Gretel and hansel (web, PC, Release: TBD)
Gretel and Hansel is an remake/update of an old browser based game a friend and I released on Newgrounds back in 2009. It’s currently a work in progress so keep that in mind. We’ve been re-working the UI, updating it for controller support, as well as further fleshing out the game. It was originally inspired by Sierra’s King’s Quest series and we tried to maintain the spirit of classic point & click adventure games while incorporating our own macabre sense of humor and quirky hand-painted visuals. The original game assets were done in watercolour, cut up, and brought into Flash and the update has taken that same approach but now the painted textures are applied to 3D models and the game is built with Unity and Playmaker.
UI animation FOR THOUGHT
We’ve been trying to look at ways to emphasize the hand-made aspect of the project without breaking the bank, which has been an exercise of judiciousness. These thought bubbles are pervasive throughout the game and one of the primary ways the player gets hints, story beats, or character insights so putting some TLC into these elements felt worth the time.
I sketched the animation first in Flash and worked through any iterations there. Once ready, I lined up the Flash frames on some paper with a projector and proceeded to paint out the frames by hand there. The frames are then scanned and brought back into Photoshop, where any distortion from the projections are fixed and then the frames are exported and brought into Unity. It’s certainly a little extra time but it’s honestly one of the more enjoyable portions of the development and I believe players recognize when developers enjoy their work, at least on some level.
more to come
There’s certainly more work to showcase here and I’ll be building this page out further as the project develops and may treat this more as a development blog.