Valley of Shadow Devlog #6

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Well hi there! It’s been almost an entire year since the last devlog, and I for one think it’s high time we picked it back up.

For the last few months, we’ve been working on a client project. We’ve mostly finished that up, and are switching back to Valley of Shadow development. Before the client project, though, we were busy with lots of things that I never reported in a devlog… so this should be a quick high-level overview to get you back up to speed! It’ll cover the following:

  1. Story Revamp

  2. Conventions (MAGFest & PAX)

  3. New Key Art

Story Revamp

Modern-day office hallway with posters on the walls

The new intro hallway for the game. The door at the end opens straight into the fantasy “dream” world

The game’s story has undergone a complete revamp. It used to center around Anthony’s exploration of a dream world that kind of served as a series of memory vaults. There was a strange voice somewhat guiding him along, and overall had a lot of mystery involved in it. Now it’s much more straightforward - it plays our similar to a therapy session between Anthony and a therapist named Emma. It still has a lot of the same photos and general mementos, but it’s a lot more grounded now.

In addition to the story itself being revamped, there is now a lot more transitioning between the “dream” world (which has all the fantasy elements and puzzles) and the “real” world (which has our childhood home). In the original demo, the player “woke up” in the home at the very end of the demo, and got to explore it a bit before ending the demo. Now, in the same demo, the player visits the home three different times, unlocking a bit more of the story each time. This not only deepens the story, but also allows us to interweave the two worlds much better; by going back and forth between the two frequently, the player can watch the home populate with all of the mementos they are gathering in real time, rather than being disconnected from it for long stretches of time.

We’re really happy with this new direction of the story, and have gotten some great responses and feedback to it at the conventions we’ve been attending. Speaking of conventions…

MAGFest & PAX East

PAX Steam page with Valley of Shadow listed

Now that the pandemic is letting up, we’ve been able to attend conventions again!

In January of this year we showed the game, with the story revamp, at MAGFest. As we typically do at conventions, we took the completely unedited demo of the game and presented that, with minimal convention-specific changes. Every time we do this, we’re blown away by the number of people willing to sit and play through the entire thing, which typically takes 30+ minutes from start to finish. We got plenty of great feedback, both from watching people and talking to them afterward. And we got our first written review on Steam!

In April, we showcased at PAX East for the first time ever. It was a phenomenal experience, and definitely our biggest convention yet. We took a different approach to the demo for PAX, because we knew a lot more people would be in attendance. We chopped up the demo to make it as short as possible while still hitting the most important story and puzzle beats. For the story, that meant establishing the fact that it’s a therapy session about family, as well as the interplay between the dream world and the real world. For the puzzles, it meant teaching the player the base mechanics and then showing 1 or 2 additional puzzles that build on top of them in interesting ways. Essentially, it was all supposed to just be a “taste” - ideally, if the player liked what was in the demo, then the full game would provide more of the same feelings. We think we were successful in this endeavor, as we got similar responses to those from our longer demo, but a lot more of them since it was condensed.

At any rate, PAX was a great time, and we got way more eyes on the game than ever before - thanks in large part to the feature on Steam!

New Key Art

Side-by-side comparison of old and new key art

Our old, developer-made key art and the new, designer-made key art. The difference is so stark, I probably didn’t even have to label them.

In the lead-up to PAX, we wanted to put our best foot forward, and that meant really stepping up our Steam Page game. After taking Chris Zukowski’s class on how to make a steam page, I became convinced that the capsule (and by extension, key art) is one of the most critical aspects of a Steam page. Our old capsule was okay, but it was really just the game name typed out in the game’s font. It lacked a flair that only a legit designer can give it.

Our new key art was born of roughly a 3-step process:

  1. Anthony and me discussing what should be showcased. A good capsule presents the main character of a game - what is our “main character”? What ar ethe other most important pieces of the game to show at a quick glance?

  2. Designing a rough draft of the new title, something that isn’t just “Valley of Shadow” typed out. Huge thank-you to Nina for the great work she did on this.

  3. Hiring a graphic designer to put it all together and polish it. Our designer, Holly, did an amazing job with a ridiculously fast turnaround.

Now we have a logo and title that we are very happy with. I’m still blown away each time I visit our Steam page, or end up on our presskit (which is something else that’s new in the past 6 months!)

That’s it for this month’s (this year’s?) devlog. Now that we are back to focusing on Valley of Shadow, I hope these will be more frequent in the future. Thanks for reading!