Priming The Slow Knife

The monster appears, the whole theater jumps, and for a moment the digital surround sound system is drowned out by the whisper of a hundred held breaths released in unison.  On the screen the characters crash through a hall, pursued by the relentless creature, ferocious and bloodthirsty and unstoppable.  They don’t stand a chance.  And […]

I Hope This Is Not Chris’s Blood

Everybody likes a good voice acting joke.  Part of the charm and legacy of Resident Evil has always been its terrible (and terribly-delivered) lines.  We’ve been laughing about Jill sandwiches and masters of unlocking for two decades. I used to wonder how those lines made it into production in an otherwise high-end (and generally well-translated) game. […]

Dead Secret Ships for Steam and Oculus

In 2013 Dead Secret started out as a small, two-person project. It was put on hiatus twice and I didn’t think it was ever going to ship. It started out as a mystery game and slowly developed a sticky horror underbelly, which I have really enjoyed. We shipped it for Gear VR last year. On […]

The Cell Phone Problem

In 2013 I had the opportunity to chat with Steve Gaynor about his then in-development mystery game Gone Home.  A playable version was on display at the Game Developer’s Conference’s Indie Megabooth, and while I was interested in some of the other titles being shown (like Thirty Flights of Loving), I was there to see his game. […]

Tracing the Tendrils of Item Management

One of the things I learned while working on Dead Secret (big announcements coming soon!) is how complicated item combinations can be.  Combining items is a pretty standard Adventure game mechanic.  You allow the player to collect parts of an item from different locations, then combine those items into a new item that is necessary to […]