Hello, and welcome to the Ominous development blog! Whether you’ve arrived from a backlink on Twitter, Reddit, Gamasutra, or some very convoluted rabbit hole on Stack Overflow, welcome. We’ll be here for the next year and a half or so with updates on our upcoming game, Spirit.

Spirit is a 3D puzzle-platforming adventure for PC, which we plan to release in late summer 2018. In Spirit, you’ll wreak [wholesome] havoc as a tiny poltergeist with a penchant for mischief and a mission to rescue helpless ghosts trapped by devious paranormal exterminators.

Though he may be small, Spirit has the special ability to possess many of the objects he comes across, gaining their physical properties. With these newfound powers, you can overcome previously insurmountable obstacles, escape danger in the nick of time, or just goof around while searching for the next challenge. Your ultimate goal is straightforward – work your way through a haunted mansion, from the attic to the basement, freeing the ghosts that have been imprisoned there one by one. Along the way, you’ll discover a whimsical world full of supernatural goings-on, an eccentric cast of characters, and a cavalcade of secrets waiting to be revealed.

We’ll be developing Spirit in Unity, based on a prototype we made with our own custom game engine about a year ago. (If you’re interested, you can view the prototype trailer here.) We made the prototype as a proof-of-concept of sorts, and after garnering some interest, we’ve decided to develop Spirit into a full game.

If you’re wondering who we are, exactly, we’re a three-person team of game developers dedicated to our craft and excited to publish our first (commercial) game. We’re all fourth-year undergrads, together officially since 2015 (though some of us have been kicking around since 2014). Each of us has a different specialty, and will post on here from time to time chronicling our adventures in development and academia. Visit the about page if you’d like to know more or you’re looking to get in touch with anyone on the team.

Throughout the next several months, we’ll be posting updates on our progress with Spirit, as well as some lessons we’ve learned along the way and some general game development know-how. Feel free to contact us with questions, topic suggestions, and spicy memes, if you are so inclined. Some of the subjects you can expect us to cover include:

• Development updates and progress trailers from the team
• Unity tutorials, code examples, and rants courtesy of yours truly
• Photoshop/Maya/Blender tutorials and tips from our artist Josh
• Design sketches and articles written by our designer Owen

And that just about wraps things up. We’re glad to have you here and hope that you’ll stick around as we work on Spirit over the coming year. If you’d like to stay in touch and receive regular updates, be sure to follow us on Twitter and stay tuned for new posts!