Hello everyone, Cow (aka Victor) here!

It’s been a couple months since the demo/beta/early access/chapter 1 of Hiraeth came out, so understandably all you curious folk must be wondering what we’re up to! I’m quite the hefty typer, so there will be a neat little TLDR at the bottom if you’re just here for the news :D

Getting things clear first, no, the game isn’t dead yet. Progress has slowed down since I’ve yet to get used to college, notably social interactions costing me ~108.75kJ/h, so by the end of the day I have much less energy to actually work on the game. Fear not however, it will be finished eventually, and there still a lot to be seen (Chapter 1 comprises ~20% of the planned game).

Quickly before I begin rambling about nonsense no one beyond myself cares about, I want to proudly announce that we’ve passed 100 downloads on Itch! :D That means it’s  steeeeaaaaam time!!

Soon, there will be a free re-release of Chapter 1 on Steam with some minor modifications to accessibility & some level redesigns (I’ve been listening to your cries of frustration!)

In the meantime, Vestige is holding me hostage in his basement and wants me to discuss our journey with you. So without further ado, here is the full story of HIRAETH:

Part 1: Meeting Thomas

So my programming journey started with QBASIC, aka Ye Olde Python-Equivalent (but with no native graphics support, documentation, IDE, libraries). It’s a quirky beginner-friendly language that you’re supposed to only use on really small dumb things. So obviously, I ignored all that and made my first game: _TAB (might publish it some day if I get time to revise the spelling…)

A couple months go by, I start Secondary school and I spot in my FOV another weird kid obsessed with creating media like me, although instead of games he likes music (weird, but fine “I guess”). Over the next year I forced him into learning QBASIC (like the good friend I am), and even if he’s a bit quick on using the GOTO method, he becomes very talented in this new medium. He makes his first game, RUN, as well as making tiny other experiments along the side. Although, after a short amount of time, we had nothing to do and we started to get bored.

Part 2: The homoerotic tension between Victor & Thomas rises

Skipping along, Thomas & I got bored and decided to start working on our first “Big Game”, in QB64 this time (QB64 = Qbasic with very basic bitmap handling and minimal Windows interfacing). It was basically a terrible Undertale clone. Alienaterra (that’s what Thomas named it) was an unplayable bug-ridden mess whose executable was over 500mb and would crash every 10 minutes from memory leaks (freeing pointers is hard when you’re 14). The whole thing was 10 000 lines of raw code (this is not a joke, see photo 1) because we didn’t know how to store levels in separate files. Thankfully, we officially gave up in 2020 (it was about time!).

Part 3: Victor & Thomas kiss behind Unity HQ

Wait, this is supposed to be about Hiraeth, isn’t it? I’ll get there, don't worry…

Anyway, friendship ended with QB64, now Unity is my best friend. In 2019, I started messing around with Unity. I made a bunch of disconnected prototypes, ranging from top-down survival, silly RPGs, Spore clones, etc. Eventually I began work on what I decided would be my “Next Big Game”, AnotherSpatialDimension. This is the earliest iteration of Hiraeth, and some puzzles have even been borrowed from it. Check it out here: 

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C45aGturUex96MxSOnsdfFcAhbmheb9J/view?usp=share_link

As you can see, this was very basic. The original concept was about adding 4 dimensions, similar to what 4D Golf is doing now. However I soon realized that this added no complexity to the puzzles and was merely just parkour. I instead started experimenting with gravity, which led to the core concept of today’s HIRAETH (it isn’t shown much in Chapter 1, but you get a glimpse of it at the end). The 4D concept became the “Fractal” levels, which will be explored in chapter 3, and adds much more puzzle potential than (ironically) simply adding Another Spatial Dimension (see photos 2 to 5 for new content!).

After seeing my terrible graphics, Thomas felt pity and joined the project as the lead art & music director. Soon, we were working on a new game.

Part 4: Victor & Thomas lose their innocence

Yep so to put it simply, the game was garbage. After Thomas joined, my vision expanded beyond my grasp and my monkey brain thought: “What makes a game good? More levels, of course!”. I began making levels for level’s sake. Each section was to have 100 pseudo-unique puzzles, but since that’s impossible, they all ended up being dumb parkour and filler. I didn’t know how to properly make the player movements physics-base, so there was input lag and frame skipping, weird “mechanics”, clipping and bizarre edge-cases.  Paired with this unusable player controller, the game felt like a chore to players. We made another beginner's mistake. So here’s a piece of advice for those who started making video games: DON’T ASK YOUR FRIENDS TO TEST YOUR GAME. They care about you too much to tell you the truth: that you are garbage at what you do.

When I realized this, I was quite sad and unsure what to do. Then, I had another monkey brain idea: “What makes a game good? A story, of course!” So I started integrating a dumb story into my dumb game. It was literally the Portal 1 storyline, but the game being so long it was stretched beyond recognition. Since the levels were already done, the player didn’t even have agency in it and it was like the narrator reading an audiobook over the gameplay. Utter garbage. We “hired” a friend to make a story for us, to write a plot for a pre-made game which is already inherently unfun. Obviously, it was also garbage, and that’s what finally made me realize that I was the problem.

I take all the blame for this part of development, Thomas doing an exceptional job with graphics and sound and we haven’t had to replace any of his stuff.

Part 5: Victor & Thomas raise their child

Now that I had identified the source of the issue, I rolled back everything to the last “fun” version (AnotherSpatialDimension) and just started building on that anew (6+ months of development, yay!). The plot got gud, the levels were fun again and everything returned to an “artistic” state. I remembered that what people thought was nice about the first version, even with all its terrible jank, was the general trippiness, so expect even more of that coming soon!

Part 6: Loss [I strongly recommend you skip this section if you are weak of heart]

The game was ready to be released, and we took two weeks to advertise it a bit, create an Itch.io page & become active on the Discord server again. 

And that’s when it happened. You see, during this time Thomas was on vacation in Alberta. I didn’t think much of it, but when he stopped writing regularly I got nervous. As I was starting to fear in the back of my mind, it happened. I got a phone call at 3am, from the Alberta police.  I shouted to myself : “Please be a licensing issue with Hiraeth, please let it be a stolen asset, please let it be the missing Unity splash screen!”. My palms were sweaty as my grasp hardened around the phone. The officer spoke. My knees were weak, I was trembling. My arms are heavy, and that’s when he said it. There was vomit on my sweater already. “Mom’s spaghetti”.

I burst out into tears. Thomas had been attacked by a cariboo while skiing. He had only hours left. I jumped onto the first flight to Alberta that night, with our infant child Timmy Hiraeth in my arms. When I arrived, I quickly ran to the hospital where he had been put on life support, holding on to life by a thread. I wish I would have been faster, I wish I’d have been there. I sprinted through the corridors of the hospital, pushing the staff trying to restrain me. I saw his family in the lobby with grim looks on their faces. I pushed through. 230, 231, 232, 233! I had made it to his room. I opened the door, got on the floor. Everybody walk the dinosaur. It was too late, he was no longer amogus. The sussy baka had passed.

I was lost, how could I ship Hiraeth without him? The love of my life was gone. Then, I met a strange figure glooming over his bed. It was his identical twin brother, Vestige! My soul still split in half, I could at least say to myself “our child was not lost”! After the funeral, I approached his brother. He said that in Thomas’ memory, he’d be glad to work on the music, but he wasn’t capable of modeling and texturing as his brother could.

Anyway, that’s how I met Vestige and why I’m now a one-man band, working on the game mostly by myself.

Part 7: But life must go on

Emm yeah, sorry about that. Anyway, Hiraeth will have a full release: it’s just a matter of time. As I’ve been saying, gamedev is hard and I want my game to be PERFECT. It won’t take 10 years, but it won’t take just 1 either. The full game will be paid on Steam, but Chapter 1 will remain free to all. As you all know, there are always alternatives to paying for media, especially games: it would be a bit hypocritical for me to get mad at people for cracking my game, so take no remorse in sailing the seven seas! :P 

Also just in case anyone is wondering, there is no way in heck that this will become a “franchise” in any sense of the word. I’m never touching this genre again. After the full game is out, I plan on returning to the RPG scene, with more “emotional” storytelling.

Vestige also adds that he will be releasing an album with all the Hiraeth songs and some bonus ones once the game is done.

Part 8: Thomas’ soul lives on

As a quick side note, I was helping Vestige with his side project about a house cleaning simulator to test some of the newer Unity features, and when I added a particle system to simulate the dust, it began moving to reveal a chilling message. Somehow, Thomas’ soul persisted beyond the natural world and he is HAUNTING HIS BROTHER’S GAME. [Yes, this is canon. Fight me @Vestige]

Introducing The House of thy Spook, a horror game where you can only see the ghost by the way he interacts with the dusty floor, all while you are tasked to clean it: madness ensues! Coming soon to Blu-ray™ Disk and DVD!

(see photos 6 and 7 for some development pics of House of thy Spook!)

Part 9: Conclusion

Vestige here, here to cut the crap for a moment. The past two years working on Hiraeth have been amazing. Admittedly, there were tough moments here and there, but even when we were close to giving up, we kept pushing until we finally released the first chapter. For me, it was quite freeing to finally let go of our baby. And the response was so amazing! We can’t thank you enough for supporting us and playing the game. 

Even though we stayed silent for about 5 or 6 months, we are still very much active, and we will continue to be for a while. Our hobbies are the only thing keeping us going amidst all the things that are going on in our lives. Personally, I’m studying both science and music at the same time. On top of that, I’m working on a video game on my own, the music for Hiraeth, and, finally, my own solo music. Victor is single-handedly carrying the Hiraeth project while also studying science. Even making this small update took a while!

So, although we promise that Hiraeth will be released eventually, we don’t know when. We are both full time students, and trying to balance everything out is quite a challenge. But it is one that we will take on.

Finally, we’d just like to thank you for believing in us and for always reacting so positively. It means the world to us. We’ve got more content for you coming in all directions. There will be links below that lead to all of our socials, including mine if you want to listen to my musical shenanigans. Until then, have a good day or evening, wherever you are in the world.

:)

- V&T

TLDR: We reached 100 downloads on Itch.io, it’s time for Steam!! blah blah blah, Hiraeth lore stuff, Thomas gets reincarnated into Vestige, Hiraeth is still being worked on, and a new game is coming soon!

(you can follow our socials here): Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/EtX7Xv7txY Insta: https://www.instagram.com/cawezstudios/ Soundcloud (Vestige): https://soundcloud.com/vestigetunes Insta (Vestige): https://www.instagram.com/vestigetunes/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cawezstudios/ Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/CAWEZ_Studios/