Key stuck under a drain cover. Needs a hook and a string.
Just a little SH2 horror trope that I love. And our game SHOCKFACE has a lot of tropes from classic horror games and campy 90s slasher films!
Coming this 27th August! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705980/SHOCKFACE/
Some screenshots from our game SHOCKFACE. It's 9 days from release and we're working on making it more atmospheric 👀
It's on Steam here! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705980/SHOCKFACE/
As someone who grew up playing Max Payne, HL2, FEAR and Splinter Cell, I have always loved that dry, rough look. Story wise, we wanted it set in the 90s, inspired by slashers and B-movies of that era.
We used Unity 6.0, so the goal was to make a game that looked modern but nostalgic at the same time.
Some of the workflow/decisions:
* It's got PBR, but we heavily rely on albedo only materials in most places. This 100% goes for buildings (walls, floors) and characters.
* Most props are albedo only too, except a few. For example a surface that we like reflecting some light such as some metals, ceramics or fluids.
* The lighting is a combination of baked and realtime GI. Currently I'm playing around with film grain to make things look a little less "static"
* Soft realtime shadows. I chose this over hard simply because I wanted to keep the game looking "clean". However we use shadow light only is some places where moments feel "cinematic" because I felt it can be distracting with our fixed camera setup.
* Depth of field, especially in cutscenes, really makes it look new and old at the same time imo
* The game is set in the 90s, we use post FX to give it a slightly yellow/beige look.
* The UI is DOS inspired to complete the look! Although we don't have any post FX on the UI.
Our game is a survival horror with puzzles and hiding/stealth that rely on quick navigation to escape. It's got fixed cameras and tank controls.
Also we've got the 90s slasher movie tropes with some campy story and characters!
If you like how it sounds, here's the steam link. It's coming out this 27 Aug! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705980/SHOCKFACE/
As per this filtered page we're in the top 40 upcoming survival horrors.
Or at least that's what I think that page means. I'm surprised because we only have slightly 400 wishlists. Last 7 days we've averaged 30/day.
What we're doing:
* contacting youtubers, streamers, anyone with the right audience that could give us a boost
* trying to post things about the game
* going through steam curators list to contact
My questions:
* any tips on how we keep up the momentum and keep climbing?
* what's worked for you in the last 10 days before release?
* Lastly, is this a big deal? I'm not sure if being #39 on a subgenre is something to get excited about.
For context, this is our first game and a short ~5 month dev. Also I know these are small numbers! I made this post because our numbers were much smaller earlier.
We started in April and I made the mistake of making the page only in early June.
And the steam page was pretty lackluster:
- The capsule art was dull
- The first trailer (which we made in late July) really didn't hook players in the first few seconds. The rest of it was boring too
- Screenshots were mostly environment pictures
For two months we averaged 3 wishlists a day.
Here's what we changed:
- New trailer which starts off with 10 second action scene. Followed by 25 seconds of buildup. 25 seconds of action. Then 20 seconds of cool off.
- New capsule art
- New screenshots that show gameplay and characters
What we did after these changes:
- My new trailer post on twitter on twitter did well (3k+ impressions)
- A post about our game's "PS2 look" in ps2_graphics a smaller subreddit as well another in HorrorGames
- Trailer post in IndieDev
- Trailer post in HorrorGames
UNEXPECTED: a joke post I made for fun did really well in IndieDev sub and in ps2_graphics sub
***
Even though we've not got a LOT of wishlists, here's what I have learnt:
- The trailer best practices are truly worth following. Don't start with your logo or a slow intro. Fill the first few seconds with action.
- A lot of people will come across the trailer while on mute, so show a bunch of things at start
- Post and forget. I posted the joke post right before going to sleep. But for an hour I didn't see any response. It was actually downvoted. But I woke up to see it had crossed 300. Today it's 650+, my second most upvoted post.
In the end our posts got 160k impressions across Reddit and Twitter and resulted in ~200 wishlists in a week, 10x our average.
It might be a bad statistic to some but I think that's the brutality of conversion funnels? Some things I tell myself:
- Our game isn't exactly viral material
- All this came from our posts, not from a popular account or page boosting us. We're working on that now
- We've really just fallen into this by mistake. We really thought until last weekend we'll be launching with 400 wishlists or something. Now we're hoping for at least 1000.
- Some of the wishlist velocity probably comes from the fact we're <2 weeks from release and it's starting to show up
PS. Our game is SHOCKFACE on Steam: https://s.team/a/4705980
It's been in the works since March/April and is finally coming out! Out first Steam release!
We are heavily inspired by the kind of compact horror games you can finish in one sitting (think PUPPET COMBO), 90s slasher movies that we grew up watching and that PS2-era graphics/aesthetic.
The idea itself came to us after watching a little known movie called P2!
Would genuinely love to know what horror fans think of it.
And if it looks like your kind of game, check it out! https://store.steampowered.com/app/4705980/SHOCKFACE/
Not a serious post, just for laughs!
We have a dinner conversation dinner and I figured the protagonist should eat something while talking.
Made a quick low poly lasagna model in blender. The lasagna swaps to a half eaten mesh after a few bites.
Adding this was a little win for the day!
The game is SHOCKFACE for those interested. It's on steam here: https://s.team/a/4705980
Not a serious post, just for laughs!
We have a dinner conversation dinner and I figured the protagonist should eat something while talking.
Made a quick low poly lasagna model in blender. The lasagna swaps to a half eaten mesh after a few bites.
Adding this was a little win for the day!
The game is SHOCKFACE for those interested. It's on steam here: https://s.team/a/4705980
I posted here earlier and received a lot of kind words!
My wife and I have been working on this since April and we are releasing on 27th Aug! https://s.team/a/4705980
My wife and I are developing SHOCKFACE
Something we decided early on was to try and have that 2000s look.
Games like Manhunt and Max Payne that are synonymous with grit and grime.
I know PS1 look is really popular too, but I think the PS2 look is equally amazing!
We're launching this 27th Aug on Steam! https://s.team/a/4705980
Initially we wanted to go with a heavy VHS filter.
Earlier in the development I tweeted about how diffuse only materials look so good which seemed to resonate well.
Over time we've removed those effects to try and achieve our mood with lighting.
We have baked lights and realtime ones with realtime GI. So that's pretty modern. But with models that are low poly with diffuse only materials (on most of them).
I really like the result!
We're making a game for PC named SHOCKFACE (find it on Steam!)
Just a little WIP.
Our game SHOCKFACE is set in the 90s. We're close to a release and I redesigned the style because we've been on "programmer art" for way too long.
Initially thought of a Win95 style. But this feels like it has more character!
Not shown here is the serial killer. We're keeping his identity and appearance a secret. 👀
Our game is on Steam and is called SHOCKFACE
In January both of us decided to try some career changes and try new things. And the last 3-4 months have been the most exciting chapter for us in terms of work.
Our game is called SHOCKFACE and it's coming to Steam soon. https://s.team/a/4705980
We started development on 1st April 2026 and are finally coming close to finishing the game.
The YouTube link to the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BeckPJlqWjc
In January both of us decided to try some career changes and try new things. And the last 3-4 months have been the most exciting chapter for us in terms of work.
Our game is called SHOCKFACE and it's coming to Steam soon. https://s.team/a/4705980
We started development on 1st April 2026 and are finally coming close to finishing the game. Our release date has been pushed many times, but we're confident we'll get this out in August 2026!
I have a game development background since 2011, but have been working on enterprise 3D software for many years now. On this project I did the programming and environment design.
My wife has a background in data engineering and in general a good eye for design. She has been working on story, dialogues, cutscenes and puzzle design.
I got tired of hunting for scenes in the Project window every time I wanted to jump between levels. A small Unity Editor tool that gives you a quick scene menu right in the Scene View is an absolute quality of life upgrade.
The game in the video is SHOCKFACE (find it on Steam) that we're working on.
Drag your scenes into a simple wizard once, press a trigger (Ctrl+Alt or Ctrl+Shift + right-click) with your cursor on the scene window and you're done.
t's a free UPM package (Unity 2020.1+) on github.com/adrenak/scene-switcher
Edit:
Just updated to version 1.1.0 and now you don't even have to drag and drop the scenes. If you have any in the build settings, it'll be populated in the list by default!
Something that I've always been annoyed with is that invoking methods via UnityEvent doesn't allow you much freedom over arguments.
It occurred to me last week that I can use the builder pattern with public methods to do this.
The component has a public method Begin that creates a builder instance. After that you keep calling more public methods that forward the calls to the builder. Calling End performs the actual operation using what you configured in the builder instance.
A handy SceneNote component that I attach to the component I call this on allows me to know what methods are available to pick from.
Maybe this is overengineered or just janky, but would like to know what approaches others use!
A couple days ago I reposted an old tweet showcasing a PBR painter I'd made with Cursor and asked "if I paint texture maps in this tool and use in my game, what should my Steam AI disclosure be?" Here is the tweet
I was genuinely curious, but also wanted a discussion to happen.
Collected and posted my thoughts Here but the key points are:
PS: I don't know what the online subculture between AI and non AI devs is, but I hope to hope to have a good conversation here too.
Been having a lot of fun making cutscenes for the first time. Figured some BTS footage running parallely to the actual cutscene might be interesting viewing!
Our game is called SHOCKFACE on Steam