We’re a small group of 5 friends from Portugal that wanted to try their hand in creating a story-focused videogame inspired by their love of point-and-click adventure games. Although we had some artistic background ,none of us had ever made a videogame so we learned along the way to code and animate.
The Night is Grey is a cinematic thriller with a revivalist take on trauma. It features a man lost in the woods, an abandoned little girl, a place filled with mysteries, dark humor and very strange wolves.
It also has frame by frame character animation with hand drawn characters and an original score recorded in studio.
André always wanted to make a videogame and had the seed idea for a great story. We can’t tell what it is here, because it’s kind of a spoiler. He then invited Tiago at work to create the story with him and write the dialogue. Then, Miguel joined to build it and make it actually work, Teresa came in to illustrate it and bring characters to life, and finally Bruno built the soundscape with music he recorded himself.
Since we all have day jobs, we had to spend our free time making the game. Long nights turned into 7 years, which would be an impossible schedule for a bigger studio with deadlines.
It was hard, but we think the time also allowed the idea to mature and grow and we all grew as people in that space of time. It also made us rethink some elements and make the whole story more compelling.
We used Unity because it seemed intuitive and lots of solid adventure games have been developed in this engine.
Learning to do everything from scratch was daunting. Specially assemblying all together with all the ammount of artistic detail we wanted for characters and scenarios.
If you’re a newbie, some people in the industry will try to take advantage of you. From sketchy production companies that want to profit from you without actually giving anything useful back, to game journalist that aren’t as kind-hearted as they seem.
Be aware of that, but also know that most people in the dev and game journalist communities are actually cool, supportive and open to lending a hand. Build these relationships and you’ll have nothing to fear.
The Night is Grey was made with love and passion. If you’re looking for some story-focused game to chill during a weekend, consider giving it a try.
Thank you for taking interest in our little game.
-Whalestork Studios
❤️
