#rerun studios

Happy Holidays everyone! You may have noticed that we have been silent for a while now. Our game production course has come to a close and our team is currently enjoying time off! Unfortunately we were unable to release our game's demo version by the end of the course due to some unexpected bugs. We will see what happens once we get back from our holidays...

My name is Tari and I am a sound designer. My specialities are making foley and sound effects (SFX) for movies and games. What is foley and how does it differ from SFX? Foley is recreating sounds that an actor or a game character does. These can be footsteps or moving clothing. Usually foley artists make sounds live with the moving pictures and practice actor movement. SFX are sounds that are really hard to make again live. These can be sounds like gun shots, vehicles or an earthquake.

I decided to study sound design after one game that I played in high school. That game was Amnesia: Dark Decent. Amnesia was one of the best horror games that I had played and what made it so different from other horror games was its dark ambiance. Every SFX and foley sound backed up the story, music and graphics. I usually didn’t check end credits, but I wanted to find out who was behind all these sounds. It surprised me that one of the makers was a Finnish guy named Tapio Liukkonen. Tapio was a foley artist for Amnesia and after this finding I sought myself into a movie and sound school in Outokumpu.

Now I have studied sounds for about 5 years and have made foley and SFX for over 20 short movies and 4 games. I have even met Tapio Liukkonen. The first time was in a foley lecture where he asked a question his teacher had asked him. “If a man drinks from a bottle in the middle of a desert, what kind of sound do you have to make to tell the viewers that the drink is poisoned?” This question can help to understand sound designing greatly.

Hi everyone!

So I am Sanna and I decided to be a programmer in this project. Actually I have been interested in programming for a while and my eagerness to learn it was the reason why I wanted to take this course. I didn’t have that much experience to begin with and I have to admit that it has been a pretty demanding job to learn while working. Gladly we have had help from our teachers and the Internet offers a lot of information about programming and game design. If you are interested in starting game programming I would recommend to try finding information from Youtube or Unity’s answer page. Although most of the time you can’t just copy a code and use it on your script as it is. Usually you have to change the scripts somehow first.

(This is what our animations’ interactions looked like at one point.)

Now that our project’s demo version is almost done, I have to say that I have enjoyed doing my part a lot. Programming is like a puzzle, it isn’t enough that you have all the pieces, you also have to know how you put them together to make the picture whole. When you stare at your computer screen for five hours, you start to feel dizzy and at the end of the day you might also have an incipient headache, but somehow programming just has this way of sucking you and stay interested.

I am actually amazed how much we have evolved as individuals but also as a group. There are of course things that we could do better and learn more about but all in all we all knew that this course was going to be too short to make a complete version of the game, but I am already very proud of what we have achieved.

Hello, I’m Sara and I’m in charge of the game design, primarily what kind of levels our game ‘Memory of Light’ has.

At the beginning of our school project I was given the role of game designer. I have no prior experience in that area whatsoever so at first I was skeptical and a little worried of what I could possibly come up within eight weeks (the duration of our game design course). But I decided to try anyway.

At first I started doodling some possible level designs for the first level by hand after we wrote the story and looks for the first level with Jere, our screenwriter. Since it’s a forest level, I already knew for sure how it begins but I had problems with the rest of the level. What assets are there? How does the character move? Will there be other characters? How can I build it so that it would be enjoyable to play? In the end I came up with the idea you’ll see when you try the demo and I’m quite pleased how it turned out, even if I say so myself.

I’ve already designed the second level (one that unfortunately won’t be included in the demo) so there is possibly more to come in the future. And maybe a few levels more ;)

(This picture is from one of the very first level tests with our character set on a concept art background. Now everything looks quite different.)

This project has given me an opportunity to try out new things and take me out of my comfort zone. It has been rewarding to work as a team, even though I usually like to work alone. I’ve learned a lot, for example how to effectively work as a team and how communication is the key in everything we do. I work closely with Jere so we both have a vision how this game will turn out in the end.

I was the annoying little sister who insisted to play the games her big sister played so that’s how my gamergirl life begun. I love video games very much and I couldn’t imagine my life without them, so it has been a dream come true to try and experiment different aspects of making a video game of our own. Also it has helped a lot that I’ve played lots of different kinds of games so I’m not exactly out of the forest (haha, did chu get it?) when it comes to level design.

And finally I want to point out that our team has done a lot of work for this game. Even though it’s just a demo for now you can still expect beautiful graphics and wonderful music on your journey to the Temple of Light.

Hello! My name is Jere and I’m working as a screenwriter in our game studio Rerun Studios. I’ve been working mainly on the game’s story, script and level design together with our game designer. The script for our studio’s first videogame Memory of Light has been in works for a couple of months and now it’s really close to being completed.

It has been interesting and educational to work on a videogame script for the very first time. I haven’t been a huge fan of the fantasy genre but I’ve found so much enjoyment from creating a new interesting world and a background story for it. Our major influences for the game’s story are Inca mythology, Finnish fictional characters called Moomins and many pieces of entertainment inside the fantasy genre.

Working on a platform-puzzle game like Memory of Light has been a pleasure for me because I’m a fan of games that include platform and puzzle elements. I’m glad that this game is small-scaled and very simple to work on from the screenwriter’s point of view. Although at first it was difficult to find the main formula on how to write the game-script, now the writing process has turned much easier.

(This is a drawing I made of our main character.)

The script for any kind of videogame has to include all the basic things and elements that the finished game will feature. The game script includes for example the descriptions of all levels, graphics, sounds and puzzles, all possible dialogues or monologues and lists of assets that help the rest of the game development team on their work. Everything is of course mainly in text-form but concept art and pictures always help to perceive the detailed text.

My journey on writing the videogame Memory of Light has been wild in a good way. It might have felt like every workday has rolled within the same formula, but working with our awesome team it has never been boring. My work has been creating something new and modifying it with other people and their great ideas. After this project I can only imagine if I would get a chance to work on writing a bigger game in the future. That could be something else but it still would be a learning experience in script writing. Just like how this project has been all along.

Hi everyone! I’m Siiri, the one who’s in charge of Rerun Studios’ marketing.

When I first chose my role in marketing I didn’t know much about online marketing. I had an idea of what my job would include, yes, but I had no prior experience in making a brand image and therefore this project has been very experimental and instructive for me.

(Fun fact: These little images of our team members are drawn by me!)

During this project, I’ve had the opportunity to see our members’ progress in their own work. One thing I’ve held important is documenting everyone’s work and making sure to name the members in our photos on Instagram, etc. Since this is our chance to show off our individual skills, I don’t want anyone to be left unnamed and unseen! Still, there are some areas I’ve yet to document. Our sound and graphics teams’ work is easy for me to document as you can hear and see the results of their work right away, but it’s a lot harder to think of what kind of content I could make of our project management team’s work, for example. More than anything this is a chance for me to learn more and I’m sure I will figure it all out soon enough!

All that said, our project hasn’t been a particularly easy one to market. As you may know, we don’t have any finished product to advertise since our game Memory of Light is still underway. This has made my job as an inexperienced marketing representative a little challenging as I have to be careful with my words; even our team can’t be 100% sure that our game demo will come out in time completely perfected even if we try our best to reach that goal!

One particular thing I’ve come to understand is why companies hire people to specifically take care of their social media accounts nowadays. As most of us use social media daily, it can seem a little strange especially to us young people. Anyone can make content on social media and it’s fast and easy! However, in this role I’ve learnt is that making content on social media isn’t just fun and games when you’re not making content only for yourself but a group of 12 people. You have to be sure your content both represents your group and is interesting to the viewer. I’ve definitely changed my view on online marketing and the people behind it!

(These are some of the very first logo sketches I made for Rerun Studios.)

All in all, our project has so far been a great chance for me to learn more about online marketing and creating a brand image on social media. It has been both fun and challenging, and I know I can only get better from here!

-Siiri

(Psst, if you’d like to support my work in this project, make sure to follow us on our other social medias! They include:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RerunStudios/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rerunstudios/

Hey! I’m Ada and I’m the third member of our game’s graphics team. It has been very pleasant to work with this group. I have learnt a lot of new stuff about making a video game. I’ve done many different things such as drawing smaller assets, designing characters and animating.

(I also did some logo designing.)

Drawing has always been an important hobby for me, a part of self-expression and just a way to kill time in the middle of a boring moment so this kind of job can be fun but also hard due to my self-criticism. I had a long break from doing digital art before this project so the beginning felt a little harsh but you only learn by doing! And so it started to get neater and smoother.

(A sketch of the forest creatures with the main character)

I’ve always been interested in video games as well and I draw my attention to the atmosphere. Our game has a very nice, dark and dreamlike ambience. Lastly, for me it’s important to feel as comfortable as possible while working, so for example I grab some coffee, wear comfy clothes, drink water, listen to relaxing and inspirational music, take a break once in a while and drink more water (stay hydrated!) to keep up the good vibes. Other important things are to ask for help if needed and get a good night's sleep! :)