gaming

Dev Diary #23: Choices, Choices

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How do we create a new game in the Cally’s Caves series that feels fresh and changes things up?  The first 3 games in the series were very light on story, and although we were able to plant some seeds for future story ideas, we could take the plot for Cally’s Caves 4 anywhere.  This dev diary will go over some of the decisions we’ve made to make Cally’s Caves 4 stand apart from our previous games.

callyscaves

Setting

All 3 Cally’s Caves games took place in “the Caves,” a place that started in Cally’s backyard and gave us a good amount of variety to work with.  The story of Cally’s retaking of the Caves has now been told, and we want to take the environments in Cally’s Caves 4 in some new directions.  Instead of taking place in one interconnected Cave system, Cally’s Caves 4 takes place all across the globe, in facilities owned by the Golden Skull Society (more on the G.S.S. later).

Capture

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Razor Treat Released for GMC Jam 16

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razor treat 2Happy Halloween!  To celebrate the GMC Jam 16 – Halloween Jam, Cally’s Caves 2 artist 0HK0 has released “Razor Treat.”  Razor Treat is a horizontal schmup with 0HK0’s signature art style and an awesome soundtrack from his brother, Facefuzz.  It was made in a single day, using Gamemaker 8.1 and FL Studio.  You can check out Razor Treat in this thread.

– Jordan

Cally’s Caves 2: The PlayPressers Trailer

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Recently, a guy by the name of Tyler Williams contacted us about doing a fan trailer for Cally’s Caves 2.  Tyler is the creator of PlayPressers.com, a trailer-making service for aspiring game developers.  Needless to say, we were totally blown away by Tyler’s trailer (it was much better than the official trailer we made for Cally’s Caves 2).  Check out the trailer below, and be sure to check out PlayPressers.com to see more of Tyler’s amazing work!

Cally’s Caves 2 Media and Discussion Roundup

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So our game has been available for 9 days now, and things are going pretty well. We thought we’d post a bunch of links to the various videos and articles that have popped up since release (and hopefully we will do a blog post on how we approached marketing shortly).

We got talked about on the Toucharcade Podcast.

And mentioned in their weekly release article:

We got talked about on Neogaf 😀

And an awesome review from Appadvice!

Here is a sweet review from SentralGamer.
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Cally’s Caves 2 OST now available on Bandcamp!

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Since we had wrapped up our soundtrack work on Cally’s Caves 2, we figured we might as well put it up on Bandcamp and see what happens!  We will be linking to the Bandcamp in a “support the developers” tip in the game.  It’s pretty much our “donate” button for Cally’s Caves 2, since the game will be totally free.  Enjoy the tunes, and if you like them, there’s 21 full tracks for only 3 dollars.  Also, if you don’t want to pay, there’s always our Soundcloud, which has a decent number of the tracks available for free.

Cally’s Caves 2: Development Diary #9 – Getting Ready for Testing

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Putting something you crafted into someone else’s hands is a harrowing experience.  When that person’s gaze locks onto the object you created, a shift happens.  What was once your private project is no longer your own, and a singular experience becomes shared one.  It can be amazing or terrifying, but either way you will walk away from that shared experience with an idea of how you could have approached your creation differently.  The beauty of game development is you can choose to incorporate the feedback you gain from sharing your creation with others before your product is finalized.  This is why we have dedicated a two-month period to beta testing Cally’s Caves 2.  In today’s Dev Diary we will discuss how we have approached the 8-week beta test period of our game’s development, and what we hope to gain from putting Cally’s Caves 2 in the hands of playtesters.

Cally's Caves 2 Screen

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