demo before submitting feedback. Those who have played the demo and completed this form will be entered into a competition to win 1 of £100 Steam vouchers, and 2x £50 vouchers. The first 50 responses will also receive the full game when released for…
- Dev Log #13 - The Summerford Winter Demo - 11 December 2020
The Summerford Winter Demo is now available on Steam for testing! We’ve added and overhauled some of the major systems based on feedback from players in the Steam Autumn festival. Please keep in mind this is a test demo - it's not the finished, final product, but it is far closer to our final vision, and has been refined based on a ton of feedback from users on Steam and Discord. If you encounter bugs or just want to provide feedback, it would be amazing if you could let us know on our Bug Tracker or on our Discord. We’ll only be updating the demo to fix major problems, but any feedback and ideas still have plenty of time for us to implement into the main game. Here’s a few of the changes in the Winter Demo: Combat System Summerford now has a proper combat element! Alongside her original knife for use in emergencies, Sam now has a gun that she can equip, and she can find health and ammo…
- Summerford Demo: What’s Next? - 14 October 2020
So the demo is over! We’ve had a great time getting the game out to people, and we've had a lot of new wishlists and some great feedback. It's also fair to say some of the feedback has been mixed, and we've still got lots of development to do! Expectations Given the pure amount of demo downloads, and the amount of feedback we’ve had in general, it feels like there’s been a lot of interest in the game and loads of people adding us to their wishlists. We've also had positive comments on the visuals and atmosphere of the game, which is great as this is a part we've both spent the longest on in terms of creating content, and probably was our biggest worry as we have only a single artist to make a fairly complex game. However, in terms of the games mechanics, It’s clear people were expecting something more complete and polished, and we didn’t have time to provide that experience. This demo w…
- Demo Improvements Overview - 9 October 2020
Join us for a live stream where the team (Rob, Dan and Sarah) will be going through the changes we've made in the demo, why we've made them and how your feedback has helped shape the product We're also going to have a Q&A section so if you have any questions or comments you want to put to us live then do feel free to do so!
- Summerford Dev Log #12 - Narrative & Inspiration - 4 September 2020
Demos are hard. Demos for narrative games are especially hard! As we speak, we're working on the script of the Summerford Demo. It’s presented all sorts of interesting problems, not least the age old classic of how you make a demo of a narrative game that shows off the narrative elements without ruining it. We've gotta capture a vibe that both sells the experience without selling too much of it. It has to do that in a relatively short period of time and in a market and festival with a lot of noise. It feels the horror genre seems to have become more and more polarised in recent years in the way we tell stories. Either they trend towards the supernatural and jump-scare focused games, or they’re labeled as psychological - a term which has become synonymous with characters having and dealing with various levels of off-screen abuse and trauma. Remember the ORIGINAL Silent Hill? How the cult…
- Join the Summerford Devs Live on Stream on October 9th - 27 August 2020
Join us Live during the Steam Autumn Festival Want to hear a team of industry experts provide you with a deep, insightful look at modern game development and the future of the horror genre? Us too, that would probably be really helpful! But while we look for those experts, you can always come and hang out with us on October 9th at Friday 8pm BST / 7PM GMT / 3PM EST / 12PM PST We're first time developers making a horror game that builds off the classics without just copying them wholesale. We haven't done a livestream before, or a public demo for that matter, but we did once strap a VR backpack to one of our old team members for a YouTube video, if that counts. We'll be playing through our festival demo, probably apologizing a lot, and chatting about some our design decisions. If you have any questions, we'll be very happy to be answering those too. It'll be fun, we promise. Links to the…
- Summerford Dev Log #11 - Dinosaurs & Ferris Wheels - 18 August 2020
Welcome Back! We’re finally wrapping up act 2 of Summerford now! We’re running slightly behind where we hoped to be at this stage, but every area in this section of the game has ended up being a little larger than we had expected. One thing that has always been our mind with Summerford is creating areas that are a little more unique than just abandoned houses, mansions and hospitals. We also wanted to set as much of the game as possible outside, but avoid falling into the trap of endless woods, trees and areas not feeling distinct or memorable. With only one artist, that’s certainly been a challenge, but it’s good to see all these areas coming together. Dream Valley Dream Valley is a “Theme Park” - though perhaps not like ones you’ve seen in other games. It’s a “local” theme park, which although far fewer in number in England now, used to be much more common. These parks didn’t have the…
- Summerford Dev Log #10 - Modernising Survival Horror - 28 May 2020
Last week we spoke about some of the things that make Summerford a “survival horror” game, but even when making a game inspired by the “classics”, it’s hard to deny game design has moved on since Alone in the Dark released in 1992 (!) So what common pitfalls of the genre are we trying to avoid? Puzzle Logic Puzzles are a big part of a survival horror title. They need to be hard enough that solving them feels like an achievement, but not so difficult that they ruin the pacing and tension you’ve created. We have our own mostly-unwritten rules for all of our puzzles. Firstly, we don’t ever want to repeat the same puzzle twice. Secondly, all our puzzles must be solvable with information provided within the game (So no puzzles that require a knowledge of Chess, to use a very common genre example). Thirdly, our puzzles need to be integrated well into the game world. We all know that survival…
- Summerford Dev Log #9 - Our Take on Survival Horror - 21 May 2020
What is a survival horror? According to Steam, pretty much any horror game! It’s no secret we take inspiration from the classic era of survival horror, developed mostly in the PS1 and PS2 days. Even then, that’s still a very broad range of games. Both Resident Evil and Silent Hill are survival horror games after all, while being very different experiences. That’s not to mention games like Obscure, Fatal Frame, Rule of Rose, Haunting Ground and many others which all added their own spin on the genre during those formative years. So, perhaps a better question is: What does survival horror mean to Summerford? Fixed Perspective Cameras (With some updates) While the triple-A world has moved on, this classic visual identity of older survival horror is a large part of Summerford. Using fixed perspective cameras affects the design of Summerford at every level, from combat to controls, but even…
- Summerford Dev Log #8 - We're back! - 11 December 2019
We’re alive! It’s been five (!) months since our last post but we have been working, I swear. Well, we’ve been mostly working, I did have three weeks off to get married and go on my honeymoon, and Dan and Sarah have moved house into the English countryside, literally in the middle of the woods. This, along with the shorter and colder days, has certainly lent a more Summerford vibe to our surroundings! Also on a side note the dev blogs are a bit messy on Steam. Steam refuses to let us delete duplicates or rename anything right now, but hopefully that will be fixed soon. Rest assured, this is definitely dev blog #8. Lighting and Atmosphere Overhaul Rather than jump into exactly what we’re working on now, I thought a quick catch up on our last blog would make more sense. We’ve spent a long time polishing the early areas of the game, partly for our own sanity, but mostly for our trip to EGX…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 8 - 3 June 2019
Hello. It’s been a few weeks, including a pretty disastrous week last week where between sickness, funerals and business stuff getting in the way, we managed to get something close to two days to sit down and actually work on the game. Third Person Camera and Outside Lighting After much messing around with third person cameras and the open world areas of the game, we’ve made another big decision to return to fixed perspective for the entire game, and instead focus on making our fixed cameras more ‘dynamic’ feeling and varied. This means things like slightly tracking the player or moving to a follow position for small sections. This is the style used in the Resident Evil 1 Remake, and in many PS2 era survival horrors. We’ve made this decision because it allows us to deliver a more focused and polished final game. It’s not too hard to make small, confined third person sections, but making…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 8 - 3 June 2019
Hello. It’s been a few weeks, including a pretty disastrous week last week where between sickness, funerals and business stuff getting in the way, we managed to get something close to two days to sit down and actually work on the game. Third Person Camera and Outside Lighting After much messing around with third person cameras and the open world areas of the game, we’ve made another big decision to return to fixed perspective for the entire game, and instead focus on making our fixed cameras more ‘dynamic’ feeling and varied. This means things like slightly tracking the player or moving to a follow position for small sections. This is the style used in the Resident Evil 1 Remake, and in many PS2 era survival horrors. We’ve made this decision because it allows us to deliver a more focused and polished final game. It’s not too hard to make small, confined third person sections, but making…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 6 - 20 May 2019
From now I'll be trying to do a spoiler-free update in this top section of each dev log, and I'll mark out a section around mid-way for spoilers, such as new areas and such. Any really big spoilers will use the spoiler tag, so you can decide if you want to go in completely blind or not. School’s Out (For Now) Following submitting the INDIE MEGABOOTH build, we spent some time testing and tweaking that so it works a little better. There are some things that aren’t perfect, mostly to do with the way the outside camera works and the way the enemies move / attack, but we believe now that it’s a good enough representation of the game, considering we’re not planning to release for another 12 months! This has finally meant we’re moving on from the school a bit. Sure, we could spend more time now polishing every aspect of that area and it certainly isn’t 100% completed - but there’s a couple of…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 5 - 10 May 2019
A build is built! We just about submitted to indie MEGABOOTH, in the last few hours of the submission being open. The nature of getting a build ready means there's not too much exciting to talk about this week, as most of what we've been doing has been either making small tweaks to existing systems, or fixing problems with large but boring systems like scene loading. We did manage to pull all our existing mechanics together, including combat! Combat isn't finished - enemies can't hurt you and have a tendency to get confused / slide around wildly - but it's at least integrated into the school for the first time, and a part of the main gameplay for the first time, including reloading and ammo pickups, which are obviously a big part of any survival horror! Here's a picture of our zombies finally in the game: https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34647328%2F207154%25E2%2580%25A6
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 4 - 3 May 2019
Indie MEGABOOTH build We're still hoping to submit a build for Indie MEGABOOTH late deadline. Having only noticed we could submit mid last week, it's a bit tight, but we've managed to make a lot of progress with major systems this week. For example, combat, including reloading, and animations is well on it’s way - and this time programmed from scratch to be buildable upon for the rest of the game. As a result of adding ammo to the game, we now have stackable inventory done, too! While we already had some basic combat in the EGX demo for a placeholder boss fight, this is all paving the way to be putting regular enemies in the school itself. Alongside combat, we've also added a far more functional and attractive map system in place for the new build. We’ve taken some queues from Silent Hill and some from Resident Evil with the map also functioning as an objective tracker, of sorts. Here’s…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 3 - 26 April 2019
Road Trip This week we went to on a bit of a research mission to two of the nicest looking places in the UK, the Cotswolds and Wales. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34912814%2Ffaf2f0c4d05317dd48609c075636e20915e04450.jpg We grew up in the English countryside for the most part, so it’s not like we had a lack of experience to draw on when making Summerford, but we thought it would helpful to take a look at different types of villages a bit further from home. https://cdn.steampulse.org/steam/asset?u=https%3A%2F%2Fsteamcdn-a.akamaihd.net%2Fsteamcommunity%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fclans%2F34912814%2Fdc61658158b8dcde690605a9bb7dbc37bf26e825.jpg We managed to visit some very pretty looking villages, a few less pretty but more functional ones, some countryside and farm areas, and a ruined cathedral. We capped the trip off with a quick visit to an abandoned boys summer camp in the absolute middle of nowhere. https://steamcdn-…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 2 - 18 April 2019
Thanks to religion and history, England has a way of putting many of it’s national holidays very near each other, and we totally forgot that Friday and Monday are such days, so both this week and next week are only four days long. So we’ve not quite finished our goal of recreating the school - though for hopefully a good reason: In working on the outside we’ve been testing out exactly how we want to the outside areas of Summerford to look and play like. An Open Environment From the very start of development, we’ve been changing our minds about exactly how to create the village of Summerford. One idea was to limit the locations to mostly indoor and small outside areas, using a map to travel between them. The other was to actually create an outside that you actually play through, like the original Silent Hill games. Obviously the latter adds a lot more atmosphere, but it’s also a lot more…
- Summerford Dev Log - Week 1 - 12 April 2019
Hello, welcome, we've decided to move our dev log over to Steam while we continue work on the game. My name is Rob, I am 1/3 of the team working at NV on Summerford along with Daniel (programming) and Sarah (art). I'll be posting here once a week with whatever we end up getting done by the end of the week. You can find our previous dev log over on our site, for now. For continuity purposes with that blog, it's now day 82 since we started working on the game. EGX We did manage to show Summerford for one day at Rezzed! Unfortunately the build wasn't really where we wanted it to be, and as we got the space for free as part of running the tabletop area with our other company, we decided it was best to just do a quick demo and get back to working on making the game. It was always going to be difficult taking even a vertical slice demo of Summerford to a show with only two months in developme…
