222 - Early Build Walkthrough

[matt]

While we showed Neverending Nightmares pretty early in development with our kickstarter demo, I found a build that was much earlier in development and... not very good. Watch my playthrough!

[RightClickSaveAs]

It's always interesting to see how far along the game progressed. At least a few of us got to see that first hand by playing the Alpha builds as they came out, I remember how big a difference it made adding little things like the stairs and closer looks, which weren't in some of the earliest alpha builds either I don't believe. And it's also always amazing to see what a huge difference sound and music can make. It's a lot like watching unfinished clips of a movie that haven't had the sound mixed in yet.

[matt]

You mean you didn't like my sound effects? hahahahah

I had forgotten about Skyler's original track. It was cool but not quite the mood we were going for. I think the final music turned out perfect.

[RightClickSaveAs]

It's not that your sound effects were bad, it's that Eduardo and Skyler's work was just TOO good! There, that's a nice diplomatic way to phrase it!

Yeah the soundtrack ended up being so amazing. I hope it's selling well. The one video I put up on YouTube (Last Lullaby from the Lost Child level) ended up getting almost 10,000 views, which blew me away. I tried to direct everyone there to the bandcamp page to buy it so hopefully at least some of them did!

[matt]

haha, I think my voicing of young Gabby was severely lacking. hahah

Skyler owns the soundtrack and we license it, so I don't have any numbers on that, but I really hope it is selling well.

[JPrice]

Very interesting video Matt, thanks for sharing!
You can definitely tell the game came a long way from that early build hahaha

I like some elements of it though, like how there was kind of the illusion of a floor plan to everything. Things like the bathrooms, bedrooms, that foyer type area and the fact that there seemed to be way more rooms in that level made it seem kinda like a hub style thing where you could explore the entire house at will. Obviously that would have probably been out of scope for the project I can imagine!

[matt]

We definitely had a more realistic floor plan at various points in development. If you look at the art book, it has some of Joe's original maps where the player could walk outside through a garden. I felt like we should push the layout to be more nightmarish and less realistic, so you felt like there was no escape.