In the Snowy Winter's Wake

Factsheet

Title:
In the Snowy Winter's Wake
By Josh "Cheeseness" Bush
Based in Tasmania, Australia

Release date:
TBC (2020)

Press / Business contact:
contact@winterswake.com

Social:
Twitter (@WintersWakeGame)
Twitter (@IcicleEngine)
Patreon

Description

In the Snowy Winter's Wake is an in-development single verb, text only adventure game with first person mouselook style controls. In it, you play as an adventurer who becomes trapped in a snowy mountain pass. Positional audio and background tinting provide orientation and support a sense of space and atmosphere as you explore and solve puzzles to uncover the valley's mysteries and find your way home.

History

Inception

In the Snowy Winter's Wake began as a project for the 2014 7DFPS game jam, where a much smaller vision of the game was under development. Missing the submission deadline, developer Josh "Cheeseness" Bush expanded the concept and continued development.

Development

Supported by Patreon and freelance work, continued development expanded to encompass a richer vision of the game, with a soundtrack by composer Anton Riehl, sound design by Jasmine Serrano, and a more detailed story with stronger characterisation. Continued development also allowed scope for expanding the game's engine into a reusable tool.

Engine

In the Snowy Winter's Wake uses a custom game engine named the Icicle engine. Icicle allows for similar first person/text adventure hybrid games to be created via a visual interface that requires no programming experience. The engine offers support for mouse, keyboard, and gamepad input, with support for screen readers and VR head mounted displays planned.

Other Icicle games of note:
The Spicy Meatball Saves The Day
Voices of the Past

Images

There are far more images available for In the Snowy Winter's Wake, but these are the ones we felt would be most useful to you. If you have specific requests, please do contact us!

Selected Articles

"The demo is short, but the time spent in this world was charming and deep. This is in part due to the rambling nature of the imagination. I found that stumbling across a waterfall in the forest recalled images that made me feel calm and comforted, in a more profound way than any artist could render. [...] and that’s truly something special."
- Andrew O'Meara, Pop Culture-Y
"Not only is [...] Winter’s Wake an exercise in nostalgia, it’s also breaking new ground by being a ‘first-person text adventure’, blending the mechanics of first person exploration games and text-based storytelling to create a truly unique experience."
- Jess Zammit, Select Start Media
"Mostly though, what it's about is presence. While climbing a snowy mountain, meandering through a sun-dappled forest, or hanging out in a healer's hut, I felt like I was there in spite of the lack of graphics."
- Jody Macgregor, PC Gamer
"As in The Spicy Meatball Saves The Day, the Icicle game engine does a remarkable job of combining first person exploration and text adventure gameplay. Meanwhile, the writing does a great job of fleshing out he game world and the 3D Audio design is superb (headphones recommended). A first person text adventure is a novel concept, but it works very well and is even being developed for VR – which will make for a very interesting experience indeed."
- K J Robertson, Alpha Beta Gamer