Despite how bad their films tend to be (Though Independence Day was pretty alright), Dean Devlin has always done a pretty spectacular job in creating tension and anticipation in his teaser trailers, it definitely did its job in making us excited for the film, that sadly was in no way as good as we thought it would be. The Godzilla teaser was also clearly trying to differentiate itself from the Jurassic Park films in terms of presentation, pulling off that ballsy move of making good ol' Gojira step on the bones of a Tyrannosaurus Rex (Poor baby…). Cleverly done,
Mr Hublot Trailer
While not actually a teaser trailer, its duration matches that of one (So… maybe it is one?), it is no surprise that the creators do not wish to show too much of their work before they are viewed at festivals. The contents seen mainly in this trailer are parts of the animation's gorgeously designed setting, and a preview of the main character's OCD-ness, a central point of the story itself. No narration of any sort is required, we are actually given a pretty nice preview of the animated short.
Samurai Jack Season 1 Trailer
Samurai Jack mixes together a montage of still images (They seem to resemble some of the concept art I have seen) as well as existing clips from finished episodes. Samurai Jack's monologue has always been a pretty important aspect of the show, considering how cinematic the series has always been in its narration, and so it is no surprised that his voice is heard throughout, explaining the going ons of the series' main plot.
Transformers Teaser
Another massively anticipated film much like Godzilla, the teaser does what it does best… tease, which is pretty surprising considering who it was that directed this film (The man whom we always knew was big on explosions and overly dramatic sunsets and sunrises… though I kinda like those I guess). We only get a very brief glimpse at the very end of the giant alien robots whom we have been dying to see, but it is more than enough to fuel the fire of excitement within us long time fans.
Constellation Teaser Trailer
A pretty useful example to look into for us beginners, the teaser for this indie animation is presented in a very straight forward manner, giving us a preview of one very brief scene as well as let's us know whom is the creator behind it (As well as the music that is used) and of course the title of the animation. The story is simply with one simple line "A sad tale about love"... The teaser is overall very simple in its execution but gets its point across.
Various sound effects were gathered together from Youtube and other free royalty free websites, sadly the BBC ones that I had borrowed were all a little too calm (But I can most definitely use them for another project)… it was surprisingly hard to find realistic enough train sounds (Or clear enough ones for that matter, there were quite a few that sounded far too muffled as if they had been used for a really old show), and ones that sounded eerie and grating enough (I almost decided to simply import an audio version of a random Silent Hill 3 walkthrough so that I could use it's train squealing sound effect). Thankfully I didn't have to record any screams (I had thankfully found a decent one as well as had some done for me by a friend, though they were a tad too humorous and had to be edited a little) since it was already 4am by then, I did however have to do the monster's screech, and while that was fun, I had hurt my voice just a tad when doing the lower growls, several clips were recorded and then mixed together with different effects given to each of them to create an inhuman sort of sound. I was exhausted but doing the sounds has always been pretty fun for me, maybe I will get a chance to do some voice acting once we start collaborating with one another.
Seeing that I only had two days to finish this up (So I had initially thought… well, we still have to submit the first version at least), I had to cut back on a lot of details, most of these scenes are just still images that are later on edited to have some movement in After Effects.
As seen here the background, Felicity the central character, and the groups of people crowding around her are all separated into their own layers (The background was separated from Felicity just in case I needed to make any changes in details to it).
A little shadow was given to her body after on a separate layer, which I then decided to combine for easier animating later on.
David gets a cameo for his contribution.
Nothing but straight lines for the first bit of the background.
Once I figured out a train interior design I was somewhat satisfied with, I then started shading it in.
I then added in a bit more lighting.
I had to mess around a bit with Felicity's sitting pose, initially it had looked like an exact copy of Chihiro's in Spirited Away, I also thought that she looked a little too composed, and so I went with something that shows more exhaustion.
Seeing how monochromatic everything already is, I had to sketch out the crowd in red so that I could actually see anything when I started painting over it.
I was considering adding in some blood details, but it would take away the tension I was trying to evoke… people however would probably still question why is it that woman in the bottom right is crying. To create better focus on the main character, I then painted a shadow over most of them.
The background perspective turned out to be a real huge pain in the ass, I had to decrease her size and draw out a rough outline of her body to better figure it out.
After numerous attempts and references that weren't all that helpful...
After animating the head turning bit, I then started painting in her hair, it had originally simply looked like a blob without any volume whatsoever and it just looked so darn weird… (I think I had a gif for it, but for some reason it won't upload properly here, so I will just talk more), so I decided to take a bit more time in improving the movements of her hair sliding off her shoulder.
Another layer was placed over the last few frames so that there wouldn't be a spastic change of hoodie shadows.
For the last scene where she reaches for her mother, I was clearly rushing with this bit and was thankful that the last section where she gets thrown from the sudden braking of the train had to be done quickly (So I didn't need to be too precise with the details on her).
I had originally drawn her arm frame by frame while copying and pasting the hand, but in my rage I decided to scrap it and try something else.
The arm was instead separated into two sections, that I started to piece and position together for each frame, while it still looks pretty stiff and weird, I think it looks a lot smoother than the other hand drawn version.
I after that rushed to paint in each figure, coloring any transparent bits first.
I then once again did some quick shading.
I was suggested by my teacher to lessen the shaky movements of the train, which I will definitely do once I get some sleep… and fix up that darn white line at the top of the reaching scene… that's just my fault for not shading that sill properly.
This is a little over 30 seconds (But heck there are normally teasers that last for nearly a minute), this teaser shows a wide array of characters (And enemies), presented in that frantic and catastrophic manner to invoke confusion and fear, where no real hint is given of the plot itself, but does give us a taste of the terror we have yet to experience (There are very small hints of gameplay in there too, but it is pretty hard to tell them apart from the cutscenes) . What is interesting to note is that the title shown at the end is still listed as their working title, once again a reminder that a lot of changes tend to take place during the releases of these teaser trailers.
Silent Hill 3
The voice over with the little girl wasn't actually something featured within the game, so this is another one of those examples of teasers where notable changes are later on made to the final product. While it is meant to be creepy, I'm glad that the game was a lot scarier than this little girl made it sound, haha. I still did find the arrangement of these clips nicely put together, especially for such a short duration, it actually goes along pretty well with what the dialogue, despite how cheesy it might be.
Silent Hill 4 (Warning: A little 'screamer-ish' at the end?)
Silent Hill 4 continues the tradition of showing a compilation of really short but scary clips and images, this one however does focus on one enemy in particular, for those that had played the previous titles, seeing such a humanoid enemy (Well, a more humanoid than ever enemy) should pique their curiosities at the changes made for the 4th installment, and will most definitely excite them at what new scary changes they are going to make (Considering the presentation of this one).
Not even the main character is actually shown clearly in this teaser (Save for one for very brief scene where he is getting attacked by her), the distorted noises used for her definitely makes this one of the scarier teasers around (Akira Yamaoka always was the master when it came to that), it is a really nicely done one where no dialogue is at all required.
Shadows of the Damned
This teaser focuses a lot more on what enemies will be seen in the game as well as the gameplay itself (Albeit very briefly), it has a pretty b-horror feel to it overall and is definitely a lot more action oriented as compared to the rest (Actually, this is dumb, I should be honest, this is a Suda51 game, and most of the time they tend to be hilarious and perhaps politically incorrect). It gives a pretty classic and brief introduction as to who the main character might be, with some really rocking' music playing (If only for just a moment) to set the tone and mood of the game.
Alice: Madness Returns
When it comes to horror game teasers, there are possibly two methods in presenting them, one is to show a montage of really short clips that normally evokes some sense of panic, or to simply focus on one enigmatic scene…
It definitely gives off a different effect, instead of causing frantic confusion with really short clips that only gives its audience a face view of things, I believe one single scene does allow the audience to better familiarize themselves with the important character/s (At most the protagonist, I am putting it down as important character/s as some teaser trailers do sometimes focus on the villain instead… or even a side character that's just there to set the scene). Alice: Madness Returns had been a long awaited sequel at the time, and so these
Noticeably the following teasers do get a little longer as we start to better familiarize ourselves with the main character, and so a little more insight is given into the game as well, with new lines, new scenes, but just enough to excite us as the release date nears… Though this game actually uses originally done animation for its teaser trailers that are never featured in the game itself, the design of Alice is also incredibly different to the final one seen in the game.
So I made quite a few changes to my idea in the past few days due to time constraints, and so I don't think that I was able to keep a consistent art style for this one, as I ended up doing some of the drawings and animation in a much simpler style (I think the only thing that remained consistent was the hard brush I used throughout, haha). Initially I had wanted to do my presentation in the form of an animated scrap book, where the animated illustrations would also be placed into them, I realized however that it would take some time to tweak it to my liking (Such as how the next image would appear as the page is turned, I really didn't want it to just suddenly pop out of nowhere once the pages have been flattened. Still, I was glad I made my first attempt at rotoscoping, I might be able to use this for another project in the future, so it is not all for naught.
I hadn't realized that the black pages would make it so difficult to see the outlines of the turning page, so I was glad that it turned out pretty well considering the wild guesses I made as I blindly traced over them.
After cleaning it up a bit more, all I did was stretch the image so that I wouldn't waste most of the space available on the sides of the screen.
I kinda liked how it looked, but I felt that so much tweaking was still required, and I was starting to get really exhausted and confused trying to find the right layers in the thousands that I had made.
While we were advised to avoid using Powerpoint and be a little more creative, I decided after awhile to use it to arrange all the images and little animations I had done, it also makes the timing for each one a lot easier to control, I really didn't have enough time to estimate how long each one should last and so as always, Powerpoint was a big help to me. I had also realized how silly it was to waste so much space in repeating animations (With less than ten frames sometimes) for nearly twenty seconds, and so after testing out to see how different the gifs looked in terms of quality to a video or normal JPEG image, I decided to export most of them as gifs. Some of them might be a little pixilated, but otherwise they shouldn't be that bad… (I hope) I am still considering whether I should put in some music, the only thing so far that I have actually put in is a sound effect for one animation, I might go in that direction (I really wouldn't want to pick a piece of music that would irk any of my classmates), gathering other sound effects for the other images and animations shouldn't be all that hard. There are still two more I hope to do, but right now it's time I switched back to my other project. Will I survive and have all these finished by Thursday? Stay tuned.
Limbo is a puzzle platform video game (It doesn't actually fit any of the well known horror game genres, but I would consider it as one due to it's eerie art style and subject matter) that was released in July 2010 as platform exclusive title on Xbox Live Arcade, though thankfully ports were made later on to the PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Windows. It was the first title by indie Danish game developer Playdead (While the second project is presently in the works, not much is known about it at this time).
The game is a 2D side scroller, incorporating the physics system Box2D to govern the environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through incredibly dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister. Players are actually expected to fail numerous times throughout this game before finding the correct solution, hence this is why the developers called the style of play "trial and death" (Poor thing…), using interestingly gruesome silhouette-like imagery for the boy's deaths (Poor, poor thing…).
God, this is Heart of Darkness all over again...
The game is presented in black and white tones, using lighting, film grain effects and minimal ambient sounds (The soundtrack available only lasts for less than 20 minutes too, but Jesus, listen to the "Rotating Room" track when you get the chance...) to create an eerie atmosphere often associated with the horror genre, since the pre-release of a development screenshot, the game's art style and presentation has actually managed to stay consistent though the development cycle.
As many have said before, this game has been classified as an example of video games as art, much like the works of ThatGameCompany, the game breaks away from the usual norms implemented into video games we normally see in larger franchises (Though of course we still love those kinds of games, don't get the wrong idea), going for a more unique and unconventional look, often standing out for aesthetic beauty in design (Which is most definitely present in this game).
The decision to go for a more minimalistic style was a clever and creative one, considering how it allows the players to deal with threats within the game in a surprisingly different manner (For one, by having better eye sight and keeping you more on your feet than ever before), it really did allow the developers to focus more on the gameplay design, and much like Okami, avoiding more detailed/realistic graphics was really a blessing in disguise, considering how well received the art style was for this game.
And I'm pretty sure that this game was able to get the special kind of reaction it wanted from its audience, especially with its interestingly open and ambiguous story and eerie but rather enthralling, absolutely atmospheric setting.
While not much is given about the storyline of this game, save for the tagline "Uncertain of his sister's fate, a boy enters Limbo" and of course the title itself, those are probably enough to hint at where this actually takes place, as well as perhaps explains the open ending to the game… oh wait what am I saying? They obviously aimed to make this game open to interpretation from the very beginning.
As he looks for his missing sister, he encounters only a few human characters, who are either aggressive and wants him dead, runs away, or are dead (The latter are the most helpful of them all, just a heads up), strangely however there are practically no more humans seen about in the second half of the game...
This full blown image on their site gave me a heck of a shock the first time I found it.
Kuon is a really underrated survival horror video game developed and produced by From Software (The same folks who brought you Demon's Souls and Dark Souls) in 2004.
Oh yeah no surprise there...
The game is based on an ancient type of Japanese horror story called kaidan, in its broadest sense, kaidan refers to any ghost or horror story, but it has an old-fashioned ring to it that carries the connotation of the Edo period Japanese folktales, and so this term is no longer as widely used in Japanese as it once was; Japanese horror books and films such as Ju-On and Ring would more likely be labeled by the katakana hora (horror) or the standard Japanese kowai hanashi. Kaidan is only used if the author/director wishes to specifically bring an old fashion air into the story (Such as this game, which is quite a rarity, even among all the japanese horror games we have seen thus far).
The setting takes place in a dark and gruesome mansion in the Japanese town of Kyoto where mutated creatures and other horrors lurk. The game is set during the Heian Period (794 to 1185) of ancient Japan, most of the game follows the protagonists as they explore a feudal Japanese manor at night (Oh god why?!), as well as an old mountainside temple. The main antagonistic forces or the game are various forms of undead, including ghosts and resurrected corpses, but the latter aren't just your typical zombies, they are horribly mutated monsters created from fusing several dead bodies together.
There are a total of three playable characters featured in the game (The third one however will only be unlocked once the chapters involving the first two characters have been completed), throughout the game the characters encounter a pair of mysterious twins, often found singing a dark aria, the player eventually learns that they are the manifestations of two evil mulberry trees (Kids… right?).
While it most definitely has a fantastic ambience to it, it is once again the game mechanics that causes the overall grade for the game to fall short (The running feature seems almost pointless, so as long as you have the utmost patience when it comes to your characters walking throughout the whole thing).
Nonetheless, it is most definitely an entertaining game with really interesting (And dare I say beautiful) visuals, the creature designs are pretty darn amazing, while they might not seem like the most creative ones at time, the designers have done a great job in bringing out the creepiness factor for each and every one of them. The atmosphere is just so darn amazing, especially when one normally might consider that a gore-fest staging might ruin the eerie mood and tone (I mean, tunnels flooded with blood and rooms filled with severed body parts are scary, but it definitely does not give off the same feeling of the unknown like a deserted factory or hospital will, with no signs of the true horrors that are hidden within until it is too late...), and folks should simply give this game a try just for the experience. Now if you will excuse me, my laptop has been behaving weirdly throughout this whole write up… I think it's time to restart it before moving onto the next subject...
A teaser campaign is an advertising campaign which typically consists of a series of small, cryptic, challenging advertisements that anticipate a larger, full-blown campaign for a product launch or otherwise important event. These advertisements are are "teasers" or "teaser ads". A teaser trailer for an upcoming film, television program, video game or similar is usually released long in advance of the product, so as to "tease" the audience. Movie teasers are usually made for big-budget and popularly themed movies. Their purpose is less to tell the audience about a movie's content than simply to let them know that the movie is coming up in the near future, and to add hype of the upcoming release. Teaser trailers are often made while the film is still in productionor being edited and as result they may feature scenes or alternate versions of scenes that are not in the finished film. Often they contain no dialogue and some have scenes made for use in the trailer only. Some teaser trailers show a quick montage of scenes from the film.
"Well way to ruin the whole movie! Teasers these days give away
Ernest and Celestine is a 2012 French-Belgian animated comedy-drama film directed by Stephane Aubier, Vincent Patar and Benjamin Renner. The film is based on a series of children's books of the same name published by the Belgain author and illustrator Gabrielle Vincent. The film was released in the US in 2013 by GKIDS, where an english dub was also released along with it, featuring the voices of Forest Whitaker and Mackenzie Foy. I am thankful that in this day and age that people are more willing to give us a more in-depth look into the making of films, video games, animations, books, comics, etc. Providing us with informative blogs, video journals, art books, etc... though I suppose we have the internet to thank for that as well. And this was the reason why it took me so long to finish up this write up (Aside from not watching it yet that is), as the during the past few months, I have been following their official tumblr blog that recounts the hilarious (It could be a little exaggerated in some parts for a more comedic effect, but I can imagine most of it happening) experiences of director Benjamin Renner as he works alongside producer Didier Brunner and fellow directors Stephane Aubier and Vincent Patar (It took me awhile to realize that it was him, since he didn't formally introduce himself in the beginning), with all of them being represented as adorable little anthropomorphic animals. Renner takes us step by step whilst also providing entertaining comic strips that makes the entire experience all the more interesting to read, it is pretty evident just how much Renner had enjoyed working on this film (Whilst also panicking numerous times along the way), so not to spoil anything as I think that it would be much better if you just go over to their blog and read through it all for yourselves I will simply give a very brief summary of each chapter and share some extracts of information that I found particularly important. 1. Benjamin Renner first meets with producer Didier Brunner, a rather eccentric fellow that leaves Renner quite baffled, though it seems everyone who has worked with or under him have gotten use to his antic.
2. Renner starts reading the children books that the film is based on to familiarize himself with the characters, as well as the narrative and art style, we also learn a bit more about the author herself, such as her real name and the other beautiful works she had done just before she passed away in 2000. 3. Continuing on with his research, Renner begins work on several short animations inspired by her illustrations, attempting "to find the energy of Gabrielle Vincent's drawings and interpret it into motion" as well as focusing on keeping the characters faithful to the books themselves, beautiful minimalistic conceptual animations are shared in this post. These little animation tests are then shared with the producer… who apparently requires some help from Renner in opening up these animations.
Other than that however…
But then…
But as usual…
4. As the stories of Ernest and Celestine tend to be very simple and short, novelist Daniel Pennac was hired to write an original story for the film, a very animated and energetic fellow who reads his stories in the most amazing manner.
Representation of him reading Ernest and Celestine's roles respectively
At the beginning of 2009, the recruitment of an artistic team commenced.
5. Background designers Zaza and Zyk (Known for working on Persepolis and Lucky Luke) were hired first. The two were responsible for most of the visual concepts and designs done for the film, trying to stay as close as possible to Gabrielle's art style and her techniques (All backgrounds were also hence done traditionally instead of digitally).
6. As Daniel Pennac had added in a great number of new characters that had not been featured in the books, character designer Sei came in, a young talented artist from the renown Les Gobelins animation school. The female lead Celestine had been redesigned, with some inspirations taken from the books as usual (Though her design would apparently change from one book to the other), she was made to be more expressive, Ernest was apparently much easier to work on and a confirmed design for him was done in no time. The character models needed to be charismatic and not too complicated so any animator can draw him or her.
Renner is also notably starting to show his more dickish side as well, though it's just a sign of him getting closer to his co-workers.
7. The lead animator simply known as Patrick (Another Les Gobelins graduate) was one of the first people to be hired into the team. As the lead animator, Patrick's duty was to make sure that the animation in the film was coherent and that the same style was used across all of the animators, he also needs to decide which animator will receive which scene they are best suited to work on.
8. Renner had originally only worked as an artistic director for this film (Focusing only on the visual aspect of the film), it was a little later however that Didier has asked him whether he wanted to be one of the directors of the film… Renner obviously took that offer very well.
9. Co-Directors Vincent Patar and Stephane Aubier joined in soon after, together they worked on the adaptation of the script into pictures.
10 and 11. Production is finally able to commence from there, the three directors beginning drawing up storyboards to guide the animators and background artists, with each department working separately before their works are then put together through compositing. The creation of the storyboards is a rather lengthy process, a rough version is first made to get an idea of the scene, when going through that first draft, new ideas and improvements are made on it, this process is repeated over and over until they are satisfied with the scene.
Julien, another director is asked to polish up the storyboard further, where the backgrounds are drawn more clearly to see, with Renner drawing in the characters once more after.
12 and 13. Jean Marc begins causing the voice actors for the characters, Lambert Wilson (Known for playing The Merovingian in The Matrix Reloaded and The Matrix Revolutions) is casted for the role of Ernest the bear, as this was Renner's first time working with an actor, he was clearly nervous.
14. The film was made in 3 different countries, Belgium, France and Luxembourg. Les Armateurs unfortunately did not have a studio big enough to host the whole team, and so producer Didier had to find another place to rent for their use… overrun by hundreds of cute mice (For real).
15. With the storyboard done, the crew began working on a rough version of the film.
16. Color scripts are first done by the background designers before the backgrounds are actually colored in, these color scripts are composed of rough colored backgrounds that gives the crew an idea of what the main colors of the film will be.
17. With the backgrounds done, it's back to focusing on the animation, once the roughs are done and cleaned up, a color team lead by Greg comes in to color each moving character and object. Normally they have to deal with issues of the lines of the drawings not being probably closed up, and so they will have to figure out the volume of the drawings on their own (Ugh, that's such a Rob Liefeld thing…)
18. With the animation, the coloring and the backgrounds all finished, it is time to put them altogether… after a watercolor effect is put on the colors of the animated characters and objects that is. Interestingly a software was developed to create that effect.
Compositing allows the team to add some light effects of other things like rain or snow.
19 and 20. Editing consists of cutting and moving scenes in order to create the final version of the film, this editing is done by Fabienne, seeing as the director has practically watched the film over and over for 2 years, another set of eyes was required for this duty.
It makes sense how Renner and the others found this to be one of the more difficult processes to deal with, seeing as some of the scenes that they had worked so hard on might be removed.
21. The sound design (Not to be confused with music) is done by a professional named Bertrand, when recording the sounds, Bertrand stands in front of a screen with the film on it and creates the sounds depending on the action he sees. For example if he sees a character walking on the screen, he synchronizes his steps with the animation.
22. Post synchronization consists of recording voices of the characters once the animation is made, we also see why veteran voice actors that can do children voices are hired more often than real children.
23. The music was composed by Vincent, a cello player. Renner and him and actually started working together much earlier than one would expect, musical themes were already worked on when the animation was still in the storyboarding stage.
24. The first screening takes place, Renner once again starts panicking, but despite the lack of gags, Didier tells him to be more confident himself and that everything will be fine, and so Didier saves the day in his own weird way again.
25. A touching tribute is made to Gabrielle Vincent (Or Monique Martin), as Renner thinks back to how much effort is put into this film, not wanting to betray the original message presented in her books while also not wanting to completely copy off them, all he wishes is that this film would help the audience to discover the rest of her works.
A final inspiring message is then made to those interested in entering this industry.
The Cat Lady is an adventure psychological horror game developed by Remigiuz Michalski, it was released on December 2012 in English and on May 2013 in Italian (Though the english voice acting remains). It is an indie game made using Adventure Game Studio. An album was also released featuring music by Warmer, 5iah and Tears of Mars.
Whilst I was facing a rough patch in my life in the past few months, a friend had actually mentioned this game to me whilst I was discussing with her about psychiatrists, let's just say it wasn't what I had expected when it came to indie horror games. It is however a perfect example as to why I adore horror games so much, there are must some titles that prove to be surprisingly therapeutic to play, especially where they have a decent storyline and well developed characters that you can relate to.
On a somewhat related note, Outlast is not one of these uniquely therapeutic horror game titles, in fact it is one of the most stressful horror games one would ever dare to play… and so it is pretty damn awesome.
The plot follows protagonist Susan Ashworth, a chronically depressed, middle-aged woman with no friends, her only companions being stray cats, earning her the cliche but nonetheless insulting title of the Cat Lady among her neighbors.
One night she decides to end her life, but this instead leads her to a mysterious world where she encounters the Queen of Maggots, who makes her immortal and gives her the task of ridding the world of five psychopaths referred to as the "parasites". Whilst reluctant and only seeking peace in death, Susan isn't exactly given a choice and is sent back to the world of the living, where she is soon forced to carry out the first part of her task.
The game deals with mature themes such as depression, suicide, and loneliness, though now and then some dry humor is added into this otherwise very deep game. The themes of depression and suicide have always been done in a far too cliche or ineffective manner… and honestly, yeah, somewhat cliche moments still do occur in this game, but I can't blame them for that, it's pretty hard avoiding one-liners and those so-called abstract scenes (Wow they sounds harsh). Anyway, cliche isn't entirely bad, and besides, only a small percentage of this game is presented in that way.
And aside from that, I find the main protagonist to be likable and actually relatable (Save for her unfortunate disdain for dogs…) as she progresses along, and I think we can all agree just how awkward and dumb those suicide helplines tend to be, her distrust towards most people despite their oh-so kind mindset of desiring to 'help' and 'understand' her situation is also incredibly understandable.
Let's just say that this is the most movie-esque game I have ever come across (This would perhaps be the only game movie that would actually turn out right, if they ever made it into a movie that is), whilst it most definitely has a creepy and rather gothic feel to it overall, most scenes tend to be more dramatic or action-related than scary (The sound effects still do get me now and then… stupid cringing piano punch).
Going back to the art style of the game however, it is gorgeously stylistic as seen in these few screenshots, while most scenes tend to be in black and white, the ones that are colored have an absolutely rich look to them, the characters are never actually colored (With the exception of their clothes), and so it is really cool to see how clever they are when it comes to the use of lighting. I also love how they don't actually color every single thing in, a few spot colors are instead used, be it for the characters' clothing or the blood stains. Overall I just really like the contrast of colors and shadows in each scene, especially the more monochromatic ones.
While it might seem like a side scroller game most of the time, the creator was able to create more unique poses for the characters (So they won't simply be showing us their sides to us for the entirety of the game) as well as different camera close ups to enhance certain scenes. Each character definitely has a set of different expressions to go with whatever situation they are put in, I however find it unfortunate that it is rather difficult to make them out considering the usual distance put between the character and the camera itself, and there aren't many close ups when it comes to them pulling their more interesting facial expressions.
One of the more uniquely designed scenes, as the character's thoughts decorate the walls of her home.
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The Adventure Game Studio is an open source development tool developed in 1997 that is primarily used to create graphic adventure games. It is aimed at intermediate-level game designers (Aww and I thought I had a chance to mess around with it once I get my hands on it) and combines an integrated development environment for setting up most aspects of the game with a scripting language based on the C language to process the game logic. (I would still love to learn more about it one day, especially if it is able to produce a game as beautiful as this one)
Aside from The Cat Lady, thousands of other games have been produced using this software, many of them being professional quality. Such examples include The Blackwell series by Wadjet Eye Games, Resonance by XII Games and Gemini Rue by Joshua Nuernberger. Numerous Sierra releases have also been made through this software.
