NOVEMBER 2023

And just like that, December is upon us. No but seriously, did anyone else feel like this November was the shortest month ever?

But you know what doesn't feel short? This update. It's time to look back on everything we accomplished on Tales from Hazelwood Post this month. And what an exciting one it's been too!

Animating The Environment

The very first thing I did at the start of November was learn how to animate in Godot. Why? I had just received the finished illustrations of the environments, and I really wanted to bring them to life.

<span class="p" <the="" animations="" are="" fairly="" subtle,="" but="" if="" you="" look="" closely="" you'll="" notice="" the="" following="" details:<="" span="">• Dust particles drifting gently around inside the Post Office
• Rain, Wind, Snow, or Leaves gently floating to the ground</span>

And something not quite captured by any of these gifs since they move wayyy too slowly to really notice:

• Clouds lazily drifting along in the sky

Small details, but I really think they make the scene even more magical!

It's a long way off, but I cannot wait to get sound effects in this game. Imagine the sound of the rain hitting the glass panes, or the distant twittering of birds. Ahh, a girl can dream :)

And speaking of animations...

The game currently just 'fades to black' every time you open your Post Office in the morning, and close it at the end of each day. It didn't feel right - so I tried my hand at rotoscoping a little sign swinging open and closed! For anyone who doesn't know what rotoscoping is, it's when you record a video then trace over every frame to create an animated version. I covered the process in this Tiktok video, and here's the finished result:

Is it perfect?

Gosh no. In fact it looks super janky in the game... But hey, I'm proud of myself that I gave it a go and learned something new along the way. For now... Back to fade to black!

UI, Visuals, and Shiny New Buttons

The other thing I spent a lot of time focusing on this month was a cohesive UI and 'button style' across the game. Using the colour scheme from the door, I came up with a style I can use across all sorts of buttons, windows, pop-ups and the like.

Separate from the buttons and windows... Are the letters themselves. Each letter in the game will have it's own unique style, and I wanted to share some of those below. From left to right - stacked, flat, and open.

Designing The Logo

Did I save the best part of the update to near-last? YOU BET I DID.

Finalising the game's logo is a big deal for me because a lot of folks have been asking for a Steam page so they can wishlist the game. In fact, your support has been overwhelmingly wonderful, so I've been making getting a page live my priority.

Buuuutttt.... I can't make a Steam page until I finalise some of those core graphics, such as the 'capsule' image, 'banner' image and so on. Which is where the logo comes in!

I've been working with a Ukrainian graphic designer called Serhii Hirylovych (who is also the designer for one of my favourite game logos - Station to Station seriously it's soooo pretty). We've been back and forth a couple of weeks going over a few designs.

From these options:

Although the 'mail bag' and the one with the little bird perched on top of the S were most popular on Tiktok, I decided on the logo in the lower left, because it felt truest to the environment of the game.  The others erred on the side of 'too cozy'. Don't get me wrong, it is a cozy game, I just wanted something that leaned more on the bureaucracy and organisational side of the postal service with a post box, than the 'postal worker on the ground with a bag delivering letters'. If that makes sense. Perhaps yes, perhaps not. But, we moved forward with that design, and the next round of changes was:

Since italic font doesn't show up super well in a Steam capsule, we tried out a few font options, and from this round number 3 was the winner.

Last but not least,

Eeek! SO CUTE. Gosh, can I just have all four logos? Haha. So from here, we picked again, the bottom left. Which brings me to the ✨ the finished logo ✨

As I type this, I'm making those graphics for Steam, and after pushing it through Steam's review process I hope to have a page live soon. Hopefully before the next update.

Advent Calendar Puzzles

Last but absolutely not least, I did a marketing thing! That's right, a couple of months ago one of my wonderful friends, Matt Lui, from the escape room world reached out and asked if I'd like to submit a puzzle for his annual puzzle advent calendar hosted on the Perplexing Doodles and Escape Room Memes Facebook page.

I decided to use the space to make a puzzle set in, and about Tales from Hazelwood Post. I illustrated it myself, so it's closer in style to the prototype demo than the artwork you see here on this website, but the puzzle is hopefully still fun to play.

At the risk of this update becoming an unwieldy wall of text, I'm going to pause there. Honestly, I'm so excited about Tales from Hazelwood Post I could probably keep talking about it for another 50,000 words, but I'll save it for next month when I have something even more exciting to share.

Until then, I hope you have a wonderful December. Oh, and if you have a regular postal worker, and if you feel comfortable, try tell them how much you appreciate them! Gosh only knows how much pressure the holidays put on our postal services ❤️