Awkward 2: The Party Game of Savage Secrets News

As you may have seen on the Awkward 2 Steam page, we have new capsule art!

As we continue our mission to tie together two themes that aren’t often seen together: ‘adult’ and ‘party’, we are working hard to show this unusual marriage of genres through the Steam page and other forms of advertising. We’ve added new Chibi characters (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1682690/view/4363508865810825036) and we’ve also decided to change the Awkward 2 capsule art!

Here’s the previous one:



We loved this art that showed off the wicked Demi-God Wick surrounded by some beautiful illustrations of various other Gods but, in theory, this capsule art could be linked to any game genre and it doesn’t clearly enough demonstrate that this is a party game.

Here’s the new art:



In this image you can see Wick, Momus and the Egg of Destiny all emerging from the screen towards a group of friends who have gathered to drink and play together. Another bonus of this capsule art is that you’re able to see they’re playing with their phones as a controller which is a feature we really wanted to highlight!

We’d love to hear what you think of the new art!

Last month we were super fortunate to be featured at the 'Brilliant Indie Treasures' event at the Develop Conference in Brighton where we, Snap Finger Click, along with a selection of independent developers were invited to showcase our game to about 350 game industry people & press.

We were selected for the event with Awkward 2, and while we obviously think it’s a great game, it was amazing to hear all the positive feedback from the players!

We played the demo of the game and had constant queues of people either wanting to play the game, or just wanting to see how other people answered the weird and disturbing questions. It was great to see Awkward 2 catching so many people’s attention with special praise of the art, art direction and especially the look of Wick!



Additionally, we were thrilled to see how well our use-your-phone-as-a-controller software, Needletail, remained strong throughout the event as the internet was really bad and we ended up having to tether through a mobile phone using data the whole time. However, it didn’t disconnect once and players were able to play as intended, using their phones as a controller through a browser!

Overall it was a great event, with really positive feedback from players with lots of buzz for Awkward 2 and it only boosted our excitement to share the game soon with everyone!

One of the challenges with developing an adult party game is tying together the yin and yang of two themes that aren’t often seen together: ‘adult’ and ‘party’.

We want the look and feel of the game to convey the disturbing nature of some of the content and the dark backstory of how the players have ended up navigating their way out of Wick’s wicked world while also bringing the lighter feel that players usually associate with multiplayer party games.

A way we’ve been able to combine these themes is by adding a new art style to the game to accompany the beautifully creepy existing art made by our 3D artist, Amanda.

The additional art style we’ve decided to go with is called Chibi which is described as “a Japanese caricature art style characterised by characters with small, exaggerated bodies and oversized heads..”

We found an artist called Mustafa who was able to take the characters from the game (Wick, Momus and the Egg of Destiny) and ‘Chibify’ them and we absolutely love the results!

Take a look below at some of the work in progress sketches of the new art and the final ones that we’ll be adding to Awkward 2 and see if you can find where it’s already been added on the last pic!

Mustafa’s Sketches:


The Egg of Destiny:


Momus:


Wick:


Egg of Destiny Inventory and Unlockables:
Can you spot the Chibi character in the screenshot above?

We're thrilled to announce that Awkward 2: The Party Game of Savage Secrets has been selected for the Games Lab line-up at Aesthetica Short Film Festival! Aesthetica is a prestigious BAFTA-Qualifying event that takes place in York, England. The Games Lab is a new part of the festival this year, featuring 50 games that show off some of the best innovation and creativity, where bold stories are told differently.

There are a number of other exciting titles that will be shown off alongside Awkward 2, including Desta: The Memories Between from ustwo, and Polygon Treehouse's Mythwrecked. As well as showcasing some of the best and most groundbreaking upcoming games, Aesthetica’s Game Lab will be celebrating game culture, design, and production, enhanced by a number of panels and talks from industry experts.

As a part of the official selection for Aesthetica, Awkward 2 is also eligible for their Best Game Award. We’re honoured to join a line-up of incredible games made by some fantastic talent, and we can’t wait to find out if we’ll be taking home the trophy for Best Game at the Awards Ceremony in November.

This will be the first event where we’re exhibiting Awkward 2 and we’re so excited for its debut! You can come along and play it for yourself at Spark, York between the 8th and the 12th of November.



To find out more, visit the Aesthetica Short Film Festival website here: https://www.asff.co.uk/

- Martijn and the team at Snap Finger Click

As the title suggests, Awkward 2 isn’t the first game in the Awkward series. Awkward 2 is the sequel to our small indie title we released back in 2018. At the time, Snap Finger Click was a tiny studio with just five of us on the development team. Shortly after founding the studio, we made ACT IT OUT! and we wanted to follow it up with another small game which became the original Awkward.

The first Awkward game is about difficult and controversial questions. Starting out with tame but still polarising questions like “Does pineapple belong on pizza?” and “Should ketchup be stored in the fridge?”, eventually the game ramps up the difficulty, asking about topics including difficult moral dilemmas (“If you could only choose one, would you save the life of a 1-year-old or an 18-year-old?”) and your parents’ sex life (“Who has the best sex life, you or your mother?”).

The idea for Awkward spawned from conversations with our friends. Approaching our thirties and some of us and those in our friend circle had been married or in longterm relationships for many years. We discussed missing those early days of dating when you’re learning so much about each other, telling stories and revealing secrets. It’s exciting and fresh, and when you’re with a longterm partner, although you still have fun and love each other very much, many of us longed for that ‘new relationship’ feeling where you find out something surprising about your loved one.

One of our approaches to game design at Snap Finger Click is to take a real-world experience that’s fun and see if there’s a way to turn it into a game. If you can capture that same feeling of fun from something you already know feels great, it’s almost like your very first prototype! As we experimented, we found that posing difficult questions naturally led players to explain why they had chosen certain answers, and in turn would reveal tidbits of information about their lives they’d never revealed before.

The goal with the first Awkward game was to try and spark conversation and debate, getting one of the players to reveal a new fact about themselves, that no matter how well you know the person you’re playing with, you’ll still find out at least one new thing you didn’t know before.

We originally envisioned Awkward as a game for couples, answering questions about each other and their relationship. But as we playtested together, we discovered that playing with friends and family was fun too - actually more fun, because you tend to find out more intimate secrets from your friends than you do from a romantic partner.

We always felt the first Awkward game could’ve been much bigger than it was. Back then, we didn’t have the team size or budget to do it full justice. In Awkward 2, we have a game that’s much bigger and closer to our original vision. There are six different rounds, each round has its own gameplay, there are 3D visuals, and a voiceover. We spent longer perfecting the questions and trying to cut down on the tamer topics from the original game so that everything is even more Awkward.

After the release of the first game we spent a long time reading reviews and other player feedback, in order to make sure this sequel is a significant step forward. We want to keep growing the franchise and we even released a boardgame of Awkward recently after a successful Kickstarter campaign. We can’t wait to share Awkward 2 with the world!

What are you most looking forward to in Awkward 2?

- Martijn and the Snap Finger Click team