SEPTEMBER 2023

This article was originally posted on www.talesfromhazelwoodpost.com

Woah! First ever dev blog. How exciting! But wait, I'm getting ahead of myself. I should first introduce myself.

My name is Mairi Spaceship and I'm the Game Designer behind Tales from Hazelwood Post. I'm a solo developer, but I'm also really not because literally none of this * gestures vaguely * would be possible without the help of the folks I'm making it with.

First of all, this whole thing is funded by the Astra Fellowship - a grant and mentorship to support "thinky game" developers. In fact, here we all are on the 2023 cohort! 👇

The Fellowship runs from September to August, and for the first month (this one) I took part in a series of game jams to get the creative cogs whirring.

• A map, around which the gameplay was anchored
• A series of letters to unpack and read, telling the stories of the citizens
• A drag-and-drop mechanic for moving the names onto the map

Since it was just a game jam, I illustrated everything myself - but the coding was done by my brother Silas, who is also the programmer on Tales from Hazelwood Post. I'm sure you'll meet him in the next devlog.

As we head from September into October, I'm deciding between a few big questions on the game:

What will the game be called?

Believe it or not, this game went through a number of names... Delivered, to Dear Friend..., to Penny Black before I settled on Tales from Hazelwood Post. My absolute favourite name the game really nearly almost had was suggested by Lucas Le Slo - Post Romantic Address Disorder. It still makes me smile daily.

So, why Hazelwood Post? I came up with the idea that the central town would be called Hazelwood, to pair nicely with two neighbouring locations - Crow Hollows and Lighthouse Point. This game is all about being in a place both physically and emotionally. Calling it Tales from Hazelwood Post does both those things, it sets up the stories and the sense of place.

Or at least, I hope it does 🤷

...And if it doesn't, please don't tell me. I just bought this domain name lol.

What game engine will the game be made in?

Delivered was built in Unity, but Unity has not been the most popular lately for plenty of reasons, so I'm looking instead to other engines like Godot or Inkle this month.

That's all for September! See you in Spooky season 👋