Project Description:

Alone in the woods, Lumi is surrounded by sinister shadow monsters and a mysterious creature locked in a cage. Lumi's only hope to escape the woods of Hallowtide lies in the delicate friend-yet-foe relationship of the creature in the cage. Harness Lumi's ability to gather and craft resources while keeping the lantern lit to ward off the swarming shadow monsters. Inspired by Survival Horror games like Don't Starve and the timeless autumnal aesthetic of Over the Garden Wall, Hallowtide embodies the familiar mechanics of the Survival Horror Genre while also offering a unique experience to spooky game lovers everywhere.

For this project I led a team of 12 developers through each step of the pre-production and production pipelines. We spent the majority of September testing mechanic design and layering gameplay until we finally created an iteration of our core gameplay loop that felt satisfying to play. At the end of September, we moved into creating alpha builds and eventually pushed our first beta build in early October. Prior to publishing, I worked closely with Jazz Jackson and Arlo Ptolemy to fine-tune our puzzle mechanics in addition to thoroughly playtesting and adjusting our overall user experience with Dylan Steen. Publishing this game was an extremely rewarding experience that was further amplified by our extremely successful showcase at the PIGSquad’s 2021 Halloween Horror Games Marathon on October 31st, 2021.

Collaborators:

Dylan Steen, Brandon Hedden, Dave Sabrowski, Ransom Reed, Jazz Jackson, Arlo Ptolemy, Jei Shi, Dillon Gohl, Tanner Gohl, Keegan Walden, Joel Clapp