PLEASE START US OFF BY INTRODUCING YOURSELF:
Im Valen, a technical vfx artist from Argentina. I started working on the games industry 4 years ago. I come from an engineering background and the last years of my education I wanted to make a 180 degree turnaround becouse I wanted to work on something artistic. Luckily, I investigated enough to find about Technical art and it just clicked, I never stopped since that day. I always wanted to make my own games, I remember doodling around with some action script and flash when I was a child. I really didnt feel quite prepared for it when I started in the industry, and for some reason chatting with Pablo (desvelado's artist) gave me a lot of confidence to start a project with him, and here we are, almost ready for its release.
TELL US ABOUT DESVELADO.
The whole idea of making a platformer started when I reached out to pablo about some game he was stucked with, to offer my experience as a programmer and work together, I am a big fan of his work.
When we discussed about what we could do, it was obvious for both of us that we wanted something easy to start with, and with a very limited scope, our main objective was to publish something on steam, and still is haha. Becouse of that we decided we wanted to make a platformer since its not a very complex genere so we can focus on having solid mechanics and gameplay ideas. The whole story about a Vampire wanting to sleep and turning off all the lights of the castle was a perfect frame for the simple concept of having to move across a single room to solve small puzzles, so we moved forward with it.
HOW HAS THE DEVELOPMENT JOURNEY BEEN
To be honest, it was pretty smooth, with the adition of Joaco (level designer) to the team we solved the main issue that caused friction at the start of the project, the game design, neither pablo nor I are game designers so that was a roadblock for us during the first months.
We always kept the scope small and I think that was one of the big advantages we had during the production. There are a lot of ideas and posiblities during the development that sound amazing but it can add incredible amounts of work that you cant visualize from the start, so we were super cautious about those, and end up focusing on the ideas we really thought could make a better game, and not necessarily a bigger/longer one.
WHICH GAME ENGINE DID YOU CHOOSE AND WHY?
We used Godot for the whole project (I did a quick prototype on Unity but got scrapped pretty fast). The main reason was Pablo's experience with Godot, it was easier for us if we both could do some scripting, and I had no issues diving into a new engine. I have to say, its an amazing engine, it was so easy to pick up, I never imagined that. I couldn't be happier with the decision
WHAT'S BEEN YOUR BIGGEST DEVELOPMENT HURDLE SO FAR?
I think that keeping the team motivated and understanding that there is a moment for each thing during a whole development has been quite a challenge for us. We devs want to code/art/design, and that's what makes us start this projects, but once the thing gets serious you have to spend time doing a lot of stuff that do not involve any of those things, like marketing, localization, PR, etc. It was a whole new dimension for the three of us.
ADVICE FOR FELLOW DEVS?
Just do the thing, finish it, and start again. You can always build on top of what you did before, release the game, even if it has issues, room for improvement, just turn the page over and start again. I think that is super important in the result focused times we are going through right now
ANY FINAL THOUGHTS?
Doing games is hard, rewarding, but hard, I hope the people enjoys our game, and if they dont, its totally fine, I have a lot to learn and will keep trying.
Thanks for contacting me Rob!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2878710/Desvelado/
-Valen
❤️
