Trailer Maker: Desktop Dungeons: Enhanced Edition

This is a very long overdue post, but I’m happy to finally be getting around to sharing this. Following on the Kickstarter video that Cool Your Jets made for Cadence, we were approached with a cool proposition from Cape Town game creators QCF Design. The studio was plotting the launch of an enhanced edition of their cult hit Desktop Dungeons. They wanted us to make a trailer it.

Being fans of the studio and the game, we were obviously really keen to take them up on this offer. Additionally, the creation of game trailers is a pretty great venture for a team of animators that want to spend their days working on games. Understandably, our response to QCF’s invitation was a very loud “hell yeah!”

Fast forward a few weeks, and we’re right in the middle of making said trailer. The timeline is insanely tight, but with the support we’re getting from QCF the trailer is shaping up to be something very special. Working alongside the studio’s artists, Dorianne Dutrieux and Daoyi Liu, we’re able to realise the Desktop Dungeons world in an awesome, imersive way that we’re all really stoked with.

Fast forward a matter of days and the trailer’s done! Desktop Dungeons: Enhanced Edition goes live! Response to the trailer is great, and for me, it’s just awesome seeing something we made showing up on Steam.

All in all, a whirlwind project with results we were very proud of. I’m hoping we get some opportunities to make more game trailers soon. For now, here’s the debut effort in this corner of animation!

And on and on and on…

I have a lot of actual, exciting, game-related news to share, but first, here’s a small explanation as to why recently there’s been so little (read: zero) recent posts on exciting, game-related news. I’ve been busy. Very, very busy.

In the space of the last three weeks, from start to finish, Cool Your Jets made:

A 1 minute trailer for a South African game studio.

A 3 minute animation about recycling in Finland.
A 3 minute, pitch video for film-makers in The US.

There was also the juggling of the beginnings and endings of various other projects over this stretch. And sandwiched between all that, I squeezed in a poster design for the next Superfriendship Arcade, a poster for the UK tour of SA band Al Bairre, the finishing of a logo design for a friend and the co-creation of a little icecream cone dating-sim. Through all this, I’ve also been chipping away at a certain psychedelic, space-horror comic-book, which, as things have played out, might have been the most challenging project I’ve ever taken on.

I’m busy.

The past three weeks have been especially extreme, but mostly it’s just in keeping with the way this year has been heading. Day after day, week after week, it just feels like there’s more and more that I have to do. Finding the time to do what I want to do becomes an ever-growing challenge. And so, it’s now May. Four months into the year, I’ve barely posted any magic up here and the sum total of my game-making endeavors for 2015 are a half-baked dating-sim and a not even half half-baked platformer about dancing bears.

I don’t want to dwell on this for to long, but this blog is after all here to document the story of me making games. Right now this is the story: Ben has no time to make games and is barely keeping his head above water. I’m grateful as hell for all the work, and I do love my day job. But at the same time, it breaks my heart that I’m left with so little time to do the best thing I can imagine using my hands and brains for; making games.

This post isn’t me complaining, or acting defeated. The bottom line is only this; it’s tough trying to follow your dreams. Regardless of what kind of dreams these are, most anyone that does follow their’s will tell you the same. Right now, the only way I can make little bits of time for games is at the expense of sleep, or hanging out with Anja and that really sucks. So it goes.

I hope that not to long from now this story will be different. It’d be amazing if I just got to dedicate one solid day a week to making things for people to play. I hope that’s what my story will be in the not too distant future. For now, I’ll keep fighting to find the time, loosing out on sleep, scribbling messy sprite sheets and pushing on and on and on…

Cadence Kickstarter is live!

I’ve been a pretty crappy blogger over the past month. My last proper post was on the January MGSA meetup. February’s meetup is tomorrow already; I’m looking at a solid month with only a single real blog post written over it.  Why did this happen? I blame Cadence.

This isn’t entirely true; it’s been a crazy busy time for Cool Your Jet’s, with a bunch of cool projects on the go. But that said, nothing has been as demanding or time intensive as Cadence. If this is the first you’re hearing of it, Cadence is an upcoming musical puzzle game from Cape Town studio, Made With Monster Love. The first time I saw this game, I freaked right out. Cadence combines so many of my loves in one, truly unique package. I was swept away by the game’s look and feel, a  gorgeous, meditative  creation, really the kind of game I dream of finding. Then there was the fact that Cadence revolved around creating and shaping music; allowing players to lay down and control music in a 3D environment, like nothing before it. And it was puzzle game! And it’s actually also a synthesizer! And it came from South Africa! There’s so much to like here, I could really go on and on, but in short, the impact of Cadence just blew me away.

Understandably, I was over the moon when Cool Your Jets were commissioned by Made With Monster Love to assist with Cadence. We were asked to help make a video for the a Kickstarter campaign, to see the game expanded on and released. After a good year and a half of independent development, Cadence is looking phenomenal. But with ambitions as grand as creating something that reinvents how people engage with music, the team are raising funds and establishing a community to take things to the next level. Matt, Jason and I were understandably really stoked to help them make this a reality.

The process of crafting a short video to try to concisely sum up something as expansive as Cadence was one of the most tough challenges we’ve taken on since forming Cool Your Jets. It’s been a grueling couple of weeks getting here, but right now, typing this at 5:40 AM, waiting for our baby to upload the Kickstarter page that goes live in a matter of hours, I’m feeling pretty on top of The World. I’m really proud of what we’ve put together, but past that, just absurdly excited to be able to help bring this brilliant game to light.

So, without any further ado, let me direct you to The Cadence Kickstarter! If you’re able to, please consider helping this incredibly special creation blossom into the wonder I know it will be. Tell your friends, spread the love and join us in bringing The World one of the most exciting games South Africa has ever produced!