Author: Sarah Northway

Rebuild 3: Main menu art

We’re nearing the start of the Rebuild 3 Kickstarter on October 1st! Here’s a sneak preview of yours truly in the campaign video:

I think I sum up the game nicely: “Rebuild is a game about Rebuildenating. Click on things… and then you win”. I may have had too much sun that day.

One of the art pieces I’ll be showing off in the Rebuild 3 Kickstarter campaign is this illustration Adam did for the main menu:

You can see his process here with this timelapse:

Wallpaper versions: 1920×1200 1920×1080 1680×1050 1440×900 1366×768

September 27, 2013
Going Indie with Sarah Northway

Hardcore Droid invited me to write an article about my rise as an indie game developer for their series on game jobs. In it I talk about education, travel, and my experiences as an indie so far.

I’m an independent game developer. Independent from publishers, independent from bosses, from 9 to 5 work schedules and commutes and possessions and national boundaries. Since I went indie in 2011 I’ve lived in 15 countries and released five games, including the post-apocalyptic strategy series Rebuild.

I know my experience isn’t the norm but if you’re keen to do the same I can tell you the steps I took to get where I am now.

Step 1: Love Games

In 1988 I was 8 years old and saving up for my first big purchase: a NES with a light gun, Duck Hunt and Super Mario Brothers. One afternoon of smushing goombas and I was hooked for a lifetime. Forget TV and books (or God help me, sports or makeup). Give me my video games! In my awkward teens I got deep into the vast open worlds of pc games like Sim City, Civilization, the Elder Scrolls and Might and Magic. Through them I learned how to navigate DOS, connect soundcard drivers and write batch scripts. I loved computers because they were full of little puzzles and let me play games but I knew the games industry was a very exclusive club of brilliant and hard working people. I believed if I was ever lucky enough to become a game developer, that video games would lose their magic and the last thing you’d want to do after working on games all day would be to play one.

I was wrong…

…read the rest on Hardcore Droid

September 7, 2013
Rebuild 3: Kickstarter in October

Rebuild 3 Kickstarter from October 1 to Halloween!
Now that Kickstarter‘s available to us Canadian devs, I’m setting up a crowdfunding campaign for Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville, to help pay for the game’s art and music.

This will be your chance to show support, preorder the game, and get your hands on some exclusive goodies like the Rebuild Board Game (designed by me!). Best of all, this will be a chance to get your name or face in the game and guarantee your place in line as a beta playtester.

Perhaps you have some opinions you’d like to share in this survey?

I’m kind of addicted to funding games through Kickstarter. I love that it helps small teams mass-print awesome board games and film amazing movies. It’s also become a thing to crowd-fund video games since Double Fine opened the floodgates. When it comes down to it, crowdfunding has become a convenient way to preorder games while getting some cool shwag in the process. It’s also a good way for us devs to get the word out and gather a community together. I’ve had a fair bit of success with the Rebuild 3 wiki, but I know there are more people out there who want to be a part of making Rebuild 3.

The campaign will be a lot of work, and there are some hitches (like distributing iOS versions). But I’m excited to be a part of the whole crowdfunding deal. More info soon!

Oh – and here are the results of the second Rebuild 3 survey. The most interesting fact was that of the 58% of people who have Steam accounts, a third of them ONLY buy games that are on Steam. And 37% of the (mostly Kongregate) players said they’d rather pirate than buy it when it comes out. Sounds about average to me. :)

August 30, 2013
Rebuild 3: Plus one Sara

Remember the farm blight that you had to research pesticides to prevent..?

We’re adding another artist to Team Rebuild 3: Sara Gross (aka Two Bit Art). She worked with me last winter on Word Up Dog, my whimsical hiphop spelling game that nobody played and whatever, I know y’all are just here for the zombies.

Sara will be working under direction from me & lead artist Adam Meyer, starting with illustrations for the copious random and not-so-random events of Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville. Here are a few samples from the new game:

Sara’s twerkin bunnies. Will you decide to eat them, or keep them as pets?

It won’t all be bunnies and happyfuntimes I assure you. Yes, there will be blood.

Sara’s best known for unfinished indie games and her beautiful webcomic Menagerie. You can follow Sara on twitter, check out her sweet draws on tumblr and occasionally you can even watch her live while she draws Rebuild 3 characters.

August 27, 2013
Rebuild 3: Genders for Everyone!

It’s a delight every time I add a new piece of Adam’s art to the game. Today the new survivor “coins” got a makeover. In Rebuild: Gangs of Deadsville you’ll be able to start missions by dragging and dropping these little portraits instead of scrolling through the long list of survivors.

After watching the newest edition of Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women in Video Games I am acutely aware of the lack of female characters in the current build. The survivors are a bunch of strong-jawed white dudes right now (well, except that one guy with the face mask), but rest assured there will be diversity.

Adam’s getting started on the women just in time. Here he is sketching one of the possible sets of features and clothes for the new “tall and strong yet still feminine” body:

Next he’ll trace over the whole thing in Illustrator and add color. Like the men, there will be 3 female body types in Rebuild 3: the hungry waif, the buff & curvy, and my personal favorite the “big momma”. No doubt she has the best scavenging skills of the three and I can imagine her kicking ass with some sort of BFG or flamethrower.

August 2, 2013