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Now the dust has settled on I am Dead's release, I'm gonna talk about the folks on our fantastic team: @Dick_Hogg and I are delighted to have worked with so many talented people on this game. I'll go roughly in the order they joined the team...
Firstly, big thanks to (my wife) @cookymumsta who does all the finance, admin and planning for Hollow Ponds, ensuring that the ship never hits the rocks, no matter how erratically we steer it (making games the way we do is often quite chaotic!).. No small undertaking!
@whitingjp worked with us from the start - he made the 1st prototype, lots of the graphics, tools & gameplay programming including the final implementation of slicing - which became fiendishly complex - & the mind-bending memory effect (which we only barely understand ourselves!)
Our producer was @patrickashe - a role which changed significantly over time to encompass playtesting, writing, making many lists, level+puzzle design, bug-database-wrangling, music selection, localisation, and - his favourite - poking round the backend settings of online stores
We hired 2 superb 3D artists to translate Dick's concept art into 3D - they both did an amazing job of retaining all of the charm, while adding loads of lovely touches of their own. @bitmOO was responsible for modelling the majority of the characters in the game...
And @DoodleDemmy modelled the majority of the objects in the world, including many of the magical insides of objects which look so weird + cool when you slice into them and start moving the camera around.
We originally hired @Curbychup as an Environment Artist, but his role gradually expanded to level & puzzle design, plus some 3D modelling, including many of the buildings which slice away in cool ways, and the boats (I bet he still has nightmares about the ferry!)
@DanPugsleySound did the audio design, as well as recording most of the memory VO. His audio design adds so much richness, warmth and humour to Shelmerston, and he was a great sounding board for editing the VO. (He's also the voice of the kipper fishperson on the Quayside ;)
All 3D animation was by @mmmorganism: he did such a wonderful job of making 'quiet' animations - mostly of people standing or sitting around - which convey so much personality with very subtle movements. He came up with loads of the funny ideas for what people would be doing too.
We're delighted that @VicMarsmusic provided the music for the game - we were big fans before making I am Dead. These beautiful songs have a gently-pastoral, somehow-English feel to them, which gives them the perfect feel for Shelmerston's soundtrack. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1440480/I_Am_Dead__Original_Soundtrack/
Our writer @catwrote was responsible for much of the script and a bunch of the memory stories, as well as helping us think about our characters & stories, and teaching us to problem-solve the best way to convey the important stuff, while leaving behind things we didn't need.
We were big fans of @JeroenWimmers' game Circles, and delighted that he was up for joining us to work on a very strange and special part of the game... all of the magical, mysterious 'ghosty bits' were programmed by him. (play Circles! https://store.steampowered.com/app/460250/_Circles/)
Our old pal @angusdick joined us to do all the 2D animation in the game, which included Sparky and Mr Whitstable, the outro sequence, as well as all the Grenkins, and 'conversation heads'.
All the lovely, crisp UI design - including all the circular Memento and Grenkin icons, the ghost dossiers, Mr Whitstable's riddle posters, and all the screen layouts was the fine work of @OllieHoff
Dougie Brown @makewavesaudio edited the music stems to allow layers to drift in and out so the songs don't just loop every few minutes. He also worked on lots of versions of the music that plays when you find a memento, which took a surprising number of iterations to feel right.
@cb_kovak joined to help with porting, and put loads of work into optimising the game to run well on Switch. Thank-you for getting it to such a good place Jacob!
Our friend @mink_ette swept in near the end to advise us on the riddles - suggesting a bunch of really smart replacements for the ones we had (some of which were far too obscure). She's also the voice of the cormorant at the top of the lighthouse.
We were chuffed that Grandmaster Gareth @MISTYS_BIG_TWIT was up for writing us a couple of secret songs for the game. If you've played it through, you may well have come across one, but the other will take a bunch more work to hear...
If you're going to cast an annoying riddle gremlin in your game, who else but @swatpaz to do the voice! What even IS Mr Whitstable anyway? A clown? A goat? Some kind of giraffe?! Definitely a baddie!
Huge thanks to all the @A_i folks: Making this game was tough at times, but they made it way less stressful than it would have been otherwise, providing a solid sounding board at the points we needed it, and the space and time to properly finish it, when we needed that too. <3
And we couldn't have done it without the capable (and ongoing) technical assistance from @jonmcelroy and @sirfaty, who patiently helped us steer between all the jagged rocks involved in shipping an Unreal Engine game on multiple platforms for the first time.
Our excellent trailers were made by @Jam_sponge, who was responsible for a lot of the good ideas and problem solving involved in trying to convey what on earth this game was, as well as the superb editing. He's also the voice of Greg. Thanks Matt!
Big thanks to our cast of ghosts: David Shaughnessy, @larissala, @darrenjcbs, @Justinthewoods, @MrCar2n, Nicola McRoy & @dinawilson. Recording was so fun! And to Ashley Lambert who co-directed the VO sessions and taught me loads about VO in the process.
Also to the engineer for VO sessions, Vinny Edwards, who recorded a bunch of remote performances, troubleshooted all the fiddly tech, and sent us beautifully organised, edited files which made choosing final takes a ton easier! (he is @birdlandsound on IG)
And to our fantastic cast of 'living people' for the voices of all the memories: @bigyellowtable, @LitRedCorvette, @BarnhillPaul & @DebraMichaelsB did a lot between them, alongside guest appearances from @jennatar, @philippawarr, @doseonetweets, and my son Noah: You were all ace!
Special thanks to Steve Lerner, a writer who gave our script a pass, at a point where we were stuck on a few specific problems. His solutions were really smart, and added a lot to the overall feel of the story arc.
All the QA was by HUWIZ, who are such a great team to work with - extremely flexible, responsive and sensible. It was a hard game to QA (*so many* moving parts), and they did an amazing job https://www.huwiz.com/
And the localisation was by MoGi Group https://mogi-group.com , except for Turkish which was by Wordarch Studio.
Big thanks to all the folks at Epic support who answered all our support queries and steered us in the right direction. Not least @Flippinpony, who patiently explained a LOT of stuff about Unreal's UI system to me over the years: Cheers Cody!
Finally, big thanks to m'collegue @Dick_Hogg - we've been making games together for over 12 years now! Wow!
All these folks are great: check out the links in their bios / follow em / bookmark this thread for possible collaborators!
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All these folks are great: check out the links in their bios / follow em / bookmark this thread for possible collaborators!
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