Jasson is currently at the Game Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, networking with other indie game devs from around the world and spreading the good news of Crea. He’ll be back next week!
Author Archives: Kelley
Valentine’s Oil Slimes
I made this Valentine’s Day card for Jasson using watercolors – because nothing says “love” like blobs of slime with skulls on them.
Free Creasmas wallpaper!
Crea now on Steam Greenlight!
The big day has finally arrived – Crea is now on Greenlight!!! Please vote for Crea here and share the link on your social media sites! With enough votes, Crea will be released on Steam and Steam keys will be given out to all our Kickstarter backers and beta testers.
We have some special beta-only sales going on. If you’d like to pre-order Crea, it’s now available for $10 in our Humble Store! There is also a $20 deal, which includes the game, digital soundtrack and digital artbook (when available).
Today we published a slick new website landing page and made Crea available to all our Kickstarter backers – which means that we gained over 600 new players this week! Jasson is sure to be busy answering questions and fixing bugs for quite a while!
Thank you everyone for your support and encouragement. If you’d like to contact us, leave a comment on this blog, or use Twitter, Facebook or our forums.
How do you guys like the new video?!!
Glowbat – Before and After
The Glowbat is one of the first creatures I designed for Crea. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, my pixel art skills have improved considerably over the past year, and the Glowbat was starting to look a little shabby in comparison. One major problem was that he is supposed to be an underground-dwelling creature, but his grey-brown color made him difficult to see in his environment. For a real-life animal, that’s all well and good, but for a video game, it’s visually confusing.
So here’s the new and improved Glowbat. I made him just slightly larger, added a brighter color scheme to help him pop out of the backgrounds, and made him look like he is being lit from below by his…uh…glowball.
For our beta testers who complained that the underground biome was too barren: watch out. This guy will be waiting for you, and he’s got some pretty fast attacks!
A Year of Pixel Art: Before and After
I had played with pixel art as a teenager, posting my little sprites on my Geocities homepage. But when Jasson asked me to do the art for Crea, I really had no idea what I was doing. I’m used to painting large illustrations in Photoshop, so at first I really disliked the restrictions and teeny-tiny size of pixel art.
It’s been almost one year since our Kickstarter, and during that time my eye for pixel art has improved. I put a lot more time and effort into every artwork now. Here are some examples.
I created the left llama banner for our Kickstarter. What a mess. There are stray pixels and blurriness everywhere. On the right is a llamacorn tapestry I drew just the other day, and is probably my favorite thing I’ve made for Crea so far.
On the left is a shameful, shameful drawing of a bed. On the right, a more interesting and confident bed.
And here are two oak trees.
If you thought Crea looked good during our Kickstarter, just wait until it’s finished!
Beta Now Available!
It’s true, Crea beta is finally here!
We are currently offering a $25 beta package through our Humble Store. This package is the same as our $25 Kickstarter reward tier and includes instant beta access, as well as the soundtrack and digital artbook when they become available.
It’s been a long time since our Kickstarter, and Crea has evolved greatly during that time. We are releasing beta because we feel that the game is developed enough; however, there is still much to be done! We are working on new screenshots and a new gameplay video to show the game off. I am also putting together a feature list overview. All of these should be up in the next few days. However, in the meantime…
Aaron, our designer, did a 4 hour long livestream showing off the gameplay! Here is the first hour of it. You can view the entire stream here.
As a beta tester, you have the opportunity to help shape the world of Crea. You can report bugs, make suggestions and chat with fellow testers in our forums. Help make Crea the best it can be!
We can’t wait to hear about your adventures in Crea!
Introducing Clark and Imminent Beta Release
We’d like to introduce the newest member of our team, Clark Powell. He looks like this:
He is composing the music and sound effects for Crea. You can hear some of Clark’s work at his bandcamp page. We were introduced to Clark through our team member Max. Clark has composed for Homestuck, such as “Symphony Impossible to Play.”
During our Kickstarter, we had originally enlisted Charlie of Robot Science as our composer. However, for various reasons, things did not work out. We did part on good terms and still love his work. We wish Charlie all the best with his promising career.
We realize that some of you backed our Kickstarter in order to support Robot Science, and we apologize for this disappointment. If there’s one thing that we’ve learned from the experience of developing Crea, it’s that things rarely work out as planned! However, we are really pleased with the music Clark has conjured up thus far for Crea, and we think you’ll like it too. You can listen to few Crea tracks right here!
Big news: the long-awaited beta will be available this week! If you are a $25 Kickstarter backer then we will provide you with information on how to get access soon. If you missed our Kickstarter now is your chance to help support us and get in on the beta. A preorder page with immediate access to beta is coming soon!
We know that Crea is way behind our original release date. So to thank you for your patience, we are going to give our $10 backers access to “beta phase 3,” estimated in mid August. If you are a $10 backer and would like beta access before then, we are looking into ways for you to “upgrade” to gain access now.
When we do release beta, we’ll provide another update with much more information.
New logos!
You may have noticed something different about our blog – we finally got some professional logos made for Crea and Siege Games. I (Kelley) had designed some makeshift logos for our Kickstarter campaign, but I am no graphic designer. We needed professional help. Jasson is going to GDC next week, and needs some business cards, so we decided that this would be a good time for some rebranding.
This logo was designed by Herman Dawson. In high school Herman and Jasson used to make RPG Maker games together. Today Herman is a professional graphic designer. We really had no idea what we wanted for Siege Games, so Herman came up with this design that is strong and modern and reminds me of a shield or crest.
This logo was sort of a group effort by Herman, David and myself. We wanted a design that expressed the boundless opportunities for exploration in Crea. The globe illustration was drawn by me.
For comparison, this was our old logo:
Yeah……like I said, I’m not a graphic designer. This logo doesn’t say much, and certainly doesn’t give off a sense of excitement or adventure. It served its purpose during the Kickstarter, though.
What do you guys think of the new logos? Also, is anyone going to GDC?
NPCs in Crea
In Crea, there will be several NPCs with whom to interact. This week Kelley started working on some of the NPC art. Above we have the Researcher, Nun, Grafter, Merchant and Cartographer. Here is a brief description of each NPC. Much more information will be posted about each one individually in the future. (Note: NPCs will be introduced in Beta.)
- The Researcher helps with crafting. Supply him with materials and he will return the favor by providing you with new item recipes.
- The Nun heals HP and grants buffs.
- The Grafter enhances your equipment through the use of catalysts and essences.
- The Merchant sells items.
- The Cartographer provides you with a map and upgrades for it.
