Announcing Project Art Thief

Hey there! It's lovely to have you here, welcome. 👋

In this occasional newsletter I'll keep you updated on the games I make. Currently I'm focusing on Project Art Thief (working title).

Project Art Thief??

Yes! I'll get right on with the announcement then, shall I? *ahem*

Project Art Thief (PAT) is a third-person stealth game where you'll get to wander around the beautiful museums of a european city, map their weak spots, and sneak in and out unseen to replace pieces of art.

"Replace"? Yes. You see, you've discovered that your late grandma was an art forger! In an effort to save your family name, you decide to swap back the real works she stole with the forgeries she left hanging in the museums. Whether grandma's ghost has something to say about that remains to be seen...

Inspired by some of my favorite stealth games like Hitman and Splinter Cell, I wanted to take a more lighthearted, non-violent route, and explore a different side of the genre that is typically headlined by bearded soldier men.

I'm currently developing the prototype for PAT with funding from the Creative Industries Fund, which I'm very excited about! Currently it's all gray boxes while I work on the gameplay, but I'll have more to share soon.

If you're curious about said gray boxes already, here are a few tweets from development so far (click the tweets to see the videos):

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

The past year I have learned so much more about #gamedev coding than I thought I would, being an artist with a barely-passing grade in math. Today, I wrote a 'patrol route' extension to my wandering NPC script that moves a character through a list of waypoints and back again 😍

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

More games need secret passages, so while prototyping my next game I'm making sure to sprinkle some in #gamedev #projectartthief

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

Folks, sometimes, you should read the manual. I've been debugging Sensor Toolkit for half an hour, turns out it was in part caused by a setting I did not know I needed to adjust. You live, you learn. But hey, now you can hide from people! #gamedev

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

I may have made the throwables too powerful... #gamedev

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

Had to blow a bit of dust off this project, but I'm back working on #projectartthief today 🎉Easing back in by prototyping a tagging system - every good stealth game needs one! I'll have more news to share on this project soon 👀 #gamedev #stealthgame

Tim Hengeveld @timhengeveld

Yesterday I played Stray on this thing, today I'm play(test)ing my own game! Surprised by how easy it was to get a Windows build out of Unity into Steamworks and onto my @OnDeck. It looks great! Also runs great (I have the Deck capped to 40fps but the game runs at 100+) #gamedev

As I said, I'll have more to show later this year. I'm also working on a proper website and presskit and everything, so I'll let you know when all of that will start appearing,

NEXT TIME,

on Hedgefield's Gamedev Updates.

See you then! 👋

-Tim

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