Velvet 89 News

[p]Dear everyone![/p][p]Velvet 89 turns one year old, and we are tremendously grateful to everyone who played it. We really appreciate that you seem to enjoy our game! And what’s a better way to celebrate than with a major update that further develops the vivid picture of the Velvet Revolution we set out to capture?[/p][p]Hence, our Velvet 89: anniversary update is now live for you to play. [/p][p]But first, a short teaser:[/p][previewyoutube][/previewyoutube][p]So, now allow me to be specific. The anniversary update brings:[/p][p]We wanted to visit this Moravian metropolis from the very inception of the project. And thanks to your support and interest, we were able to do it! Anniversary Update brings a whole new city, unique both in style and content. It features an iconic human chain, which people formed to protest against the unjust incarceration of political prisoners. Stories from Brno show how the revolutionary spirit spread across the country and what role did independent media (such as self-published writing or VHS tapes) played in spreading it.[/p][p]As for the level itself, it is the first truly snowy level we did. Our graphic artist, Ondřej, also took great care to recreate the distinctive plague monument that is still standing there in 2025. And when you complete the scene, you are, of course, awarded with archival footage from 1989.[/p][p]All in all, Brno features 10 new characters and 3 new items.[/p][p]Wait, what, items?[/p][p]We should talk about ther-[/p][p]But it is not just Brno that’s new: every scene now contains three new items for you to search. Whether its a camera, a manifestation leaflet, a soldier’s beret, or a miner’s badge, each object gives players additional context of the era.[/p][p]The items can be found only after you’ve located the main, compulsory characters, and each one unlocks a special entry in a library screen alongside sometimes pretty exclusive photos or archival material.[/p][p]Items enabled us to flesh out the story of the Velvet Revolution in greater detail. And there are new achievements, of course.[/p][p]Or, you know, just download the updated version of Velvet 89 and see the new things for yourself :)[/p][p]We are glad to be keeping Velvet 89 alive even after a year it‘s been out. We hope you like these additions, and thank you for playing and being interested in Czechoslovak history![/p][p]Best Wishes,
Ondřej
Game designer
Charles Games[/p][hr][/hr]

Hi everyone, since we are in a festive mood before Christmas, we decided to gather some scenes from Velvet 89 and compile a wallpaper for you to freely use on your devices. It is a thank you for playing Velvet 89 and being our fans.

Find the wallpapers below or download them in the best quality (4K, 100% JPG) via this link.

Thanks and happy holidays wherever you are!

Ondřej
Charles Games

Hi!
First of all, thanks so much for playing Velvet 89, with 45 000+ of your it makes our developer hearts very happy. Secondly: tools! Velvet 89 was a first hidden object game for us, which meant we had to adapt and come up with new software solutions to the issues such as "create a huge crowd, but make sure its diverse and ensure that there are not two target characters".

Hence, this post, where I’ll show you some of the special tweaks our very own Tereza made to Unity engine to make our life way easier. We will look a bit under the hood, but if you have any other questions, leave them below and I’ll get back to you.


The most important thing: our protesters! Each of them is composed of various interchangeable parts: heads, torsos, legs, hairs, glasses, signs or flags. Ondřej Javora drew them, put them together in Adobe After Effects and then imported into Unity. Tereza then made this menu that enabled us to quickly iterate different versions of each character type, experiment with different parts and let the engine generate many variations quickly, without us needing to assemble them by hand.




With the characters set, our squares and streets needed populating! Hence, the crowd generation tool. First, we created what we call "Figure Bundle", a list of characters needed for a particular scene. The tool Tereza made also enabled us to set how often each of them should appear. And then, we could generate our crowds! All we had to do was to set the amount of people in the scene (hundreds in Teplice, thousands and thousands in Letná/Ostrava), how spread the crowd should be and how tightly packed protesters should be.




But we could not leave everything on the computer as we wanted to polish each scene the best we could. To that end, we got "Figure Brush" to quickly draw handpicked selections of characters and delete them, refining the crowd to our liking.




To ensure we did not have any baffling doubles of our target characters (then ones you are tasked with finding), Tereza made a special tool to help us. Either to spot those exactly the same characters as the target ones or those that are very similar: we did not want to make players hunt for almost the same doorman with only difference being a small hat.



There is of course a lot of smaller things happening under the hood (layering, hints, animations and much more), but these are the big ones that made Velvet 89 happen.

I hope this was an interesting foray into how the game was made! Thanks for playing and all the feedback you’ve been giving us and let us know, if you’d like to see another hidden object game by Charles Games in the future or perhaps an expansion to Velvet 89. Who knows!

Have a great day,
Ondřej
Charles Games

Czech and Slovak Games Week is upon us (starting 19:00 CET here https://store.steampowered.com/sale/CzechSlovakGamesWeek2024) and we wanted to make something special!

Therefore, we’ll be streaming Velvet 89 and bits of We Grew Up in War, starting 16:00 CET on Tuesday (12/11). Tune in here on Steam to hear us talk about how we made the game, how we approached the sensitive historical subject and more.

See you soon!

Ondřej
Charles Games

Velvet 89 is a free hidden object game that tells the story of communist Czechoslovakia's "Velvet Revolution" in 1989, which brought an end to 41 years of one-party rule and led to the founding of a parliamentary republic. The game released earlier this month, and you can find it on Steam, iOS and Android. I know nothing about the Velvet Revolution, but I do have some quick thoughts on the use of a format I associate with Where's Wally to capture a process of extraordinary political change.

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