Dark Lessons News

Hi there,

It's been a while since my last update on Dark Lessons, my psychological horror game where your teacher is up to no good.

If you've been wondering whether work on Dark Lessons is still going on, first of all: Great, you thought about my game! Thank you!

But also: Yes, I've been working on the game quite steadily, actually — it's just that much of my progress hasn't felt worthy of being shown around yet to me.



As an example, I spent some time in January on the save game mechanism. Essential functionality, but also not much to write home about. In February and March, I added custom animations for my villain Agatha to replace the ready-made downloaded ones that I had originally used for my placeholder character model. I also upgraded the game to run on a newer version of the Godot game engine and did a lot of optimizations to reduce load times, going through all the file sizes and types of files used in my game ... but as I am writing this, I can already sense you drifting away and falling asleep reading it ...

Wake up, please!

Let me tell you about something more interesting, namely the moment I entered Content Hell. This is the phase of development where all the basic systems are in the game but I still need to churn out lots and lots of content before the game is done.

Besides content for puzzles, there's content for lore, such as this newspaper you'll find in Agatha's living room. One of the challenges in the months ahead will be enriching the game's world with many more of such items.



[h2]A Match Made in Hell: Arthur and Agatha[/h2]

The other big task that occupied me in the last couple of weeks was to finally create the 3D model for Agatha's poor late husband, Arthur. He got a bit too involved with the Arcane, and it didn't go well for him.





I already teased Arthur in one of my earlier newsletters when my amazing artist Hitsugitoshi created the concept art. I've now sculped his model, and while some details and the textures — which will need to do some heavy lifting — are still missing, I finally feel comfortable sharing my progress with you.



Whenever I do one of these characters, it feels like I'm biting off a bit more than I can chew. While I can now create a simple piece of furniture or another small item in Blender within perhaps half an hour, getting these characters with their organic shapes right is still a week-long process besides taking care of my day job and family.

Luckily, there'll only be one more character in Dark Lessons. I won't be tackling that one before releasing the demo, so I hope I'll be able to make good progress with everything else in the meantime.



Right now, I'm working on getting Arthur ready to for an updated trailer, which will be included in an event at the end of May.

Until then, if you haven't done so yet, I would really appreciate it if you could wishlist Dark Lessons. It's the easiest and most effective way of helping me out, and it really does make a difference!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2675700/Dark_Lessons/

Hi there!

As I've been trudging through content hell (more on that in the next update), I noticed that I never posted my last newsletter here on Steam. So, here's part 1 of what I've been up to in the last couple months before I'll drop more current news in a few weeks.

Having spent most of the time since summer creating 3D models and learning animation, it has felt really good returning to more gameplay-related activities recently. This included mostly busywork like bug fixing, but at least some changes are also nice to look at.

One example is the addition of real classical paintings to the game world. Previously, I'd relied on placeholder art from an asset pack that I've wanted to replace ever since I've been using more detailed character models. It turns out that many museums offer public-domain access to thousands of classical art pieces online. Thus, with a little research, I was able to turn Agatha's home into a bit of an art gallery in its own right.



I'm really happy with how these images help me set the scene and offer a glimpse into Agatha's character. The only downside is that I'll now probably need to add more detailed materials to the image frames as well. 🤷



Besides classical art, there's one very special picture made by my concept artist Hitsugitoshi. This wedding painting hides a secret, but I don't want to reveal too much just yet ...



Alas, if only they could've been this happy forever!


[h2]When Players Get Stuck (Like, Literally)[/h2]

When I alpha tested Dark Lessons in early summer, one common complaint was that players kept getting stuck — not in a puzzle, but in door frames. This was because the character is holding large, five-pronged candelabra in their left hand that would collide with obstacles when players didn't expect it.



After some tinkering, I found a way of dealing with this, and I think it's a great example for how game dev involves a lot of smoke and mirrors:

The player's right hand item now isn't part of the game world at all, but is instead projected into the world via a so-called subviewport. As for the candelabra, there's an invisible instance just to cast the candles' shadow into the room, whereas the candles you actually see on screen are a tiny copy floating right in front of the camera at scale 1:10. If you'd like to learn more about it, I wrote a post about the technical details on Reddit.


[h2]Updated Horror Game Awards Show Trailer[/h2]

Last year's Horror Game Awards Show was 14th December, and I was graciously given the chance to present a new trailer during the event. It doesn't feature as much new content as I had planned, but it does include two new scenes as well as a completely new original score by composer Megollyen. Big thank you to Will, Phil and the Horror Game Awards team for introducing me to such a great audience, and to Megollyen for doing an absolutely amazing job on a very tight schedule!

If you've missed it in the show, you can check out here:

[previewyoutube][/previewyoutube]

Hi horror fans,

In my last update, I talked a lot about Agatha. She's the evil teacher whose house you need to escape from in my psychological horror game Dark Lessons.

What I didn't tell you is that you won't be alone with her. Agatha used to have a husband, and he's in the house as well — or rather, whatever is left of him is. I won't reveal why he's there, why he's dead (... maybe?) or what he's up to just yet, but I at least wanted to share with you this amazing concept art of him that my 2D artist Hitsugitoshi has come up with.



Him and Agatha, I think they make a lovely couple!

By the way, there's even a fourth person in the house (you, the player, being the third), but that's a topic for another newsletter.

As for myself, I spent most of the past month taking Blender animation courses so that I could properly bring my 3D models to life. Unfortunately, this means that I haven't got any new in-game footage for you, though I promise you that something really cool is cooking right now.

I'm also fairly certain that this will conclude my months-long saga of taking Blender courses, at least for this project, and I've now got the 3D basics needed to hit the ground running.

Meanwhile, please take this simple practice animation of a wobbly blob I did as part of the course and bear with me.



At least my artists (yes, plural!) haven't been lazy at all this month. Besides the drawings for Agatha's husband, I got composer Megollyen to create an original track for me, and capsule artist Guilherme Holz revamped my Steam capsule to give it a much more professional look!






"Which games inspired you to make Dark Lessons?"
"Will I be able to play it on my ultra wide screen?"
"When can I play the demo?"

If questions like these have been keeping you up at night, you might be relieved to know that I've posted some FAQ on my Steam Community Hub page. So head over there and check out my most commonly asked questions!

In case you've got a question that hasn't been answered there yet, feel free to post it or send me an email!

Hi horror fans,

It's been a while since the last newsletter for my horror game Dark Lessons, where you need to survive your murderous teacher. Let me start by doing what I bet no man has ever done before me: blame a woman (as an aside, I've been thinking a lot about misogyny in horror media since I started work on the game ... 🤔).

I'm referring of course to Agatha, your favorite teacher and the game's villain! In an upcoming newsletter, you'll learn more about her back story, but today will be all about the makeover she's gone through in the last couple of months.

[h2]How It Started vs How It's Going[/h2]



My original plan was to make a game as quickly as possible, just to prove to myself that I could finish it. I knew nothing about 3D modelling, so I used the bought asset that you see above on the left. Since then, my goals for Dark Lessons have shifted quite a bit, and quality has become much more important to me.

One of the most common criticisms of my game has been how generic good-old Asset-Agatha looked. I had to agree, found an amazing artist and asked them for a 2D, Manga-style redesign. This is what they came up with:



In July, I began working on the 3D model. This is the first time I've modeled a human being, and I had to follow along in-depth tutorials to make it happen. As if that wasn't enough, I wanted to make my model work simultaneously as a higher-detail asset for marketing material and as a simpler, lowish-poly version that would fit in with the game's low-poly style.



Once the shape was done, Agatha needed colored textures and a skeleton that could be used for poses and animations. So I learned texture painting and rigging to make Agatha come to life:



The finishing touch was motion capturing to add facial movement. (I'll spare you the horrifying webcam recordings of myself here, but you'll find one on my social media. 🙈 )



I'll be honest: Had I known beforehand how much work the redesign would be and how long it would take, I wouldn't have done it. At the same time, I'm really happy with the result — it is, just like the redesign of Agatha's house, more than I thought I could ever do not too long ago. Let's just hope I won't take as long for the remaining two models ... 👀

If you've made it until here, don't forget to support me by wishlisting Dark Lessons!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2675700/Dark_Lessons/

I'm super excited to announce that my friends at Skaar Game Productions have released Envelope, their PS1-style, open-world horror game.

Step into the shoes of an unfortunate soul who finds himself getting pushed to do something beyond anything he could possibly imagine.

I've been following Envelope's development closely, and it slaps. Go check it out!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2717480/Envelope/