Momento News

How are you? It feels like it has been (checks calendar) forever! Julian and I have been away doing showcases and talks and pitches and conferences but we’re back now and everyone is (mostly) healthy. We’ve reached 100,000 wishlists on Momento! We can’t believe we’d ever get to such a number when we first started this game! Thank you to everyone who has wishlisted and everyone who has joined us on our mailing list since then 🥰 we couldn’t be doing this without you!



Now back to the fun stuff: whilst Julian and I flew around the country with our 18 month old (conferencing with a toddler: not recommended), Jasmine and our programmer have been doing some super cool stuff in the engine like…drum roll🥁



OBJECT STATES: you can now rotate books to be different perspectives and open them 💕 (these are temp objects which is why they are currently greyscale). I am FROTHING🤤.

We’re planning to add this ability to some of our furniture as well - you can already open cupboards and drawers but you’ll also be able to turn chairs around to place them under desks and so on. 🛋️

We’re doing a HUGE content push for story mode at the moment. 💪 Which means Jasmine and I are doing a lot of temp art to import into the game whilst Julian and Zac work on the systems required such as the choice system, character relationship manager, clutter system, task system, and journal system to name a few. Now that we have our creative mode and a lot of awesome tools that our programming team has made, it is so much easier for us to add new objects and make more rooms super fast! 🏃

We've been testing out different room sizes - here's some sketches Jasmine has done on our massive Miro board for story mode.

In our latest newsletter, we asked you to tell us what kind of pets you would like to see in Momento (pictures were highly recommended!). We read through all of your replies and now have an overload of cute pet inspiration. Thank you all for sharing part of your lives with us 💕 If you haven't already, be sure to sign up to our newsletter if you'd like to have a say and help us with Momento's development!

That’s all for now - we have a few deadlines to meet before the end of the year so it’s back to the grindstone for us!

Hope you have a wonderful week ahead of you 🥰

Jess and the Momento Team

First up is a recap from Gamescom! Over the 5 days, Jasmine met and chatted with so many wonderful people who had an incredible time playing Momento’s Creative Mode! She received valuable feedback which we’ll be working hard to implement into our next build. We hope you enjoy the stickers and postcards Jasmine gave away, as well as the TimTams (which was a crowd favorite!) Thank you again for stopping by and playing! 👋🥰

Jasmine at Gamescom - the cat is a big hit.

We are currently working on ✨Story Mode✨!!



Now that she’s recovered from Gamescom, Jasmine is doing a review of our art system along with our programmer Zac who is creating an item importer tool so we can get to putting together those story rooms in the engine ASAP. Soon she’ll be doing art for more rooms and more objects. We’re also going to do a redesign of the journal and how that’ll function. 🎨

Testing out our clutter scatter system.

Julian is setting up all our systems for our story mode which is so exciting to see. We’ve got a clutter system started and are working on a ‘moment in time’ system which will spawn new story items and clutter items. He’s also working on a relationship system at the moment, which’ll affect the characters in the playable character’s life. 🎁

Journal Layout Concept

I’m writing some story stuff (all those story paths and aforementioned characters) and making some cool shaders at the moment - including a hue-shift one so we can change the colour of some of the furniture and walls and floors without making 10000 different assets of the same thing. We’re also starting to sketch up all the different story paths, so we can’t wait to show you more room assets soon! ✍️

That’s all from us for now~ We hope you are all doing well! 🥰

Can’t wait to hear back from you all 🫰
Jess and the Momento Team

Hope you are well! We are doing great 🤗 Jasmine is heading off to Cologne in a week or so! We are also still working on the game hehe ✨

For those going to Gamescom this is where we will be: Hall 10.1 Booth A.080! We will be showcasing Creative Mode at this festival! We can’t wait to see the different rooms you’ll make~



So what have we been doing? I love looking back on our previous updates when I write these because it is insane to me how much gets done within a month.

Jasmine and I testing out Julian’s systems of stacking, snapping, and containers~ 🥰

Julian:

• Snapping and Zone Tests for objects for easier placement
  
• Putting objects inside of other objects (stacking objects) (yes, you can now repot plants into other pots technically) - it’s not perfect yet but we’re definitely going to be working on it further after the Gamescom build!
  
• Refactoring container and creative mode managers
  

We’ve been told that Tim Tams are all the rage at Gamescom!

Jasmine:

• Finalized art assets for the additional rooms and interval puzzles
  
• Masks for colliders
  
• Reviewing art of old rooms to include open and closed states
  
• Getting stuff ready for Cologne (Tim Tams, more stickers, business cards and the like!)
  
• Story teaser art
  
• Making TikToks
  
• Item States for some objects (I finally know how useful convert to smart object is 🤔)
  

Teenage Bedroom Objects plus some concept sunset lighting - and lava lamp shader in progress!

Jess:

• Story treatment review
  
• Additional object art for rooms (remember CD players?? Remember burning CDs to play in your car? Wild)
  
• Additional Light rays for additional windows
  
• Making custom shaders for all our lighting setups (including a lava lamp shader)
  
• Story item descriptions review
  
• Background art cleanup
  
• Gobos for lighting (I have rustling leaf shadows working on it 🥵 yay)
  

We also have an additional programmer, Zac, who is helping out with our databases and systems and will be helping create additional tools for development. 🤩 Jasmine’s partner, Ryan, has been making updates to the website which you can see here! We also have our audio team SubZero and our composer, Mikey O’Neil, doing a lot of cool stuff in the music and SFX department! 🎶 I’m using too many exclamation points!!

Stay tuned for more updates! ✨ We’re going to aim to be more present on socials in the coming months~ ✨ With our creative mode almost finished, we’re going to have a lot more content to share 🥰 We hope you have a great month coming up!

All of the love 💕
Jess and the Momento Team

Hope you are doing well! 😊In the last month we have: shown off our creative mode at the Queensland Games Festival, applied for some showcases, and Jasmine got a grant to jet off to Gamescom in Cologne next month! Let me show you what's been going on!

Our latest creative mode build! 🌜Night Time Version🌛

Our creative mode build is what Jasmine and I will be using to build all the different rooms and connect them with the story-lines that have been laid out! It’ll also be available as a mode you can play in Momento where more items and furniture will unlock as you play through the story (plus maybe there’ll be some hidden ways to get more stuff? 👀)

This is some of the features it has so far:

• Place furniture: Comfort (seating, beds); Surfaces (desks, shelves, bookcases etc.); Wall Items (corkboards, mirrors); Floor Items (rugs etc.), Appliances, Storage.
  
• Place windows! We have backgrounds (currently one (1) but there’ll be more) drawn so when you move the windows around you can find the view you want! There’ll be season changes 🤭 we love making more work for ourselves.
  
• Place objects from a wide ranging list from cushions to plants to laboratory equipment!
  
• This build has five wallpapers and floors to choose from but there’s going to be way, way more.
  
• Can also choose the colour of the wall trim!
  
• Change the time of day from Morning, Midday, and Night time. (Night-time is my favourite. Especially when you add all the glow in the dark stars everywhere 😍 More.)
  
• Take a photo and save your beautiful (or cursed) creations~
  

Here’s what we are working on this month.



Julian:

• Adjusting the placement system! No more things just hovering in midair :’) though you’ll be able to toggle that on and off in the options if you REALLY want to have things hover in midair.
  
• Object layering system adjustments.
  
• Julian is also working on a light layering system because at the moment lights that are behind other objects are still rendering in front of those objects.
  
• Branching system rework.
  
• Journal system.
  
• Bin system
  
• Clutter object system.
  

Colour passes for bug catcher and foster cat interval puzzles.

Jasmine:

• Art for the rooms and interval puzzles for our vertical slice build to show at upcoming festivals!
  
• Art for the journal UI (including a character creator of a sort? 👀)
  
• Asset layering adjustments.
  
• Reviewing existing assets to ensure furniture with cupboards have an open state.
  
• Mask textures for lighting setups on objects.
  
• Getting ready for gamescom!
  

Jess:

• Vertical slice twine update - making sure it makes sense to play through.
  
• Spreadsheets, so many spreadsheets. Spreadsheets for object descriptions, spreadsheets for task list tasks, spreadsheets for journal entries, spreadsheets of consequences.
  
• Reworking story treatment document.
  
• Shaders and headaches for lighting set-ups (currently working on those window gobos I mentioned.)
  
• Shaders for key objects and locations.
  
• Mask textures for lighting set-ups.
  
• Story object art.
  
• This news post 🥰
  

Anyhow, we’d best get back to work! We have a lot to get done over the next month and a half! This month’s question is: What kind of room would you like to make in the Creative Mode? I hope you have a fabulous July ahead! For those in the Northern Hempisphere, enjoy your summer months! It is freezing down here! 🥶

All the love,
Jess and the Momento Team 💕

How are you? 🌈 Happy Pride Month! 🌈 I can’t believe it’s already midway through the year, time is just FLYING🪁 We have a lot of things happening for us - all good things - but it really makes the days and weeks just blur together! 😱

Here’s what we’ve been up to this month!

Julian:

• Continued development on Creative Mode
  
• Designing and testing the best way to present the UI for object selection
  
• Drawers and cupboards close and open now!
  
• Improved automatic placement system for objects and furniture
  

(A room I made in our Creative Mode! Look at that Ivy 😍)

Jasmine:

• Conceptualizing UI for Creative Mode
  
• Finished up a few more rooms 👀
  
• QA on existing art assets for consistency
  
• Designed some stickers to give away during in-person festivals!
  

Jess:

• Creating Twine demos to plan out our story paths
  
• Experimenting with potential relationship branches depending on what objects are kept or thrown away 👀
  
• Developing supporting characters further
  
• Conceptualizing lighting direction for different time of days
  

(This is a concept of how these characters might be shown in the game - as sketches that change as the player character grows older. 👀👀)

(Here’s an example of our sunset lighting setup! Honestly I really love all of them so it’s so hard to choose which one to show. 🌄☀️)

Hope the rest of your week goes really well and that our newest update gives you some excitement! ✨

All the love, 🥰👋
Jess and the Momento Team