Uncategorized ← SeeThrough Studios

We need a new normal

Jun

2013

Today Anita Sarkeesian put out a tweet noting that the XboxOne demo at E3 failed to feature any games with a female protagonist. A bunch of people on twitter sent horrible @replies which Anita documented because they ”exemplify the male privilege and male entitlement endemic in the gaming community today.” As someone who writes for games (including an upcoming title featuring a female protagonist) I feel slightly compelled to give my take on the situation (which to be honest is nothing new.)

(more…)

Changing particles: 21 improvements we’ve made to Particulars

by Paul

Jun

2013

Particulars has undergone a lot of change lately. If you’ve already bought the alpha, you should receive an email informing you of the new version. If not, you can grab it here. Some of the changes are obvious, others less so. Today, I’m going to go through everything that we’ve done since the last alpha release and explain why we did it!

(tl;dr – Prettier, better, sounds exist, comics exist, MUCH prettier! Get the new version/join the alpha here)

(more…)

Infinite Runners and Roguelike-likes… 2

by David

Nov

2012

Hey I’m David, designer for Team 1, and I’m here to take you through the initial thought process of our game. Way back in a time long ago (about two weeks before Iron Dev started), Tom (our programmer) and I were sitting around thinking about the upcoming Ludum Dare competition. I had been playing a lot of ‘Dungeons of Dredmor’, ‘The Binding of Isaac’ and ‘Spelunky’. Tom had been playing a lot of ‘Legends of Grimrock’, and we got into a conversation about how awesome ‘Roguelike’ games were, but how they were often hampered by some clunky design, mainly inventories and awkward control systems.

The genre ‘Roguelike’ has been undergoing rapid changes over the past few years, and with some recent additions like ‘The Binding of Isaac’ and ‘Spelunky’, the genre has been quite loosely defined. I defined a ‘Roguelike’ as a game with procedurally generated content, learning through death, and progress defined by how far you get before dying. This encompasses Isaac, Spelunky, Dredmor, Dwarf Fortress, and the traditional roguelikes. At this point Tom jokingly made the observation that if that is how you define a Roguelike , ‘Infinite Runners’ are Roguelikes. This observation went full circle back to what we wanted to achieve, an accessible pick-up and play (PUP) Roguelike.

If we could take the simplicity of an infinite runner and the incredible depth of a Roguelike, we could be onto something very special. Based on this observation we tried to see if we could take the really cool parts of Roguelikes and repackage them in a more accessible form. By doing this we would be exposing casual gamers to something that normally only hardcore gamers would experience. In other words we decided to make a Roguelike for casual gamers.

So then Ludum Dare came along, Tom and I both decided to make two games inspired by our conversation. Tom made a cool minimalistic Roguelike dungeon crawler called ‘Vol’. I went in the other direction and actually made an infinite runner with some RPG style elements called ‘Unnatural Selection’. Both games then went on to inspire Team 1′s next game…

Here is a little teaser to keep everyone occupied (PS this is on mobile):

Prototype Fortnight: Rhythm Combat

by David

May

2012

Hey, I’m David, and I’m one of the interns at SeeThrough Studios. I selected a rhythm based game as the first of my ‘Prototype Fortnight’ prototypes. When we were brainstorming ideas, rhythm was an element that a lot of us were really interested in doing. I’ve also had an idea kicking around in the back of my head about a rhythm based combat system. It has some very interesting elements to work with, and has some implications for pacing which I’ll outline below.

The idea came from a class I had on video editing. We learned how to use music for pacing, and as a base for editing film. Watch any trailer, and you’ll see that the rhythm and pacing of the music flows (usually) perfectly with the action of the clip. Observe how powerful this tool is, and how rare it is to find it used as a gameplay pacing element.

(more…)

SeeThrough Does Ludum Dare 23 1

by Paul

Apr

2012

Starting tomorrow at 11am, SeeThrough Studios is going to be partaking in that crazy thing known as Ludum Dare.

As far as I know so far, we’ll be having three teams:

David and Thomas are each doing individual Compo entries
Myself (Paul), Angus, Louise and friends (tbd) are going to do a Jam entry, with a special challenge (I couldn’t resist): It’s gonna be a musical!

We’ll be checking in throughout the weekend with updates and so on, so watch this space!

For now, a question to everyone: what do you think is important for a game that’s also a musical?

The second day of the second project, and worries of second-project slump 1

by Paul

Mar

2012

So it’s day 2 of this run, and so far it’s been good.

And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.

There’s a phenomenon called “second project slump” (or the Second-system effect), whereby a project team, all chuffed from a successful first project, become complacent or simply overestimate how much they can do in the time given. It’s an effect I was wary of going into this sprint (in fact I made sure to mention it fairly early on day one so that it was on people’s minds), and now I’m even more worried that it could be an issue for us.

Which is a good thing, because we’re catching it early and can correct for it.

(more…)

What’s in our cards?

by Saul

Feb

2012

Today began with index cards. Here at SeeThrough, we love index cards – whenever we hit a point where the world around us appears to be descending into chaos, Paul throws a stack of various coloured cards on the table, and we start breaking down our tasks, and writing them with big fat card.

This time, it went a bit like this:

Paul: We’re nearly half-way through our time, we need to plan stuff carefully and come up with milestones and stuff.

Us: Okay.

(more…)

Building levels and gaining levels

by Saul

Feb

2012

Monday was a productive day on the level-building front. Above is what the player will see when he or she loads Level 1 of the game, and you can find some more early screens below the cut.

But I also want to talk about another kind of levels. You may have noticed the array of progress bars over in the right-hand sidebar of the site. We built them as a fun way of tracking progress on the various goals we’ve set ourselves for the project.

They’re extremely low-tech at the moment – we’re actually updating them manually. But they’re actually pretty important to us – all the things they track are central to what we’re trying to achieve with this project, and for the company. So I just want to give you a quick run-down of what each of them represents (and how you can help us level up!).

(more…)

We’re looking for an artist!

by Saul

Feb

2012

Throw the Looking Glass Pty Ltd (also trading as SeeThrough Studios) is currently seeking an all-rounder artist to join us on a long-term basis. We require someone who can commit to at least three (and preferably five) days a week at our centrally-located Sydney (Australia) office.

Other requirements for the role include:

experience in creating 2D and 3D digital game art and animation;
the ability to work in a variety of art styles;
good communication skills and the ability to work with a team; and
the ability to work to a tight schedule.

In addition, the following qualities would be highly desirable:

experience in artistic direction for games; and
experience working in a Unity development environment.

Payment will be a combination of wages, profit share and/or company equity. Please send CV with cover letter to jobs@throwthelookingglass.com

Kotaku dev diary and lovely new logo

by Saul

Feb

2012

If you’re a new visitor to our site, chances are you’ve arrived due to the first installment of our development diary, which went up yesterday on Kotaku Australia. If so, welcome! If not, then it begins like this:

We’re making a game in three weeks. And you know something? I’m scared.

My concern isn’t that we won’t have Flatland done. That’s a minor worry, and one that’s mostly out of my hands, in any case. I’ve seen our creative director Paul Sztajer (and co.) crank out great games in half the time we’ve got. We already have a prototype that conveys an extraordinary amount of mood. I have faith that the others have got that side of it covered.

It continues over here. And there are more installments to come!

We have the lovely Tracey Lien to thank for allowing us to board the Kotaku express, and that’s not all we need to thank her for. She’s also allowed us to steal the magnificent logo that she made for the article, which has now replaced our fugly little fish-tank here on the blog. I’m sure you’ll agree that it has immediately made our site look approximately eighty times more professional!

We’re not back at work until Thursday, but I’ll be putting up bits and pieces of media over the intervening days (we have levels!), so keep watching our RSS and Twitter.

How to get to know us

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this:

Share this: