Tag: Indie Games

Miracle Jam – Winners Announced!

Posted on | by Brad Smith

Miracle Jam – Winners Announced!

Miracle Jam served as a catalyst to encourage the unconventional and deeply personal. We encouraged jammers to explore making personal games as a form of self-therapy and deepening ones understanding of their own psyche. The very first instalment of Miracle Jam wrapped up last weekend. We had over 40 participants from all over the world and a total of 8 games submitted! The jam far exceeded our expectations and we thank all of you for putting time into sharing a little piece of yourself.

Theme

In 48 hours jammers were asked to make “A Love Letter Game”…

“Whatever it is you love most in this world. That thing you hold close to your heart, be it a person, a pet or your favourite game. We would love to see games intended as love letters to that special thing of yours.”

Forget Me Not – Most Beautiful Visual Award

“While there were several nuggets of beautiful visuals in many entries, I would like to give the Beautiful Visual Award to ‘Forget Me Not’ by Elliot Chester and Andreea Mazarianu. Playing through the game got me transported to all of those non-conversations we all have with our pets, where we talk while knowing we will never get an answer back. Yet we find solace in those conversations, sharing our worries and frustrations. Trying to communicate that when we leave, we will come back. Cause isn’t that the most heartbreaking feeling, leaving your pet while not being able to make them understand we will return. This game is simplest yet perfect little homage to our beloved pets. And that feel of simplicity is only strenghtend by the beautiful visuals provided. Showing us that with a few well placed lines you can get your point across. The choice of using a watercolour art style is well thought out and goes hand in hand with the theme of the game. The blinking animation and falling petals are nice touches that make the game feel complete. This game made me smile. As a sidenote to the artist: I do hope you explores this art style more as I believe it is definite proof of your skill.” – Camille Carpentier

Them: Companions – Accessibility Award & Spin Tingling Audio

“Whilst many games entered into the Miracle Jam were accessible in a range of admirable ways, I’d like to give the accessibility award to Them: Companions, the personal love letter to our companion pets by Illien Alizée. The clear & contrasting gameplay elements as well as clear sans serif fonts create a visually very accessible game. The persistent and clearly presented control scheme and HUD alongside generous balancing ensure the tightly balanced experience is widely accessible. And finally the alternative input scheme gives flexibility to players with mobility impairments.”- Joe Kinglake

“The Spine Tingling Audio Award will have to go to Illien Alizée’s “Them: Companions”. We had multiple entries with beautifully composed sountracks but Them: Companions was the only game that painted a full soundscape covering every single gameplay element with accurately designed sound effects. From the footsteps to the eerie ambience, from the ghastly whispers to the cute jingle when you rescue all pets, the sound of this game truly is spine-tingling, and the fact that Illien designed it all herself just makes it extra special.” – Enrico Ercole

Homeward Bound – Most Heartfelt Game

“Homeward Bound by Kaitlin Haughton and Gina Loughlin has a special place in my heart. Not only did all the judges reacted strongly to the ending with a very genuine emotional response on Enrico’s live stream, but it’s a wonderfully complete entry for the time that was given. This was an entry I shared with my sisters and mother which they adored. This led to nostalgic conversations about our own old dogs and reminiscing of fond memories. Homeward Bound is relatable and touches on a genuine part of the human experience. The game very balanced visually and very well executed with little bugs. There’s so much potential for further depth in the gameplay here, I’d love to see this developed into a full release. I love the choice of green that’s used and its audio really helps establish a pleasant outdoorsy mood that feels like a walk in the park. The world needs more games like this!” – Brad Smith

Entries

We adored all of the entries in their own way. All of your games will have a special place in Miracle Tea history. The personal expression that individuals were willing to share was deeply meaningful and encouraging to see. You can play and follow teams from all of the games submitted for Miracle Jam #1 below:

Honourable Mention

Shout out to The Tower of Memories team and their commitment and drive! It was great to see you so active within the game jammers voice chat over the weekend and we look forward to seeing more of all of your work in the future!

Thank you!

A goal with Miracle Jam was to create a wholesome community offering a safe space for struggling creatives to express and share themselves however they see fit. This goal is already starting to emerge and we’re excited by what this space will one day grow into.

Thank you to all the jammers that participated in Miracle Jam for sharing a little part of themselves to the world. Shout out to our judges for giving us their support and time. Make sure to give Joe, Camille and Enrico a follow and send them some love for helping us out!

Look out for more events from us in the future. We’re still very new to all of this and we learnt so much from organising this event as a result. If you have any suggestions on how we could improve the jam feel free to reach out to us in our commune.

– Miracle Tea

A Miracle Tea Game Jam!

Posted on | by Brad Smith

A Miracle Tea Game Jam!

We’re hosting a game jam online for the first time on Friday 13th –  Sunday 15th November 2020. We have a bunch of Ruya related prizes that we’re going to give away to entries that are selected by our wonderful list of industry judges.

Miracle Jam serves as a catalyst to encourage the unconventional and deeply personal. If you have something to express that you feel you can’t express anywhere else. This is the place to do so. We applaud and encourage personal games as a form of self-therapy and deepening ones understanding of their own psyche.

You can find more information about Miracle Jam on on itch.io.

Participants can also join our Discord where the theme will be announced. A handful of developers, artists and other creative types are hanging out there as your read this so come have a chin wiggle. Don’t be shy, and if you are you’ll fit right in!

– Brad

Miracle Tea’s Game Design Philosophy

Posted on | by Brad Smith

Miracle Tea’s Game Design Philosophy

I’m going to talk about some of the things that we consider important when developing games. If you want to know more about our process and what’s important to us, this is the place! Our design philosophy has matured a lot with time and no doubt will continue to. Often, learning something new forces the introduction or emphasis of a new idea. Hopefully this offers you some useful insight into the thinking behind a Miracle Tea game.

Pursue deep work

We want our games to say something. To mean something to someone and feel meaningful. To be real and honest and authentic and personal. To reflect the human experience. To question how someone thinks. To be memorable. Even if it’s just one person that takes any of this away from our games, that’s all that really matters us.

Design around emotions

When designing, we prioritise the emotional response above all else. It’s arguably the most important thing. All the matters is how our players feel, once we know what emotions we want to create, we start studying and prototyping ways of achieving that. The very best game designers are those that know how to juggle all different types of emotional responses. Knowing which ones complement each other and which ones leave a bitter taste to send players on an emotional roller coaster ride.

Design by subtraction

We’re try to get to the essence of our idea throughout development. Often, that means adding components just to take them away. Anything that doesn’t compliment or support the core is usually not needed. Embracing the removal of content that doesn’t reflect the essence can sometimes be tough and discouraging. We’ve found though, that embracing this gets us closer to that thing we’re trying to communicate with much more elegance and grace. We’ll go into more detail about core pillars in design in a more fleshed out post in the future, so look out for that!

Treat players with respect

We imagine our players to be forward thinking open minded and intelligent individuals with their own thoughts. We try to not pander or come off condescending. We try not to hand hold and to let players discover things for themselves. We try to make them feel special and let them know that we made this game just for them.

Design for accessibility

We work to find creative ways to allow for our games to be played by as many different people and play styles as possible. If this means including dyslexic fonts, colour blind settings and controller remapping, we’ll strive to do it!

Embrace limitations

We’re a very small team, it’s important to remind ourselves of this fact. A part of that territory means we have to be wary of our capabilities in what it is we make. Embracing our limitations often results in creative solutions to solving problems. Though, we’re not shy about pushing something as far as we possibly can – especially in terms of design!

Be open to feedback

It’s useful to listen to people’s suggestions. Though, sometimes this can throw a curve ball of confusion into the vision of what you’re trying to say which can be paralysing. It’s most useful when it comes usability. We take on board feedback, digest, interpret and meditate on it before we ever act. Acting too quickly isn’t always productive for us. If you listened and acted on everyone’s feedback, you’d never get anything done and you’ll never have work that is interesting or that pushes evolves the video game medium forward.

Show don’t tell

We try to communicate ideas with visuals rather than overtly making things obvious or defining the gist to them. Meaning we don’t report on a character feeling shy or cute, we show this through their actions! This is the key to rousing players emotions allowing them to step into someone’s shoes and experience their feelings.

“If it’s a good movie, the sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of what was going on.” -Alfred Hitchcock

Scaffold Teaching

In our games, we don’t like to bombard our players with many ideas or visual elements at once. Doing so can feel overwhelming and cause confusion. Confusion leads to frustration. Frustrations leads to immersion being broken. Immersion being broken leads to people walking away. We break our gameplay/visuals down into chunks and gradually introduce more components overtime. This is especially true when it comes to tutorialising.

Time is precious

Time is all we have. It’s a real treat to have people devoting their time into something you’ve made. When you consider the ethical ramifications of making games, you quickly realise how much of an impact you could potentially have. Your creation could be played by thousands if not millions of people in its lifetime. That time is precious. If the position of a button takes a fraction of a second longer to load or it’s hard to find, that will ultimately add up to hours of wasted time for humanity that could’ve been spent elsewhere.

Personal health over work

We want to make video games well into the later stages of our life. This means that we need to learn to sustain ourselves over a long period of time. We’re in this for the long haul. Whenever work is too much, we take the time we need to recover. This is very important. We’ve pushed ourselves to the point of knowing where our limits our and whenever we teeter on that, we reign it in. Our projects take as long as they need. As a result, we’re happier and healthier and still making games.

Stay grounded and let go of your ego

Having an inflated ego is a killer a deal breaker and often a real turn off. The moment I start thinking I know it all or have the answers I try to tap into the part of me that is observing myself to consider why I’m saying what I’m saying. Freud called it the superego. Usually it’s tied to wanting to one up someone in some hypothetical game or competition I’ve made up in my head. Ultimately, it’s seeking for approval or gratification. Acting on that makes me realise it’s just an extension of my insecurities and believing it stunts my growth. It feels redundant and unproductive and surface level. Being grounded through self-awareness is a trait I really admire in people.

Go outside, observe people and nature

Spending all day indoors hunched over a PC staring at a screen that’s spewing radiation into your face can sometimes feel very soul draining and inhuman. No matter how much we love making and playing video games, we try to stay balanced by hanging out in nature, touching soil and exploring the world. Having down time and switch off is an important part of the creative process as it tends to supplement deep work.

Having a design philosophy, especially if you’re pursuing creative work, is vital. It lays the foundations of intent in your work and opens the doors of potential in the pursuit of goals with greater purpose. It’s something that all game developers who are starting out should work to define. You’d be surprised at how many developers never seem to consider this kind of stuff or just shrug off its value. At first, it perhaps doesn’t really matter what your design philosophy is, so long as you have one. All that matters is that you’re thinking about why you’re doing what you’re doing and what’s important to you as a person.