I’m trying my best to not say “It has been a while” as I said that often with hiatuses. But it seems like the most appropriate time to use it. 6 years. 6 years since I last posted on here and what a busy 6 years it has been. I have so much that I want to talk about and a lot of catching up to do; it is a bit overwhelming to write it all down. So, I will try and do my best to get through it quickly, or at least hopefully be entertaining.
A Broken Website
The biggest reason why I didn’t post and we are now doing the whole “catching up” post again was because the website was broken. It existed, but a lot of formatting broken, links didn’t work, and images were missing. The amount of work required to get it to working order was a daunting task and as I mentioned I was pretty busy these last few years. So I said, “it good enough… I’ll get to it” for so long.
But as the years have gone by, a knot in my stomach would churn as more people would link back to this site that was barely hanging on. Worse, it had out of date information on it with none of the things that I have been working on. Until I finally set out to update the site with a fresh coat of paint and the latest projects Tribe has been up to.
Welcome to the new site!
I’ve cleaned up a lot of the broken links and images, updated the projects, and simplified the navigation of the website. I would love to hear your feedback on the site, feel free to poke around and check out all the new parts and let me know what you think. I’m really happy with how this has turned out but would love to improve the site more.
With that out of the way let’s start catching up on some of those projects I’ve mentioned.
Tale of Fish and Friends
This one honestly is the one I’m most shocked by the stark difference between what I last said and where it is at now. The last time I mentioned Fingeance here on the website was when we released the alpha prototype.
Well… Good news, Fingeance is out now! And it is free! You can download the game on Windows, Mac, and Linux. Grab some friends and get your revenge! It is wild to me that it took 7 years to release, but I am really proud of the team for getting over the finish line.
Though, you may have noticed but there’s no Fingeance page listed anywhere on the website. That is because it is fully an Escape Industries joint now. So, any more catching up on this game will mean you need to head over there for any more updates (which there might be some soon!).
Land of Virtual Reality
I was fortunate enough to work with the Minnesota Orchestra Hall and GLITCH to develop an interactive VR installation. Designed for people with very limited or no experience if VR or video games in general. The kicker? No one was operating the booth, it needed to be a self-guided and approachable experience.
Unfortunately, it isn’t available online as it was designed as an installation at the Orchestra Hall. If you want to check out some more details, you can view the project page here.
Preserving the Past
Between my last post and catching up in this one, two of my previous games I had released were lost to time with broken links and non-updated apps. Meet Evva: The Game didn’t even last 2 weeks after it was first released and with that it was generally hit or miss if you could even run it. (Unity just moved over to supporting WebGL but that was one week after it was released). So last year I set out to fix that. Both Glitch in the System and Meet Evva: The Game are back up and available to play, FOR FREE.
I’m so glad that I was able to bring these back, both these games are major milestones for me. Glitch in the System was my first fully released game and Meet Evva was my first paid video game gig. I was sad when people asked how you could play them, but they were offline. But now it is back, and you can try them out for free!
Finding a Way Home
Back in 2018 I made a game jam game called Distant Transmission. It was about two women who crash their ship and try to make it back home. I didn’t finish it during the jam, but I had the basic idea down and figured I would finish up the game and then release it later that year. And, shockingly, I actually did finish up the game, well mostly. I finished up the major of the game with new art, music, and even bonuses. I was even able to showcase the game at the Tweed Art Museum in Duluth MN for a month. There were just a few bugs here and there, but really the only thing holding me back from releasing it was I felt like I absolutely needed to add one final puzzle and it needed some cutscenes.
I couldn’t figure out a good one with the mechanics present in the game. I let it sit in the back of my mind as I moved on to other projects. But it kept bothering me that I had a basically finished game that I didn’t release without a strong reason other than I’m getting in my own way. So I set out to clean up some of the remaining bugs and then attempted to tackle the puzzle. I worked on it for a while trying multiple things trying to make sure that the puzzle was challenging, but not too challenging. Something that was intricate but easy to track what was going on.
I got some testing on some ideas I was working on, I adapted, and got more feedback. And by the end of all of this… I still wasn’t happy with the result. The game slowly stepped back in my mind as I continued with other projects. Still unreleased.
Identifying the Problem
It made sense, the original game was designed with explicit mechanics for a game jam and I didn’t change anything from a level design standpoint. The current game was built on the foundation of the game jam version. I literally was building my code and designs from that version. That version just wasn’t that flexible, particularly with its level design. Rebuilding the game with a more flexible design was called for. The problem is, I knew that I wouldn’t want to continue working on the game. I had already spent more time than I wanted to on the game and the thought of redesigning the game from scratch felt demoralizing.
I didn’t want to let the game die because of this. Looking at the game and decided, “Yeah, I should release this as is.” And I’m glad I did. With all of that said you can check out the game for free! Yes, I’m a bit bummed that I didn’t get all of the things in that I wanted but I know the alternative was to never release the game because it was too much additional work. I’m proud of what I was able to put out there. So, grab a friend and try out the game, it is very short something you can finish within your lunch break.
Catching Up on That Other Project
So, the elephant in the room is the project that now most people probably know Tribe Games for within the last few years. The one that I can say without a shadow of a doubt, legitimately changed my life for the better. The one about a dot dodging shapes. Well, I’m planning on catching up on that with a dash of postmortem in there; but that will happen in another post. Heh, this post is already a long one and I could talk for so long with that I figured I’d save you having to read all of it at once.
So that concludes this wrap up post of most of the different projects I have worked over the years. I’m happy that I have a working website again! You can expect more catching up style posts in the coming days including some more small releases, some music updates, news, and more on that other project I have been dancing around even though it is painfully obvious what I am talking about. But I will leave those for other posts. For now, thanks for reading!
Phew, I’m out of practice with doing my whole two question thing at the end of these posts, alright here goes nothing…
Shocked that long form posts still exist in 2022? Annoyed that I played up the whole “other project” thing? Let me know by leaving a comment!
Yeah, I think that should work. Good to be back.