This is an announcement of my new hunting horror game for PC.

Skinwalker Hunt is a horror themed hunting game from the creator of Witch Hunt. Main focus of the game is on exploration, non-linearity, and atmosphere.

You play as a native american monster hunter, who will try to hunt down legendary creature called skinwalker in different parts of the world. You’ll be able to find and use different tools and abilities to hunt and survive.

Screenshots, gameplay video and more details can be found here.

I always had an opinion that game developers should use best possible hardware for game development. Because powerful PC can significantly cut down development time and make game development a much more pleasant experience. At the same, while my PC was pretty decent, in 2019 it was far from bleeding edge. The main thing that was stopping me from the upgrade is the fact, that I wasn’t sure that better hardware will improve my workflow with Unity. There were some signs that it might not. For example, on my friends PC with overclocked AMD Ryzen 7 2700X, Unity Editor performance was virtually the same as on my much older PC with Intel i7 3770k . The second thing that was stopping me is the fact that I need to move to new and clean installation of windows and I understood that it will take away weeks of my time to install and configure all software that I use. Which looked like hell to me. But in the end I’ve decided to bite the bullet and build new PC. I’ve moved from PC with Intel i7 3770k to PC with Intel Core i9-9900K. I’m still in the process of moving to a new PC and reinstalling and configuring all software that I use is as time consuming as I thought, but I’m happy to report that it was worth it! Unity became much more responsive and performant. By my rough estimates, on objects with lots of components Unity interface is now 42% more responsive. Code compilation in empty scene became 3 times faster! Although code compilation, when my main scene is open, became only 25% faster.

I also moved from Windows 7 to Windows 10 and so far I’m really enjoying it. It seems that Microsoft fixed almost all interface problems that I had with Windows 7, although DPI scaling still isn’t perfect, but it is much better compared to Windows 7. I also updated my main monitor from 27 inch 60 Hz Fullhd IPS monitor to  27 inch 144 Hz QuadHD IPS. But after two weeks of using it I’ve returned it to the shop and bought 27 inch 144 Hz FullHD IPS monitor. There’s several issues that I’ve encountered with 27 inch QuadHD monitor. But the main issue I had with it, is that I don’t have good eyesight. So when I don’t use Windows scaling everything is too small for my eyesight. Theoretically Windows scaling feature should fix it and for most apps it does. Unfortunately in Unity, even with 150% scaling there’s still some text in Unity editor that is one pixel thin. And one pixel thin text on 27 inch QuadHD monitor is too small for my eyesight. I also tried 27 inch 144 Hz FullHD TN Asus monitor, but picture quality was too poor, so I had to return it. 144 Hz is the main reason why I’ve decided to buy new monitor. My friend has 85 Hz monitor and even that feels much more smooth compared to 60 Hz monitor, especially in PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS. I’ve always was very sensitive to FPS and smoothness, being able to tell the difference between 55 and 60 fps. So as soon I tried to play on 85 Hz monitor, I knew that I will greatly benefit from a 144 Hz monitor.

I didn’t sell my old PC. I will now use it as another test machine and probably as a retro gaming PC with Windows XP/7/10. By the way, for everyone who has more than one PC nearby, I would recommend software called ShareMouse that will allow use to share mouse and keyboard between two PCs, if both of those are connected to same network. You can even share it between MAC and PC.

Recently I received an email from a experienced video game writer. He told me that he likes my game Witch Hunt, however, as a writer and narrative designer he was disappointed that more personality, tone and atmosphere wasn’t conveyed in the texts and voice acted content. He also attached and example of “improved” intro text for Witch Hunt. Unfortunately, his improved version is exactly the reason why I’m afraid to outsource writing. The main problem of his version is that it uses two times more words to convey same information. And as a cherry on a top Witch Hunt is not a story focused game. I did expect to see that kind of issue, from non-video game writer, but I was really surprised to see it from experienced video game writer. For that reason, if you’re involved with video game writing in any way I want to give you advise and share a fresh example prove it.

You probably know that most people don’t read books and from my 10+ years of experience in game design it quickly became clear that majority of video game players hate reading text in video games. Therefore, every time I write any text, priority number one is always on using as few words as possible to convey information I need. I know that when you make short text a priority, it means that you must make sacrifices. But I strongly believe that it is justified for video game writing.

I want to share a fresh example of just how much people hate reading in games. When I’ve launched Witch Hunt in Early Access I’ve started watching let’s plays of the game. Soon I’ve noticed that a big percentage of players don’t know that they have Silver Saber. It happened even though it is clearly visible in player inventory that they did saw and there was a tutorial message related to the Silver Saber. This happened because in older versions of the game, your equipment in inventory was displayed as a list of item names. At the start of the game it’s a quite short list, containing only 3 items.

Old inventory

But people hate reading so much, that when they opened inventory a big percentage of people were too lazy to read that short list and a lot of them ignored tutorial message. So, to solve that issue I now display player equipment in inventory as icons and after this change and a change of tutorial message where I also replaced text with icon. Those changes completely solved the issue and now 100% of players know that they have Silver Saber at the start of the game. That is how much some people hate reading text in games!

New inventory

Also, on that inventory screen you can see a Tips section. Less than 10% of players opened that section and most of players who did, have read only couple sentences before closing it. Which aligned with my expectations, but was a complete shocker for my family member, who watched more than 100 let’s play of Witch Hunt. I always thought the fact, that video game players hate reading text in games is a common knowledge in video game industry, but that email from experienced writer clearly shows that it isn’t.

When I just started my full time solo indie developer journey. I had huge problems with motivation and work discipline. I’ve invested a lot of time reading about best solutions for that problem. But to find approach that works for me, I had to go against most of the common wisdom in the field.

My current approach combines freedom and discipline in a way that works well for me and served me well for more than 4 years.

My approach I quite simple. I decide when to work, but I track my work time and my goal is to work 35-hour week. If I work more, time gets added to my time bank and it can be used to work less at some other week. If I work less, negative number of hours goes to my bank and eats from what is there. And yes, sometimes I have negative number there, so I get incentive to work more than 35 hrs. This method gives me enough freedom to work and not work when I feel like it. But it does provide a serious penalty for not hitting that mark and creates good incentive to hit it.

On my previous project the goal was 40-hour week, but those projects had more level design, while current one requires more programming. And programming is much more draining for me, that’s why I had to make that adjustment.

I use Toggl to track my time and Asana for task management. My task management habits are also skewed towards freedom.

Witch Hunt is released out of early access! You can grab it right now with a 10% discount. I want to thank everyone who provided feedback and helped me to make Witch Hunt a better game!

Witch Hunt is my new hunting/horror game for PC.

Witch Hunt is a horror themed hunting game that takes place in the 18th century. Main focus of the game is on exploration, non-linearity, and atmosphere. Witch Hunt features lite RPG elements in form of a financial system and a skill system.

You play as a witch hunter who took the task of eliminating all evil that settled in the woods near the town of Bellville. To achieve your goals, you’ll be able to use weapons, magic, and other tools that can be found and bought.

Screenshots, gameplay video and more details can be found here.

Sometime ago I gave an interview to youtuber called Kreal. It should have resulted in a video, but it didn’t happen. Since I’ve spend some time answering those questions, I didn’t want it to go to waste. So here it is. This interview contains spoilers for Gynophobia and Shadows Peak. I’m not a native speaker, so my English isn’t perfect.

You can read it here.

My open-world horror game is finally released on steam. You can grab it right now with a 33% discount. I want to thank everyone who provided feedback and helped me to make Shadows Peak a better game! I still plan to release updates for the game. Upcoming updates will add achievements and Korean translation to the game.

Final chapter has been added to my open world horror game Shadows Peak. If you finished chapter 1, just click on the “Continue” button in the main menu, watch the final cut-scene for chapter 1 and continue playing the new content. If for some reason something happened to your save file, there is a cheat code to launch the final chapter. Unfortunately, this approach will skip the playable prologue for the final chapter. Here’s how to use that cheat code.

Here’s full changelog for version 0.510.

I often think, what the most important aspect of the game? We do have a proof that almost any kind of game can be successful, but this line of thinking doesn’t help when I need to decided where to focus my attention as a developer. Should I improve gameplay? Graphics?  Or should I focus on innovation?

Well. I decided to finally answer that question, admittedly using pretty crude methods and tools. I’ve decided to focus on four categories: gameplay, art, story and innovation. To determine what is most important to players I’ve took Independent Games Festival winners in those categories:

• Nuovo Award (Innovation award)
• Excellence in Visual Art
• Excellence in Design
• Excellence in Narrative

And by using steamspy.com I’ve tried to estimate how much each winner in those categories earned. And yes, as I’ve said before, this is a pretty crude method. After analysis of 2016 winners, my top of importance looked like this.

1. Gameplay
2. Art
3. Story
4. Innovation

Analyzing other years prove to be a challenge, because not all games that became a winners in those categories were released on steam, or released at all. But it was clear, that winners of Nuovo Award category didn’t sell well in all those years. Of course, ideally I should analyze some other awards where more data will be available and maybe someday I will. But for now, I’ve just want to share those findings, cause in my personal top, innovation would take a second place and I feel that it’s the same for a lot of creators. If someone wants to take the idea and make more serious research on that subject, you have my blessing and please tweet your findings at me.