CAGES (Short Surreal Horror) Now in production.

Currently finishing up pre-production for my next short film CAGES. Hope to be shooting in a months time.

MANTRA – Episode One OUT NOW!

Mantra is now available to play on the browser, and as a download for Windows 64bit & 32bit. Play online at gamejolt and newgrounds.

PLAY ON BROWSER

(Windows Download + Android)

(Play Online + Win Download)

(Play Online)

(Play Online)

(Windows & Android Download)

(News & Updates)

 

“MANTRA” TRAILER & Early Access!

Above is the first trailer for my new episodic, point and click, survival horror game.

I am currently uploading the first episode to sites such as Gamejolt and itch.io and letting a select few people gain early access to the game (contact me if you are a promoter, blogger, Let’s Play, or some other PR site that wants to gain early access). The world wide release for PC, Mobile, and Browser will follow shortly after. If you want to be notified upon the official release please subscribe to our news letter here (CLICK ME)

In the mean time follow us on

FACEBOOK

TWITTER & INSTAGRAM @darkforestmedia

Master Toad – “Survival Horror” digital Album Review

First Review for the new Master Toad Album! Many Thanks! 🙂

The Noise Beneath The Snow

Survival Horror – Master Toad

Master Toad; not exactly a name one might think to be typically synonymous with dark ambient music.  But then again, an album capable of serving as a soundtrack to the closing of dusk and a 3-D view of the AM clouds isn’t typical either.  Either way, Survival Horror is just as effective.

Master Toad is the project of dark ambient/drone composer Justin Thomas Squires.  Survival Horror is the fourth full-length album and “serves as an homage to classic survival horror games such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill and Amnesia among others.”  In addition to four full-length releases, Master Toad has also released three EPs and two split albums.

Right away, I thought of the Cryo-Chamber label.  By now, everyone knows how much I love that label so I could end the review now.  But…… I won’t.

Master Toad creates an environment with rapidly flowing…

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New eBook. Spirits of Depression (Poems and Photography)

I put together a dark poetry and photography compilation in this straight forward .pdf ebook. Most the poems are old, the photography is more recent.

READ ONLINE HERE

PURCHASE .PDF HERE

New Short Film “Damp Air”

Some video I shot in last nights fog. Testing out the Super Takumar 50mm 1.4 and the Tamron 28mm 2.5 in low light with the Canon 550d. I used warp stabilizer and it did some whacky effects on some shots, but I left it. Kind of looks cool.

VIDEO DEMO FOR MANTRA

So after getting balls deep into development with MANTRA:The Forbidden Scroll using the TWINE engine, I decided to switch over to Construct 2 so that I can publish the game directly to mobile devices as well as browser. So it’s back to ground zero. I made a video that demonstrates what the game plays like on the TWINE engine. It kind of spoils the first part of episode one, but I wanted to show people just how far you can push this engine that is primarily built for text based games. I have yet to see some one create a multimedia TWINE of this caliber. It bums me out that I wont be using TWINE anymore just becuase I thought this would be a pretty groundbreaking TWINE game, but I have to monetize this project right away, and I can’t do that without getting the first episode on all the mobile markets. So anyway, here is the video.

I hope to have the first episode out by Q1.

New Music Video

I recently finished a new music video for my own band Abducted.

ABDUCTED – I See The World from Dark Forest Media on Vimeo.

Dev Blog#3: Battle System DEMO

After alot of research, I discovered all the coding I needed to create a turn based battle system for my next twine game. So for the past day I have been putting together a demo of a multimedia turn based battle using png, gif, jpg, image mapping, randomization codes, time codes, you name it. But the final result is pretty cool. This demo is a little laggy since the image files are hosted on photobucket. I imagine having everything on one server may solve that issue. This was a great step forward and allows me to create something pretty unique.

PLAY DEMO HERE

Another cool thing to note:

It took relatively few passages to make this, thanks to the randomization codes and the timer codes.

 

DEV DIARY#2: Battle System

After some snooping around I finally found a code that allows for a random action every time a twine passage loads.

<<set $dice to random(0,1)>>\
<<if $dice is 0>><<set $health -=25>>You have been ATTACKED!<</if>>
<<if $dice is 1>>Moose!<</if>>

Using this code, I can make an enemy randomly use an attack and take away from the players health. Not just one attack either, I can create a list of attacks with different damage to be used at random.

In a weird way this has created a sort of AI function with twine. The battles will be more genuine like an actual video game. Depending on what the enemy does at random, will determine the players course of action. It will be turn based as well. So when enemy attacks (or doesn’t) what will the player do? Attack? Use a healing item?  ect.

This code makes battle within twine possible which is exciting because I almost abandoned the idea. Before this discovery I was going to have one battle per episode, since I would literally have to create a series of passages for every possible scenario or action that the player would choose. That would have been WAYYYYYY to much work. Below is a sample of the code in action.

TRY THE SAMPLE HERE