Progress on Ravenhill

What has been happening at Ravenhill in 2024?

Hey everyone!
I hope you’ve had a very Merry Christmas and are enjoying your holidays! 🎄

First off, I’d like to apologize for not writing this newsletter for sooooooooo long 😅 I was quite busy this year and had some events in my personal life (most recently getting a job teaching for an online school).

I’m also happy to report that despite being busy, I’ve still been working on “What Was Found at Ravenhill” as well as some other exciting projects over the year, and I’m still hoping to get a demo of Ravenhill out soon!

If you’re following me on social media, you’ve probably seen a bit of what I’m going to share with you today, but I’ll also be sharing some behind the scenes stuff that I’m only going to talk about here.

Ravenhill Sneak-peak

The first exciting thing I’d like to talk about is something that happened recently… I shared an exclusive 1min long clip of actual gameplay from “What Was Found at Ravenhill“ in Carterplays “Nancy Drew Late Night Show”! In case you missed it, the video is up on YouTube and you can see exclusive look at the timestamp 27:13

Character Voices Revealed

Did you watch the exclusive sneak-peak and wonder who the voice actors were? Well, I’m pleased to announce that I can reveal them to you today!

First up is the amazing talent behind Robin, the amateur detective and main character… Mallory Flory!

And playing Clark Edwards, the owner of Ravenhill Mansion, is none other than Huw Miller from Nancy Drew Walkthroughs!

A few people managed to guess it was him, so if that was you, well done!

Adventures in Antiques

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about working on my game is making all the different old props you can see in the mansion. From old light fittings to desks, I’m modeling them all from scratch since I want a unique experience when exploring Ravenhill. Here are three props I shared a little while ago on Instagram:

Be sure to follow me there if you’d like to see more small posts like these.

Location, Location, Location

While working on the models in the game is really fun, over the past year I’ve mostly been working on non-visual parts of my game, like planning the layout and figuring out how I’m going to code certain things. You know, the boring stuff. However, I did also finish planning out every single location I need to make.

To do this, I used a flow chart tool so I can keep track of all the scenes I need to make and the way they all connect together in the game. Here’s what that looks like:

Yikes! Yes, all those shapes represent the scenes you can walk through! I really want lots for you to be able to explore, so you won’t only be visiting Ravenhill in this game…

Speaking of scenes and locations, I just shared an exclusive “monthly members-only” behind the scenes break down blog post on my Ko-fi page, all about how I build 3D scenes:

Ko-fi Page

Oh yes, my Ko-fi page!
Working on games takes a lot of time, and at the moment I’m making this game in my free time.

My dream is to be able to make games full time, but until then I decided to set up a way that I can get direct support that will help with the development of my game, such as affording hardware and voice actors.

I didn’t want to just ask for donations without giving anything in return either, so on my Ko-fi page there’s a number of ways to support me from buying digital items from my shop to unlocking exclusive behind the scenes content. 🎁

I’ll also be posting monthly exclusive content on my Ko-fi page for anyone who donates any amount once off, as well as store discounts and longer exclusive posts, like the one I mentioned above, for people who choose a monthly subscription.

AND that’s just the beginning! I have a lot of plans to offer more exclusive rewards later next year, directly tied to Ravenhill!

Please don’t feel obligated to donate, but if your able, I’d highly appreciate it since I’m currently trying to afford a new laptop to help with working on games.

Finally, there is also something I’m offering for FREE to everyone now that I finally have a place you can download them… The Nancy Drew desktop and phone wallpapers I made last year!

You can find them HERE, just click the post and then click the icon in the top right of each image to download them!

Until Next Year!

Thank you so much for subscribing to this newsletter and showing interest in my projects. One of the biggest rewards is seeing everyone’s comments and reactions to what I make.

Sorry again for not writing in so long, I can’t wait to share more with you next year!

…but until then, I hope you have a great rest of your year, and a very happy New years!

Cameron - Distant Dimensions