The Long-Awaited Production Update

It's official... we're in production! And the game we're making is called Lifted! (Thanks to Leelee for the sexy new banner, and the logo ;) Creative Crates is now spending 24/7 making our game, and it's AWESOME. Which also means we have lots to talk about -- rapid fire updates incoming:

 1. Audio Collaborators: We now have a team of three talented audio peeps helping us make a world worth playing in. Their work is as open to scrutiny as ours is, so please include them in your awesome feedback!

 2. Web Space: We ran out of it! We recently reached the limits of our web-hosting, so we've migrated. We now have a legit domain, unlimited bandwidth, and multiple builds available for you to play in. It's like Christmas, without the sugar cookies.

 3. Game Mechanics: We received tons of great feedback, and we've been reshaping and tweaking our gameplay to fit the tastes of our players (that's you!). The behaviors of the Skuttles, Launchers, M.A.K.S., and Corruptions have received minor makeovers -- and if those words mean nothing to you, then head on over to the newly established "About Lifted" section, found above. You can also find detailed contact info, as well as bios and anecdotes from the team in the new "About The Team" section.

 4. Sharing The Love: Lifted is being represented at GDC! Zeb our PM, and Leelee our artist, will both be attending the upcoming Game Developers Conference -- a huge annual games industry event held in beautiful San Francisco. We're super excited to see what sort of feedback we can get on our game in the next week, and hopefully get more ideas about how to approach the development and eventual release of Lifted.

There's more in the works, and we'll be releasing new content and coverage more and more frequently as production gains momentum. So hang tight, check out the new builds, and keep the feedback coming!

Some Concept Art for Ya.

Hey Err-buddeh. LeeLee here with some art. 

I've been working hard at the art bible for the past few days. I'm aiming for a soft, airy feel since our game takes place outside... well, virtual outside anyway (more on that later). I wanted everything to feel clean and easy to navigate. A lot of our main character, Galilei, is inspired by aerodynamic vehicles such as the Lamborghini Aventador. 

These are very early so nothing here is final. I still have plenty I'm working on. Should be up soon!

Early Galilei Concepts

 Galilei Jumps Around!

Architecture Studies for our cities.

Jump Pad Concepts

World Concept

Help the Noobs, Challenge the Pros

We're aiming to make our game challenging, but accessible.  So players who are inexperienced with first-person or PC games may struggle a little, but we still want you to have fun!

If you're struggling particularly hard, let us know.  Especially if there's some area or mechanic in particular that kills the fun.  In fact, if you ever stop playing our game for any reason other than "Holy crap it's been 3 hours, I need to get some sleep!"... we want to know.

For anyone who's gotten used to the game play, and is seeing how high they can get, let it be known that both the programmers on our project (Zeb and Thomas) have reached the top of the version 0.0.2 level, from the bottom, without cheating.
It's possible! And we have proof! 

(HINT: Pressing "C" in-game creates a new respawn checkpoint, do this often!)

In lieu of this achievement, we're uploading a taller version of the current level... 

twice as tall, to be exact.  With obstacles.  And death-causing boxes.
If this makes you sad, have no fear... the older version is still available!
If this excites you, then you're in luck!  We'll be making our game bigger, better, and more fun every week for a long time.

Creatives Crates is Live!

Hello World!

This is the first of many upcoming posts about the craft and process of making video games.
Except we aren't just talking about making a game... we're actually making one.  And we're inviting you to come along for the ride.  We'll be documenting our struggles and successes, and sharing what we learn in the process, as we develop a killer first-person physics game.

Thanks to some freaking awesome technology (thank you 2012!) each game version we churn out will be made publicly available every week.  Yup... you can play our game.  Right now in fact.
(just click on the link!)

What's even cooler is that we're recruiting help - that means you!  We need you to tell us what you like or don't like, so we can make our game even better.  Don't be shy about it! If you think we should be getting paid to make this game, tell us why! If you think it sucks and we should just quit, tell us!

We're striving to make a full-fledged video game of pure awesome, and we could really use your help...  So check out the gameplay video, play the current version, and let us know what you think!


NOTE: For anyone craving more details...
We're making our game in Unity 3.4, which means all the programming is happening in C#.  We intend to make a final product that's browser-friendly, and playable on most new-ish computers.  Our development process will be extremely agile-influenced, with a bit of wisdom from Tim Ferriss and the peeps at 37Signals mixed in.

Feel free to e-mail us at creativecrates@gmail.com (making games 24/7 gets lonely!), check out our youtube channel, and follow our twitter for extra updates