Resonance was demoed live on Gamespot’s On The Spot today! Heroic programmer Janet Gilbert (off screen) gave a run through of one scene of the game while Dave Gilbert talked to the Gamespot host about the game’s development. Fun was had by all!

Warning, the video contains some puzzle spoilers from early in the game. Do not watch if you don’t like that kind of thing!

Here’s the link!

Resonance is centered around the lives of four characters on a quest to secure a hidden vault containing a dangerous new technology. During the game, the player will take control of all four of these characters, helping them work together to find the vault.

Since these four characters carry the story, it is important to have an incredibly talented cast of actors to give them voice. And boy, did we find such a cast. Let me introduce them to you!

	Tolstoy “Ed” Eddings played by Edward Bauer (Blackwell Deception) Ed is a mathematician at Juno Laboratories. He’s better with numbers than with people, but because of his familiarity with this new technology, the other characters count on him for guidance in their search.
	Anna Castellanos played by Sarah Elmaleh (Gemini Rue, Blackwell Deception, Skulls of the Shogun) Anna is an ER doctor in Aventine City. Her connection to the vault re-opens old wounds from her past.
	Detective Winston Bennet played by Logan Cunningham (Bastion) Bennet is a senior Detective with the Aventine City Police Department. He will often disregard regulations and follow his gut, charging head-first into situations without thinking things through.
	Raymond Abbot played by Daryl Lathon (Puzzle Bots, Blackwell Deception) Ray is a controversial journalist for a popular online news source. He’s good at getting information out of people, even if he is more than a little cock-sure. He fancies himself a bit of a ladies man.

It’s a perfect fit for the game, made even more perfect by Mrs. Wadjet Eye Games herself, Janet Gilbert, who joined the team eight months ago and has taken over the role of lead programmer. This has freed me up to focus on writing dialog, team management, and all the other stuff I need to be taking care of in my limited free time. Without her, we wouldn’t be looking at a release this year, that’s for sure! So welcome her on board!

Also, Mr. Wadjet Eye, Dave Gilbert, is directing the voice acting efforts for the game. We’ve cast our four main characters and they’ve all been in for at least one recording session! Hearing voices coming out of these characters I’ve been working with for the last five years has been a really exciting experience, and I want to share that with you!

So, coming up (today if I can swing it) I’ll post a preview our main cast! Thanks everybody for sticking with me through this looooong development! It’ll all pay off soon!

As an added bonus, they’ve put up some screenshots of Shane’s long-time project Boyd Quest. I’ve played a build of it, and yes, it’s awesome!

To make up for it, I did a little live broadcast for a couple hours this morning on Ustream. It was a lot of fun! If you missed it, sorry, I’ll probably do it again because it was a bunch of fun! So if you’re into watching a guy write blurry code for two hours, follow me on Twitter and I’ll let you know the next time I do a live stream!

And if that’s not your thing (and I don’t blame you) here’s some new screen shots to taijou ovah:

Update: April fools!

Well, blog, it’s been a while. As I mentioned on Twitter, I’ve found that I can be in one of two modes: productive but silent, or loud but stagnant.

Doing community and marketing stuff takes up a lot of time! And when your only time to work on your game is between the time when your two kids and wife fall asleep and the time when your eyes start closing and you start writing code that incorporates words from the dreams you start having, you don’t want to spend too much time blogging.

I actually wrote the word “sink” into a bit of dialog two nights ago that had nothing to do with sinks because I started falling asleep when writing it. When I was played that segment the next night I had no idea what I had written.

Anywho, things are still going well. I’ve had a few epic nights of productivity recently. I’m working towards yet another deadline: this time trying to get as much of the game as possible polished and submitted to Indiecade.

One thing that has really helped me get as far as I’ve gotten has been Kickstarter. I raised $2080, which made a big dent in that red number at the bottom of my expenditure-tracking spreadsheet.

Here’s what the money went to (and it was all pretty much gone in the first month!):

• Music and sound! Nikolas Sideris got a large chunk of the Kickstarter purse. He has produced some amazing tracks for the game as well as purchased and recorded a ton of high-quality sound effects. His work really brings the game’s audio to life.
• Backgrounds! There were a few backgrounds that I was going to cut for budget reasons, which would have kind of weakened part of the game, but I was spending money that could be going into my kids’ college funds! But after Kickstarter, I put them back into the game and Nauris has done some more of his stunning work! In fact, I just posted one a couple paragraphs above! (You’ve got to see it with the mist drifting across the scene! It’s gorgeous!)
• Dialog! Deirdra Kiai got some moolah for her excellent guidance and help so far with writing the actual words that come out of the characters’ mouths. I found, that writing the dialogs had become a major bottle-neck for me since I felt like all the characters were speaking in my voice rather than expressing their own unique personalities. Luckily Deirdra is a fantastic writer and offered to help! She’s done some great editing, re-writing, and writing for the game! Thanks to Kickstarter, she got a bit of remuneration for her time, which I’m sure went straight into her own game-in-progress, Life Flashes By..
• Posters! And of course a bunch of money went into getting posters printed out and sent back to the people who pledged enough to receive one. We had a bit of trouble with a couple international backers who didn’t receive posters, but I think that’s all been sorted now!

So, yeah. Kickstarter was immensely helpful. So, I hope I don’t sound like a total beggar when I hold out my hat again.

I’m opening up donations again, this time via PayPal (as some people mentioned to me that they wanted to preorder via Kickstarter before but couldn’t do so via Amazon’s payment system). My goal is to get enough money to commision the rest of the art that I need to complete the game. Right now, a decent portion of the last half of the game is still in programmer art (crappy MS Paint drawings!) and, partially due to a recent incident where I had to spend a bunch of money to get my wife back into the country (long story), I don’t have enough money right now to pay for those backgrounds. It is slowing game development.

I will be applying the same gift structure to all PayPal donations as I did to Kickstarter, so every PayPal donator can get the same gifts that were available before. Likewise, any Kickstarter backer that wants to increase their pledge to get up to a higher gift may do so by donating the difference!

Also, all PayPal pledgers will gain access to the same Special Backer Gifts that Kickstarter backers had access to. This includes:

• Never-before-seen screenshots
• Never-before-heard music tracks
• Some sneak peaks at awesome character animations.
• An amazing wallpaper
• A special video!

And of course, you get prizes based on your contribution amount. Here are the pledge levels and prizes:

PLEDGE $1 OR MORE
A mention under the “Special Thanks” section of the game’s credits!

PLEDGE $15 OR MORE
All the above, plus a coupon to download the game for free when it’s done! This is as good as a pre-order! (This is likely cheaper than the game will be sold for when it’s complete.)

PLEDGE $35 OR MORE
All the above, plus an early playable sample sent to you before the end of November! (a complete scene from the game missing only voice acting)

PLEDGE $50 OR MORE
All the above, plus a guaranteed spot on the play-testing list. Play the game early and give feedback to improve the game!

PLEDGE $75 OR MORE
All the above, plus a poster, which I’ll send you as soon as the above time period is up!

PLEDGE $500 OR MORE
All the above, plus your name in the credits as a producer!

Any and all help (including kind words of encouragement!) will be deeply appreciated! I thank you in advance for your support and look forward to sharing Resonance with all of you!

TimW of the indiegames.com blog named it one of his top 10 games of the IGF! That’s a huge honor considering the enormous field of high-quality games! Hopefully the other judges thought similarly. Thanks Tim!

Votes are, I believe, being tallied now and game makers are supposed to be informed pretty soon (unless they already have, in which case, boo…), so cross your fingers! Either way, it was fun to take part in IGF and I’m looking forward to getting the judges’ feedback and seeing the finalists!

Thanks everyone who has supported this endeavor!

But I wanted to give something to everyone, so here’s the first minute and a half of the video for you to enjoy and share! Please Tweet! Blog! Love!!!

I’ve got another very special video for you coming up on Monday, so check back!

Newsflash! In order to avoid a lengthy legal dispute with well known game developer Neocell, one of the oldest game development companies ever to make a game called Resonance, I have decided to change the name of my game.

I was never happy with “Resonance” anyways. It just didn’t reflect the edgyness of the game. I mean, this game is truly on the edge. Almost over it. And I wanted a name that will make that known to all.

So, henceforth, Resonance will now be called rEDGEonance®!

Please update your bookmarks to rEDGEonance®’s new webpage:

Thanks!