Hey hi!
bryan/hexcavator here. I'm so excited to announce the release of I don't think I've walked this stretch of road before, a brooding 3D narrative vignette I built in Gamemaker: Studio over the last year and a half. It's an homage to lo-fi/early 3D aesthetics and the minimalistic filmmaking of Jeff Nichols & Kelly Reichardt, built around a hopeful story of personal reckoning.
The gameplay is simple point-and-click investigation. Players traverse a lonely backroad, interacting with evocative scenes & objects to evoke snippets of prose. The experience is compact, and meant to played in a single 20-30 minute session. In lieu of the aesthetic bells and whistles of modern engines, I tried to rely on weird camera work, layered ambient soundscapes, and pulsating synths to build atmosphere and tension.
I was inspired throughout the project by the community of brilliant folks doing 3D development in Gamemaker: Studio. GM:S gets a bit of a bad rap when it comes to 3D design, but the framework's bare-bones tool set and open-ended scripting language offer a great foundation for lo-fi experimentation and artistic constraints.
The story is an attempt to address family/personal trauma without derailing into the more nihilistic, destructive takes that tend to dominate video games - particularly where masculine characters are concerned. Also, there are mysterious entities of unknown origin. What's the point of making a game without mysterious entities?
It's been a long, slow, weird road to get here (development-wise and, well, because the world is ending again), but I'm thrilled to nudge this lil guy out into the world. I'd be so grateful if you swung by for a visit! FWIW I've also set a launch discount of 20% ($4 USD) to sweeten the deal a bit. Windows & MacOS builds are available; Linux on the roadmap!
OK! Thanks for hearing me out, thanks for supporting weird art, thanks to itch.io for sustaining this platform! And if you ever wanna chat about the game or review it or stream it or whatever, please don't hesitate to reach out, here or in my Twitter DMs (@bryinlyin) or via email.
Take care,
<3 bryan/hex