In Sink News

[h3]Two people working together may not seem like much, but together they can form the tiniest mightiest team![/h3]

We’re excited to announce that In Sink is one of only a handful of games that has been selected to feature in Tiny Teams, hosted by Yogscast.



Tiny Teams is a festival all about celebrating games made by solo developers and micro-studios, from already popular indie hits, to hidden gems and what could be the next "big thing". The festival takes place each summer, with 2024 being its fifth year!


Watch the stream live on Yogscast Twitch Channel


[h2]So why does In Sink qualify for the event?[/h2]


In Sink is being developed by Clock Out Games, a micro-studio made up of just two developers! Much like the two characters in our game, we work together to solve the complex puzzle that is making a fun and engaging co-op adventure!


[h3]Want to form your own tiny team and give In Sink a try?


Dive in and sync up with a partner in our prologue here 👇[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2289970/In_Sink_A_CoOp_Escape_Prologue/


[h3]Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.

Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media![/h3]

[h3]Dive into 'In Sink' with a friend, where being shipwrecked is just the beginning of your co-operative adventure!
[/h3]

We’re excited to announce that we'll be showcasing a playable demo of In Sink at BitSummit this year!

BitSummit is being hosted at Miyako Messe in Kyoto from Friday July 19th until Sunday July 21st.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858650/In_Sink/


Travel through rifts to other worlds where you’ll solve a series of escape rooms, puzzles, and other mysteries, working together to overcome each challenge. Together, you’ll need to think outside the box, and then escape from it.


If you’re at the event, come find us on the Kwalee stand to chat with our team and see if you have what it takes to solve the puzzles and escape the island.


If you want to get a better idea of what In Sink has to offer, check out our announcement trailer here 👇


[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

[h3]Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.

Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media![/h3]

[h3]Welcome to our third developer diary!


Today we will be taking a look at how incorporating colorblind accessibility has profoundly changed our approach to our game design![/h3]


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858650/In_Sink/


It was only after we released the Prologue for In Sink that we started to realise that some of our community members were having issues with the colors. Many of these players were either colorblind themselves or were playing with colorblind friends, partners, or family members, and they were finding the color-coded puzzles to be very difficult as a result. We wanted to resolve this issue and make In Sink a more accessible game for colorblind players, but we also wanted to retain the fact that our game was language-less. The big question was: What else could we add to our puzzles to help players describe certain elements to each other without using language in any way?


The answer was to add numbers and symbols!


Now everything that has a relevant color also has a symbol and/or a number associated with it, so the game can be played entirely without describing a single color!



The symbols in the game are in a 4x4 or 3x3 grid with the inspiration coming from the game Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes. They are easy to describe so as to not add an additional challenge for our colorblind players. For example, looking at the symbols and numbers featured in the images below, “two diagonal lines” or “Lever number 8” are both two simple ways to summarise what you are seeing.



In short, we wanted to give players as many options as possible for describing what they are seeing to each other, rather than limiting it to colors only. This has changed the way we approach the design of our puzzles and has brought up even more interesting discussions, such as how people describe certain symbols, why they choose to describe them in that way, and what signifiers do people naturally default to when solving puzzles (i.e. do you prefer to use the colors, the symbols, the numbers, or a mixture of all of them?). Rather than limiting our puzzle design, it has opened up new avenues for consideration and has left us with even more to talk about in future dev diaries!

[h3]Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.

Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media![/h3]

[h3]When you’re trying to find the perfect co-op partner, make sure you don’t faucet up 🛁

We’re excited to announce that we’ve synced up with UK-based publisher Kwalee![/h3]


[previewyoutube][Add trailer here] [/previewyoutube]

At the Future Games Show, we announced that we’ve partnered with Kwalee to release In Sink.


https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858650/In_Sink/


Being shipwrecked is just the beginning of your co-operative adventure in In Sink. On this strange island, you’ll jump through portals to puzzling places, each with its own quirks and unique theme. As you leap from place to place, you'll begin to unveil the island's mysteries. Together, you’ll need to think outside the box, and then escape from it.

Progress through puzzles with language-less elements like shapes, signs, colours, and numbers, all designed to be colour-blind friendly, making every world detailed in a different way. Turn wheels, flip levers, use scales, and press buttons and pressure plates to solve unique conundrums, testing your skills for escape.



[h3]Can you stay In Sink or will your plans go down the drain?

Check out our prologue and test your skills, patience, and teamwork.[/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2289970/In_Sink_A_CoOp_Escape_Prologue/


[h3]Looking for your missing piece to the puzzle? We’ve got plenty more for you to sink your teeth into.

Don’t forget to wishlist In Sink, join our Discord server, and follow us on social media![/h3]

[h3]Welcome back to our developer diary!

Today, we’d like to shed some light on some more recent changes we’ve made to update the style of In Sink 💡

Let’s take a look at how our art refresh and new lighting system have combined together to complete our brand new look![/h3]

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1858650/In_Sink/


If you’ve played our prologue, you may have noticed that the lighting differs from the recent screenshots we’ve been sharing of the game. This is because everything in the prologue is ambiently lit at ~95% brightness and virtually no shadows are cast, so a lot of the in-world lights that you see are cosmetic, aside from a select few spotlights that shine down in some parts of the level.




In order to make the lighting look more natural, we decided to switch to a real-time lighting system!

As you can see in the comparison photo above, in the prologue it looks as though almost everything is lit by default and there are a few spots, such as the areas directly below the in-world lights, that are especially bright. With our new lighting system, everywhere is a lot darker by default and only the lit spots are bright. On top of that, there are more lit spots in each level, they’re brighter, they’re at a wider angle, and they have smoother falloffs, which adds to the realism of the lighting.




We also decided to incorporate the use of light cookies into multiple areas of our levels. This has allowed us to produce the illusion of high fidelity lighting without the associated performance cost, as shown in the image below.




For the final touch, there’s now a post-processing stack that adds bloom to the lights and tone-mapping, which gives the lighting a slightly warmer temperature and makes the levels look a lot cosier.

In short, the combination of the art refresh and the new lighting system have come together to create a style that we hope you’ll love even more than the prologue!




[h3]Tune in to our next developer diary, where we’ll be discussing how we’ve been making some significant changes to ensure In Sink is more accessible for colorblind players.

Want to meet other In Sink fans and challenge them to a speedrun in our prologue?

Then don’t forget to join our Discord![/h3]