Devil's Bluff

Eerie Origins

Industry trade shows are no stranger to groups of dreamers turning notions on napkins into their next project. Still, when I ventured to Cologne, Germany to help a client pitch a mobile sports title to Rovio, I hardly expected a late-night conversation to turn into my first original IP.

“Why do you like making sports games so much?” he asked casually as we traded war stories over a pint of Kölsch while waiting on our flight home the next morning.

“I wouldn’t say that I do, exactly,” I replied. “People kept asking me to and it turned out I was pretty good at it, so here we are.”

What followed was a conversation about dream projects and infinite budgets that he smartly steered into something much more actionable, saying:

“Sounds awesome. It’s also way out of my budget. What would you make for 10% of that?”

I thought about it for a minute, and what followed was an idea for an old-school game with new-school tech that was a slapstick combo of Survivor, Scooby Doo, and Scream - and thus, Devil’s Bluff was born.

Funded by a combination of his company’s original seed money, a successful Kickstarter campaign, and a surprising influx of cash from Global Top Round’s Game of the Year award, Devil’s Bluff was a sprite-soaked, One-Vs.-Many murder mystery that focused deception, betrayal and good ‘ole-fashioned mayhem to uncover a killer before it was too late.

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Hella Hats

It was a relatively small indie project, so I ended up doing a little bit of everything. If it wasn't art or engineering, I was probably on it. After outlining the original concept, budget, and Kickstarter pitch, I recruited a core team of ten willing to take a chance on what we envisioned (my favorite was finding our lead engineer from our Kickstarter backer pool!) and got to work.

From there, I managed the schedule and stand-ups for the crew, as well as the vast majority of the game and level design, until it was time to assemble a Beta test and unleash our little monster on Steam. Heck, I even built our company website.

The game was crafted in Unity and sported some cool features like cross-platform play between mobile devices, consoles, and personal computers, as well as proximity-based audio, Twitch integration, and an interactive soundtrack from Shovel Knight composer Jake Kauffman that rose and fell based on how close you were to the killer. It was quite a labor of love and a true learning experience. Most importantly, turned out to be a pretty fun game.

Not bad for an idea hatched from a couple beers in a hotel bar, eh?

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Project Highlights

Terrifying Takeaways

Like most small teams, we did the majority of our own QA early on, but when we finally felt ready to open up things to our Kickstarter Backers and other fans who had gotten word of the project, I logged hundreds of hours with them in an effort to compete with, dupe, and eventually kill folks in our little world of "Scooby Clue."

As you might imagine, this had a funny way of making us a family, and thanks to the inclusion of a spectator mode and game lobbies designed to encourage community, I enjoyed many a late-night murder session chatting, laughing, and a competing with my newfound friends.

But if making Devil's Bluff taught me one thing about the horror fans of the Internet, it was that a steady diet of Monster energy drinks, Trollis, and betrayal can lead to some serious shenanigans.

One of my favorite examples of this ilk was when someone started singing what eventually became our unofficial tester theme song. The game featured real-time audio, so when someone started feeling particularly sneaky or evil, lyrics would randomly ring out from the pre-game lobbies to the long, dark hallways of the Crawley Mansion. It was so absurd I had to ask if they made it up, but no. It was very, very real, and they all insisted I give it a listen.

The song?

Rob Cantor's catchy take on the secret life ofac tor/serial killer, Shia LaBeouf. If you've never heard it before, you're welcome - and I'm sorry for getting it stuck in your head: