Last month, we began a visual journey within Black The Fall's bleak world by sharing with you the latest sneak peeks from The Factory and Into The Dark.

While you might have been familiar with the first two chapters thanks to the trailer and the the myriad of screenshots we have shared this year, the last two will be rather surprising.

This week we present you The Mire. Below are some visual hints of what and whom Black will encounter outside the factory.

Next stop? The City. But until then. IndieDB is looking for the Indie Game of the Year 2016. If you feel like nominating us, just leave a vote here. Thank you!

*** Black The Fall is the communist puzzle game, developed by Sand Sailor Studio and published by Square Enix. It will be released in the first quarter of 2017 on Steam, PS4 and Xbox One, so beware and prepare.

As the story unravels, more and more it's revealed of our distopyan world. These are the latest screenshots of Black The Fall's first two chapters: The Factory & Into The Dark.

The story begins as Black finds the opportunity to escape from the factory and try to run away from the oppressive system. Below are some sneak-peek images of this breaking-out-of-the-factory odyssey.

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There are decades since The Party has forbidden imagination. Wandering minds are dangerous. They create free worlds, they love and disobey. They challenge the status quo and fancy changes.

Anyway, we know you'd rather risk it than submit to The Party, so you've probably already imagined how the world outside The Factory looks like. So did we. And we've created it for Black.

This outside world is much needed in his journey. As a thought prisoner Black has to gradually unlearn how to be a worker and learn how to be a survivor. As he discovers how to cope with his surroundings, he might even take part in revolutions bigger than himself.

Up until now, if you played the demo, watched the trailer, watched a game-play or just stumbled upon Black The Fall screenshots, you must be acquainted with The Factory - the place where Black  worked for the past years and the very subject of his escape. You might have also noticed some darker areas where work is done by machines mainly and shadows are reigning. That's what we call Into The Dark - the unfriendly area that separates the Factory from the outside world.

Now, considering the harsh conditions from the communist factory what should Black expect when getting out? He might have hoped for a colorful happy place, but  the communist reality can only be painted in shades of black.

Black first sees the sky in The Mire. But as he explores the area he'll discover there's only polluted air to breathe and rusty water to drink. Exploited workers and killing machines. Sentinels or guards, their only purpose is to eliminate anyone who doesn't serve The Party anymore.

In a world where humans can't be trusted with empathy, he finds a friend. A robot helper. A pet. Now, his Pet.

 As Black continues his journey of resilience, he reaches The City.

Not that he remembers so much about how it should be. He used to live in a village and to visit the city only once  or twice  a year. However, he can tell that The City has something unsettling about it, it feels strange and more dangerous than anything he's seen until now. Pushed by courage or plain necessity, he continues his journey. And so, he's up for a bitter-sweet discovery.  But that's another story.

We are pretty thrilled about the outside world and The Pet, so can't wait to share more of Black's universe with you soon.

We are very excited to let you know that Black The Fall is fully playable. All puzzles are in place and working, all scenes are set-up, the ending is there – all of it. Black The Fall is alive and kicking! 🎇

We are now pushing for the full Alpha version, due in a month (without deadlines one would still be improving the first playrooms). This means there’s still some work to be done starting with a lot of in-house testing, as we need to scrub it of all obvious bugs, before we call our friends over for an outsider opinion. Nico is our testing queen and she needs a spa week, a city-break or just a break from playing, bug spotting and trying not to fix things on the spot (which would be so unproductive).

By the way, if you happen to be in Bucharest in the following weeks and want to play any parts of it, just drop us a note. We'd love to have you testing it!

Fun fact: Licu actually advised Nico to be bad at it, this way nobody would want her to test. But I guess she can’t go against her nature of being such a merciless observant of what can be improved. 

The game looks great and we're now adding the final communist touches. We're aiming for excellence here - Party's  orders. So we're currently working on:

• Dressing – suitable scenery to render the atmosphere (on our artists’ to-do list Nico, Marius, Andrei and Andreea).

We are closer to our goal, as we planned to launch Black The Fall on PC this autumn. And we’re going for it, full steam ahead!

- The key to a good game is in the game mechanics and puzzles!
- Non, I won't even bother if there isn't a good story.
- Nein, nein, nein, nein! Without a striking atmosphere, there is no game!

Well, I can assure you, one can't go wrong if he considers all aspects, no matter how overwhelming a task this seems.

There are plenty of courses and how-to's on programming, modelling and so many music resources (you wouldn't believe the tens of musicians proactively offering their services). With a bunch of talented people who work hard (during their spare time as well) you can get this covered. It's then a matter of mixing everything into something that makes sense. But from making sense to making something that feels fun and smart for the player, it's a long way. This mostly relies on how one uses the aforementioned means to convey emotion.

This is where game design and storytelling come in play. Besides the game design courses and publications and the ever increasing storytelling learning resources, there is some sort of alchemy when creating an interactive story, such as a video game.

Not sure how the big guys do it, but here's some insights on how an indie game development studio (namely ours) tackles storytelling. Introducing a new character to be more precise.

At some point we promised to our Kickstarter backers that Black (our main character) will be the lucky owner of a pet. So the moment came to decide what do we want from it, how is it relevant and what's the purpose of meaning, of course.

It took roughly 2h and all eight of us to decide his nature and capabilities. And other tens of hours to put on paper the puzzles for him + tens of days to actually build the puzzles in Unity. Anyway, back to the 2h thing. We split in teams of four and so the pet game begun:

Step 1: GO WILD

• Each team has 5 min to put on paper all the ideas that come to mind around Black's type of pet
• Rules: anything goes if it sounds fun.
• The two teams reunite and read everything out loud

At this stage we were rumbling about anything, wondering more in the insects area. Getting inspiration from the real creatures helped us come up with a lot of capabilities and weaknesses. For instance a wasp can fly but it can't swim. However we had no restrictions, in terms of consistency, at this stage.

Step 2: BREAK IT DOWN

• Now each team adds pet properties
• Rules: Anything that applies to any of the pet types previously discussed
• The two teams reunite and read everything out loud

The categories were ranging from How it looks, Strengths, Weaknesses, Weapons (how it attacks), to What Kills It. This time instead of starting from the inspiration animal and moving down to Properties, we would start thinking from the type of property we need and putting on paper anything related that comes up. When it came to merging what the two teams came up with, I took my laptop and opened the Excel to keep track more easily of what's discussed.

NOTE: Ideally, the teams have equal sizes plus one person who moderates everything: keeps track of time, writes down the outcome (merging the lists) and manages the voting process.

Step 3: TOP 5 & TOP 10

• Each team takes 5 min to select only 1 pet type and 10 characteristics/properties out of the entire pool.
• Rules: The properties need to characterize the selected pet types

At this point each person already had a favorite pet type and it was more about building a set of qualities that are suitable for him and were possible to implement by us in the timeline given (we have set strict deadlines for finalizing each game chapter). So we gave up on pets that can fly, because we'd have difficulties on building their navigation and designation. We gave up on the tank robot because we needed a pet with legs, that can stick to a wall. (Somehow, when thinking of the pet, we kept coming up with puzzle ideas too).

Step 4: VOTE & (make it) COUNT

• We take the lists, merge them into one and vote.
• Rules: For the pet type list, each person can assign 0-3 points to each entry, but the total of points added for the entire list, can't be higher than 10. For pet characteristics the numbers are higher (assign 0-3 points, having a total of 20 to assign), as we need to keep 3 out of 10. Each of us votes considering how that type or characteristics fit better the atmosphere and the story.
• We have a winner.
  

At this stage each of us votes, but there is no debate on it. Each person carefully ponders and independently assigns points based on what he thinks is best for the game, it can be better implemented or just what he likes best. In our case it was almost unanimously left out to have our pet crushed or to have him attack with his legs. Not because they were poor characteristics, but because they would rule out better ones (e.g.: if the pet can be crushed, then you can't use it to hold a heavy door, object or Black, himself).

Step 5: CONTEMPLATE

• Cry after the ideas you lost and embrace the winning concept. 
• Start building on that and evaluate plausible use cases
• Sketch a story of how Black encounters the pet, possible adventures together, desired conveyed emotion palette and pet's fate.

Not everyone will be completely happy with what's left on the table, but no idea is to be resurrected, no matter how much someone asks for it. If it was not meant to be, it was not meant to be. However, it's worth mentioning that this is just a concept stage and that during the puzzle development some characteristics might turn out boring, redundant or impossible to implement, so our pet's characteristics were defined during this session, but they sometimes reshaped during puzzle creation, implementation and testing.

As you can see he grew and now he has a personality.

This is how Sand Sailor Studio does a brainstorm when in need to build something from scratch. It's a method that takes some time (to play around) and discipline, but it's definitely worth it as it adds some structure to the creative process, which makes it more efficient in terms of time and desired outcome. Also you have all team members participating equally, regardless of their level of extroversion, avoiding to have everyone focused on that one idea, supported by the loudest.

So, how do YOU brainstorm?
PS: Thanks, Execution Labs, for passing the knowledge along :)