Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2022

 

 

Happy holidays from the folks at GameRealmMadness!

Halloween 2021

The spooky season is upon us, and to celebrate this, we have put all our PC games on sale with a hefty price drop

Enjoy the seasonal madness of GameRealmMadness and go grab Area 51 Defense, Kalaban or Enemy Remains with sizeable discount! OR ALL OF THEM!

 

If you want to check out this awesome artwork we made of Area 51 Defense, you can see it here: 'Alien Battlefield' at ArtStation

GameRealmMadness 7th Anniversary

 

GameRealmMadness 7th Anniversary. Some of our works from years 2014-2021. We are celebrating 7th Anniversary of our Team!

 

 

This is real blast from the past! 

We have another collage to represent: 2015 GRM Game Collection

Thank you for all these years. Fan base is as much a part of game development as anything. Join our community on Discord and celebrate with us

 

Join to celebrate with us at our Discord Server

Hello there! News from GRM

 

Ghost Hunting Tools: To seek out the paranormal
Uses Android Phone tri-axis magnetic sensor measured in microtesla to detect and measure electromagnetic frequency (EMF) emissions from paranormal activity
 
Get it for free from Google Play!

 

 

Or buy Ad-Free Pro version for $5 from itch.io

 

Are pests bothering you in your home? Can't you sleep in your cottage in peace? We may have a solution for you: Our latest app is here Bug Buzzer. Check it out!

Intended to repel fleas, mosquitoes, house flies, roaches, mices and rats

Ultrasonic sound waves with frequencies varies between 20 Hertz and 44 kilohertz which insects and animals feel even if they do not hear thus ward off the pests. Bug Buzzer protects not only you but also your family and friends. Remember do not use if there are pets in your house! 

Android required. Works Android 4.0 up to 11. Custom APK installation. Includes Instructions. This version is Ad-Free

 

 

 

A new version of Enemy Remains finally hits Steam:
 

 

 

 

• Added 'Church Road' map for the Hardcore difficulty.
  
• Added 'Mansion Library' map for the Hell difficulty.
  
• Cultist Boss AI fix.
  
• Barrel explosions tweaked.
  
• Sound mixing overhauled.
  
• Mech sounds overhauled.
  
• Added active sound mixing based on distance.
  
• Added Day/Night cycle into the scenes.
  
• Mangler walking sound after death bug fixed.
  
• Survival map one overhauled.
  
• Special gibbing effects added for Mole mutant.
  
• Special gibbing effects added for Mangler.
  

 Read more at Steam:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1478590/view/2992064583856553661

Ghosthunter: New Update 1.3.0.2 Live

Ghost Hunting Tools: To seek out the paranormal
Uses Android Phone tri-axis magnetic sensor measured in microtesla to detect and measure electromagnetic frequency (EMF) emissions from paranormal activity.
 
Get if for free from Google Play!
 

 

Project Update and Steam Sale

 

Howdy!

We have just published the update 0.7.1, which brings many visual overhauls and gameplay enhancements. Especially the early levels and outdoors areas have received drastic improvements, as well as the later industrial maps.






We've also completely overhauled the visuals of one of the basic monsters; Mole Mutants. They're the most plentiful of the foes found in game. They now resemble the kind of grisly horror feel that the game world should convey.

The outdoor areas of maps such as Raven Rock have received a huge update, with more grass, rocks and other detail meshes added in. The world now seems way more lively, and we've tried to keep the level of detail consistent across the levels.

The industrial maps such as the Corruption Plant now have signs, walkways and other visual details added to them. We've wanted to reinforce the lore of this near-our-world place, and its mundane vs. surreal aesthetic.









Especially players who have played the earlier early access versions will notice an immediate difference. The game now has story and narrative points and light RPG mechanics, which were already added in the last major update. We've wanted to offer more value for the players beyond just the basic game.

Some players cried out about the harsh difficulty of our previous gameplay demo, so we also updated the demo to better represent what the retail game will offer. We now feel that the demo is on par with the retail experience, and gives a slice of gameplay, which is unique but accurate.








Since we're in early access development, we're also building brand new stuff for the game. Above is a new hellish church location still in progress. There will be more challengeful maps added to Hardcore and Hell difficulties of the game. This will also entice players to play through the game multiple times.

In Kalaban we felt that there wasn't strong enough incentive for players to put more hours into the game beyond the initial playthrough. This is something that we've tackled with our current game. Enemy Remains is also more difficult, but we've tried to create a fair challenge for the players.








We're currently participating in the Steam Remote Play Together event, and we're offering the game with an excellent 75% discount. If you still haven't acquired the game, now is the perfect chance to get into it.

Please share, play the game, and tell us your thoughts about these recent additions. We're always interested to hear feedback on the things being added, and what people would like to see next.




- Harri J.

New Demo Available

Howdy! During the last few days we've been working on a new playable demo. It features all new maps, not found from the retail version or the previous demo.

This time we've taken special care to answer player feedback about the demo. Some players were confused about the more action-oriented demo that's was on offer. There was confusion about the demo not representing the retail game, visually or gameplay-wise, so we had to take action. 

The new maps have been built from the ground up to be story-oriented, and have the same level of quality as the retail maps. They will also offer a milder challenge compared to the previous demo, which many found to be way too difficult. Players were getting lost, and didn't know how to seek out the Thinker mutant nests and destroy them. This lead to many unwanted frustrations.

Recently added story bits and flavor points will be prominently presented in the new demo. There will be lots of small details to explore, which we found to be great for world-building and atmosphere. The overall story of Enemy Remains will be expanded through this new demo, offering new insight into the characters and the town the game is set in.

All three survival maps from the retail version will also be featured in the demo. Both the story campaign and the survival mode can be played solo or with a friend in couch co-op, just like the retail game. 

The new demo is now available on download at Steam, and in case you run into problems with Continue function from the menu, just hit New Game and start the experience anew. 

Download Enemy Remains - New Demo - Windows - Indie DB

- Harri J.

Watch 'Enemy Remains: Free Demo' Twitch video from Oneak

Dev Diaries: Early Access Plans

Howdy!

It's been almost three weeks since our Early Access launch and we've been really happy about the positive feedback that we've received. Generally, all the players who have actually tried our new title have enjoyed it.

We have already released the first update 0.6.8 and are now working on a larger content update. There is no set release for that yet, but expect it to come online in the upcoming weeks. We're going to update some visuals of the maps, and also add some much wanted story flavor into the experience.

There are still some rough edges in some of the levels, small fixes to be done in the scripting or visual glitches, but these things are easy pickings. We have play-tested Enemy Remains far more than any previous title, maybe even combined! Lot of the obvious bugs were already fixed during the development.

Some players have also asked for light RPG mechanics to be added into the game. These might bring unseen balancing issues, and we would have to test them extensively before pushing them into the update. But it would definitely bring a lot to the gameplay if you could earn experience points, and make your player character faster, or have better accuracy or faster reloading.

One addition that we're definitely planning on adding are the Steam leaderboard scores, as we have talked about publicly on our Discord and with our players. We're still pondering if we're going to implement a visual survival leaderboard into the game itself.

We will also be splitting the current survival mode into Solo Survival and Co-op Survival, with the ability to choose between two players or one. We have others planned, such as a version of couch deathmatch and a competitive couch soccer mode, where you also compete against your friend.

We're still thinking about the inclusion of four player couch survival, since that would take a considerable amount of extra code and testing to implement. This is a chance for all the players to express their thoughts; what would you like to see expanded upon?

There will be a few more maps made for the story campaign too, which will be available for the Hardcore and Hell difficulties. These maps will be more challenging than the standard maps of course. We already have art assets prepared for some of them, and they will be using some themes that are already in the level design. Our environment artist is also working on new additions at the moment.

We would be really happy to include some story content into the existing game as well, and we're mainly thinking about in-game story points that you can discover and collect to read later.

Below you can see our work in progress system for examining these story points:

 

The world still needs a bit of fleshing out, and also an introduction animatic / story sequence might also be a nice addition to the campaign. Also the game could benefit from adding small scripted camera sequences into the levels.

Tell us what you think, and don't forget to review the game too!

- Harri J 

 

 

Enemy Remains: Is now available on Steam

 

 Enemy Remains: Is now available on Steam

 

Enemy Remains is a punishing continuation to Kalaban, offering a blend of intense top-down action and survival horror.Play the game solo or plug in a controller to hop in as a second player in couch co-op! Monsters and fiends won't stand a chance against two players working as one. But sudden death awaits the careless and brash explorer.

 

 

Dev Diaries: Preview Demo

 Howdy! 

During the last two weeks we've been busy, not just with finishing Enemy Remains, the retail version but also the demo version of the game. I think even the fans who have played our pre-alpha test builds will be surprised of what we've created. 

- -

We're opting in to participate into the Steam festival, so we naturally have to have a demo version uploaded and ready too. The event will begin on February 3rd 2021, so we figured that we might as well make the demo public now.

The demo is not just a slice of the early maps seen in Enemy Remains, but three whole new levels created for this preview. The maps originally were left on the cutting room floor, as they did not fit the flow and style of the finished game's presentation. I've re-hauled them, given them a fresh coat of paint, and made sure the gameplay gels better with the retail maps, and I think the results are pretty good. 

Demo maps are a bit more open and featureless than the retail maps, which we have made sure pack a lot of detail. It was a whole lot of fun to make these more old school topdown shooter style like levels.

While we were creating this demo, we also experimented with volumetric fog inside Unity. These modifications to the lighting created some really amazing results, and they really do stand out. The downside is, that this method of lighting is a lot more hardware demanding than what's currently in the retail game. 

After the early access launch we might incorporate the volume fog into the retail game as well, but as an optional graphics setting. We hesitate to even make it part of "Ultra" quality graphics setting, because players usually hate stuff that's "invisible" to the graphics options and tied to some arbitrary level. 

- - 

We originally planned on releasing Enemy Remains in late 2020, which I'm glad that we didn't. These extra two months have given us enough time to fix most of the rough edges and outright bugs. I've put special care into the controller controls, as they tend to be a bit tricky in co-op mode. 

We're using Unity, and the engine has a bad habit of switching joystick inputs between controller 1 and controller 2, which means that we have to register which controller slot is giving input and change the commands based on that. There's a whole lot of tuning to be done to make sure that these controller input is registered properly and results in a right action on-screen. 

What I'm personally looking forward to, is hearing player feedback at large on our game and world that we've created. I would be especially happy to expand the experience with more lore, story bits that you can collect (and would act as in-game collectables), and just refining the in-game worldbuilding. 

A lot of ideas have been incorporated into the game already, like the Manglers, who are not mutants or monsters, but demons. That's why they are immune to fire, and they also have a demonic shield protecting them for a limited time. 

Thinker mutants, the snake-like creatures, on the other hand spit projectiles and they do take damage from fire. And monsters like the giant tree spawn thingy are especially vulnerable to flamethrowers. 

The demo is now available on IndieDB, GameJolt and Steam to download and play. Go join the fun, and don't forget to leave feedback! 


Enemy Remains on Steam


- Harri J. 

Ghosthunter: To seek out the paranormal

 

Ghost Hunting Tools: To seek out the paranormal

Uses Android Phone tri-axis magnetic sensor measured in microtesla to detect and measure electromagnetic frequency (EMF) emissions from paranormal activity.
 
Get if for Free from Google Play!
 
If you have Android 10 or older Android, you will need to install this manually.
Download it from Dropbox.

 

 

Dev diaries: Polishing the game

Howdy, readers! It's been over two months since a proper dev diary, and the planned early access release of our game Enemy Remains is less than four weeks away! 

During our "radio silence" we've been keeping ourselves busy with polishing the game, focusing on the core gameplay and making the experience as fun as possible. The game already had a good basis for a creepy horror shooter back in August, and we've been in re-hauling and refining mode since. In late 2020 we stopped adding new maps into the game, locking the current level set for the early access release.

There is only one more survival map that we gotta add into the upcoming release, but otherwise all the other new scene ideas have been put into the slot after launch. The enemy roster or weapon selection will not change either, and we've just been refining the mechanics for all the foes, adding more use for the existing enemies. Lots of ideas popped into our heads during development, that we just have not had time to implement before. 

There will be a few surprises in the upcoming versions to the people who have tested the previous builds. The difficulty selection in the game now actually works, and there will be serious re-balancing with the levels on higher difficulties. Bosses will also be made tougher, since we were in a hurry just to add them into the previous versions.

Pretty much all of the features that we've talked about here are either already in the game, or are work in progress. We've also added tons of optimization to the levels, working on our own level of detail code trickery. We're getting pretty solid frame rates on our test machines, and we're generally pretty confident about the performance.

Enemy Remains will not be a game like Kalaban, which was purely 2D and ran on every grandmother's desktop computer and laptop. This is a feature-complete 3D game, built from the ground up to feature modern visual effects and physics simulation. There will be particle effects, realtime light and shadows, ragdolls, physics obstacles flying around and tons of action on the screen. 

For a full-on story game I think it's important to get the product running as wide array of systems as you can. But this time we opted to create a fast-paced and frantic action title with Enemy Remains, and that's a genre where players expect to see a lot of fireworks and top notch visuals. 

We've been especially happy to welcome Tuukka Kuusisto (with his artist name 'Arctic Sounds') on board as our new musician. With his help the worlds that we've created have really come to life, and have been accompanied with the fitting mood. Music is really magical in the way that it makes all kinds of new connections in your brain, and further expands the world that's presented on screen. 

Previously we've had placeholder soundtrack in the game that was entirely composed and mixed by myself. Those tracks were pretty shoddy creations, and I'm glad we're getting a real professional to do the final soundtrack. We're also in progress of re-mixing the audio effects, making sure that all the necessary actions can be heard in-game. 

It's always difficult to balance the gunshot sounds, I've found out. You want your weapons and attack effects to sound punchy, but not over-do it by making them too loud or obnoxious. We're not quite there yet, but hopefully will be by the time of the release. 

Our character artist Sean VandenBerge started his work on this game in September 2019. Just think about that! It's incredible how much development time this game has already taken. Enemy Remains started out as a simplistic survival shooter, and I set out to create a 3D game that I could develop and finish by myself. Granted, the early versions we're quite ugly and unappealing, especially compared to the more recent builds.

Pretty soon though I realized that the task ahead was way too big for one man to handle. I was aiming for this kind of "Diablo with guns" feeling with the game, and back then I had no idea in what capacity I would be involving the narrative stuff into it. I looked at the project, and though that the game would end up taking AT LEAST two years from now (summer 2019 back then) if I started implementing quests and friendly NPCs.

Luckily, we got environmental artist Dalton Costa working on the game from early 2020 forward, so the task of building this whole world felt a lot less intimidating. Even with these two key additions to our team, I figured that I'd be better off creating a good, solid exploration shooter game, without heavy story elements. And I figured if the game would come together fast enough, there might even be time to add the story in as we went along.

Like is often the case, developing a game takes a lot longer than you'd expect. I had already predicted that developing a full 3D experience in Unity would take at least twice, if not three times as long as making a 2D game with Clickteam Fusion. Adjusted to Kalaban's development time, that would mean that with all the inventory, quest and story stuff, along with NPCs, we'd have a game ready around the year 2023. 

Making plans for a release that far away just seemed outright silly. I had no idea if I'd even be able to support full-time indie development of this project for a year, let alone four. So we put our heads down and started working on Enemy Remains as a topdown shooter. Now, almost two years later, we're near the early access launch with a game that has its focus in the core gameplay, and is overall a lot more polished experience than frankly anything we've put out before.

I've learned along the way that every little UI element or small interface feature takes a good few rounds of testing in-game, going back, tweaking a few lines of code and fixing stuff. Just adding different, changeable weapon icons might take one whole day by itself! And you gotta add in another day for the art and testing alone. This is what it's like when you're the only programmer working a 3D game. 

There is a plus side to all of this though, being the sole programmer commandeering the ship, and that is having the complete mental picture of the project in your head. If say, main menu does not load the proper scene it's supposed to, and instead just jams in the loading screen, I can pretty much instantly figure out what the problem is.

Or if a boss enemy's death by pistol triggers the right kind of level end sequence, but the same thing doesn't happen if he's gibbed to death. In that case I can also sniff out the bug that's preventing the sequence from commencing properly. All I need to do is a quick troubleshoot, tweak the code, do a round of testing, and the problem is solved! 

For another programmer working on the game these problems might turn into a nightmare of pulling hair out, and bring the coding to an absolute halt. They would have to spend a good chunk of their time trying to debug the program for strange occurences, and maybe eventually figure out the issue in someone else's code. Sure, it does take extra care and time to do everything by myself, but this project has already taught me so much than any programming degree at school ever would. 

I'm not here to learn how to write perfect code, or how to get employed by a company making utility software or database work. I'm here to learn about project management, creative, on-the-fly problem-solving, and ultimately how to become a real game programmer.  

If we're talking about future plans, and what's next, then that's all still pretty much in the air. Naturally we gotta look this launch through first and put our marketing and PR hats on, and change gears from pure game development mode. 

That's the burden of self-publishing and working as a full indie developer. You gotta get your hands dirty with this stuff. Sure, we've been looking around for a publisher during Enemy Remains' development, but none of the candidates have taken us seriously enough, or have had the qualities that we need as a developer. Most of the publishers have just snickered at our games, or have given us cold shoulder in way of saying "looks neat, but there's not really anything we can do for you", or worse yet, have turned out to be literal scam artists.

Maybe in the future, when we've established a larger recognition we can shop around for a serious publisher, that's willing to put the money on the table for actually funding the development. But until that time, we're on our own!

As for continuing in the indie space, I would gladly work with another hard-working and self-driven programmer. The qualities I'm most looking for in possible business partner are; ability and will to figure stuff out by yourself -- and simply doing it.

If you sit around all day dreaming about games that you would create if you had the team, the money, or whatelse, and waiting for a programmer to fall on your lap, then I'm afraid I can't help you. After all, I'm not that talented of a coder myself. I learned how to code and use Unity simply because I wanted to make games. That was motivation enough for me, and it's what has been driving me to learn new stuff in the field since I was a teenager.

At the end of the day, making a polished game is not fun. There is enjoyment to be had when you figure out a more elegant solution to problem you've had, or see your game running much better because of some optimization that you did, but it requires hard work and some serious sitting muscle. 

If you truly want to become a game developer, at some point you gotta get over that "fun" seeking attitude, and just take pleasure in the work itself. It's a point that only a developer can understand. Often times people look at games and think they can be created way more faster and cheaper, than they really are, not seeing the hard work that goes into making a decent product. 

Near the end of the development you get to do some actually fun stuff too - adding "bells and whistles" like it's called in programming or hacker terminology. Once you have a solid game, that runs well, you can start adding features that have no real relation to gameplay - like say; ragdolls. They're there just to add general value and appeal to a product.

Experimenting with physics in Unity has been especially interesting for me, and it's something that you just couldn't do in a full 2D game. The way that things have a mass, speed and momentum, and the way collisions work in a truly 3D environment, that is all fascinating stuff for me. 

The game's store page is live on Steam with "coming soon" status, so you can wishlist it and stay updated for new updates and the upcoming release: 

Enemy Remains on Steam 


- Harri J.