This week I thought it might be interesting for people to see what tools we use internally at the studio when working on a project. Over the years we’ve changed how we’ve communicated on a daily basis and track our work tasks. As Drinkbox grew, we adopted new practices – but as you’ll see, we also have stuck with some old school tools.

For daily communication we’ve recently started to use Slack – although Slack isn’t the perfect solution, we enjoy the ease at which we can break into teams and add media files. For me it provides an easy way to harass the art team, or pop over to the coders to see what are the newest memes. Also, my favorite channel is the #bookclub.

When Drinkbox wants to coordinate tasks at a high level we prefer to use Trello. The tool provides a simple way to pass tasks around to each other. We usually are much more active on Trello earlier in a project where having microscopic control over tasks isn’t all that important. Some of our pros include the drag-and-dropness, comments & image sharing capabilities.

As a project starts to enter final production / bug fixing we move over to the nitty gritty greatness of bugzilla. Although not the prettiest, bugzilla is a powerhouse in providing a multitude of ways for us to track bugs, asign bugs, and statistically evaluate how our bugs are being fixed.

Below is a list of bugs currently for the Severed project

Here is a really cool graph of our Severed bugs tracked over time – a lot of information can be gained seeing the # of new bugs found (hopefully decreasing) and the rate at which we’re fixing assigned bugs. For example you usually see a big spike up when a big QA pass happens, and big drops during intensive periods of production as we knock down tasks.

Hope you enjoyed your dose of insight into Drinkbox game production.

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And that’s what I want to share with you today! This is the very first version of Severed (called Slash, or rather “/”, back then) and this is what I e-mailed my colleagues at DrinkBox one Sunday midnight.

Actual e-mail:

—-

Check out the video here:

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Just got back from E3 showing off Severed on iOS devices and the WiiU/3DS so figured I should write something up.

Apparently what I was going to write about has already been scooped by Kotaku (dem scoops). In a nutshell, there is an interesting theory that E3 is trying to block out the Devolver “anti-E3” booth across the street. What I can add to this amusing story is that it must be incredibly hard to setup trailers in such an awkward manner – you really need a good reason to do it in such a way…

But turf wars aside – just wanted to give a thanks to the Indie Mega Booth and Devolver for providing a great space to chat about Severed while simultaneously providing a break from the E3 floor. We had space in a very hip Airstream trailer – courtesy IMB & Devolver – and also at picnic benches situated within a beer garden (again, generously provided by Devolver). I must admit, it is very civil to sit down with a beer to chat about one’s game versus standing in the loud throngs of E3. Solid job Devolver.

Indie Mega Booth Airstream trailer available for developers to privately show off their game.

Beer garden provided by Devolver (/thumbsup)

Here are a few folks that covered us:

Engadget “PS Vita slasher ‘Severed’ is coming to iOS, 3DS and Wii U”

Eurogamer “Severed is coming to Wii U, 3DS and iOS this summer”

Nintendo Life “Hands On: Dealing Death by a Thousand Cuts with SEVERED”

Oh, and be sure to check out some of the cool games Devolver is supporting.

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Hi Hi! The reception for Severed has been fantastic, and everyone at the studio appreciates any and all reviews and articles.

Although there are many more reviews than the ones listed below – we figured why not make a mini list of just a few of them:

Destructoid – “DrinkBox Studios knocked it out of the park” 9.5/10

Polygon – “Severed is the strongest iteration of DrinkBox’s aesthetic to date” 9.0/10

Gaming Trend – “Severed is my favorite PlayStation Vita exclusive” 90/100

Pocket Gamer – “this is a fresh dungeon-crawling experience” 9/10

PlayStation Universe – “Severed masterfully combines touch screen combat” 9.5/10

If you haven’t had a chance head on over to your local PSVita online digital store to grab a copy: PlayStation Store

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Alright folks. This blog post is not the usual long winded diatribe you’d come to expect from me. Instead we have glorious gifts of information, and a barrage of media to assault your senses.

SEVERED RELEASE DATE:

We’re excited to announce that Severed will be released April 26th, 2016 on PlayStation Vita on for $14.99 (or €14.99/£11.99). PS+ subscribers can also expect a 10% discount during the launch week. (/highfives)

NEW TRAILER:

I love the track that’s been made for this trailer!

SEVERED OST AVAILABLE RIGHT NOW

Composed by the Juno nominated YAMANTAKA // SONIC TITAN and special guests Pantayo
AVAILABLE HERE

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Hi all! Augusto, Graham and me just got back from GDC 2016 and we’re here present some cool games we saw:

Graham:

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Hi everyone, Jason here, and I’m really excited for everyone to play Severed.

Severed will be ready for you soon… but more importantly, we want to know if you will be ready for Severed!

Severed is a game that puts players in the role of a young warrior travelling through a fantasy world, exploring dungeons and fighting strange and deadly creatures.  The combat in Severed requires a keen eye, sharp reflexes and quick thinking. Enemies are varied and their attacks can be misleading. You’ll need your wits, but you’ll also need fast fingers. Combat in Severed is done with touch controls, so if you’re going to survive, you’ll need to make sure your fingers are tough and ready!

If you want to survive in Severed’s world, your fingers are going to have to be in tip-top fighting shape! Luckily, the internet is your friend, and there are many resources to help you strengthen your fingers and prepare yourself.

The benefits of strengthening your fingers will provide you with many benefits, such as the ability to climb small to large mountains.

In conclusion, mountain climbing may (or may not) help you play Severed, and playing Severed may (or may not) help you climb mountains!

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This week we just finished up our 20th playtest for Severed! As a studio one of the most important practices we’ve learned is: playtest your game early, and often. As a designer, you are constantly making assumptions about how people will play your game, and you quickly learn how wrong these assumptions usually are. For example, what may seem like an obvious path within a game can be vastly missed by the majority of players – It’s very easy to make a poor judgement call about how people view a scenario I’ve created.

Subsequently, we’ve also learned that it is difficult to create a natural playtesting environment if your entire studio is standing over a playtester’s shoulder like a bunch of weirdos… This can affect the playtester (positively or negatively) by changing the way they would “normally” play the game. For example, a skilled video game player might feel self conscious, resulting in them struggling during a demo, thereby giving us the impression we’ve made the game too difficult.

credit: koen deetman

One solution is to record the playtest for review at a later time. A drawback to this method is we don’t have the opportunity to ask the playtester about certain moments of their play session. “Did the trapdoor puzzle feel rewarding, or was it too easy?” Asking questions much later after a playtest sometimes leads to a playtester having trouble recollecting their experience.

Our solution is to record the playtest AND stream video of it across the office to the design team. This allows the team to have a live discussion during the playtest, pointing out possible improvements, or observing unforeseen challenges the player is experiencing.

Here is the setup:

First, Severed is recorded with an over the shoulder video camera with an HDMI out that contains the screen data. We lead this signal to the input of our Game Capture HD60 from Elgato. The HD60 is an affordable and versatile little capture device. The supplied software is simple to use and we’ve been happy with the quality of recorded video, even up to 1080p 60fps.

Now we get sneaky. The HD60 is connected by USB to a computer that records the playtest, but also simultaneously streams the computer’s desktop video via VLC Media Player to our local LAN via HTTP. We have tried a few different software solutions and currently use the powerful (and free!) VLC.

The way we setup VLC can be found in the below post, found here. Anyone in our office can easily pick up the HTTP stream feed by using their own copy of VLC on their respective computers. There is a slight lag since transcoding is taking place on the hosting computer, but we’ve had up to 6 computers watching without a problem. To improve performance one can reduce the desktop resolution of the hosting computer and also reduce the fps of the stream from within VLC.

There ya go! A little insight into our playtest sessions.

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Hey all, here are the details to how we setup our playtesting. This How-To is going to be a bit brief on detail, but should give you a general idea.

======Host Side========

Start the Stream

Select your Desktop as the Capture Device

Not sure about this page, just click Next

You want to select HTTP, then click “Add”

Select your preferred coding, H.264 is pretty good

Change frame rate to what will be required, we go with 30fps or 15fps.

Select port, the default is 8080 which works for our purposes.

Click Next

Last find the local IP of the Host computer. An easy way is to go to your Windows Start button, put “cmd” in the search parameter. Then in the console window that pops up type “ipconfig” and the IP address will be listed there. It’ll usually be 192.168.1.?, but, depends on how your network is setup. In the example below it is 192.168.1.124

============ Client Side=========

Click “Open Network Stream”

Enter the IP address of the Host computer with the port. In this case the hosting computer’s IP is 192.168.1.149, port 8080. Click “Play” and you should be good to go.

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By Gary Corriveau, Lead Designer

As much as I love the whole process of making games, there are two phases during development which I love the most: Getting started and finishing up.

When embarking on a new project, quickly iterating on prototypes is the name of the game. Testing gameplay ideas, experimenting with art treatments, developing new characters and stories; quickly producing tests that allow the team to dip their toes in the ocean that they are about to dive into. This is fun stuff. The time between investment and reward is short and the possibilities for the future of the project are boundless.

Another great time during the making of a game is the home stretch. This is where we’re at with Severed right now.

The final touches of the game are falling into place. We’re tuning numbers, tidying up animations, mixing the last of the sound effects and music; Polishing the game to it’s full potential. Make no mistake, it’s hard work! Not because of the hours put in or the nature of the work, but because you know you will have to stop at some point. Most of us have enough ‘final touch’ ideas to work on the game for an eternity. But we’re also anxious to get Severed in front of an audience with the hopes they will enjoy playing the game as much as we’ve enjoyed making it. That cognitive dissonance can be difficult at times, but the rewards are well worth it.

Here’s the thing with finishing a game: The last bit of polish impacts the game to a much greater degree than the many months of the work that led up to this point.

If you are trying to admire a beautiful painting, but someone has spilt a dab of ketchup across the canvas. What sticks in your mind the most? The artist’s work, or the ketchup? (Think Rembrandt, not a Jackson Pollock.) Removing those last placeholders and fixing those last bugs have a similar impact to cleaning the ketchup from that Rembrandt. You remove all the distractions and finally see the game for what it is; what the team has envisioned it to be.

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