We Create Stuff blog

The time has arrived. It was not easy, but after nonstop work in the past weeks I’m thrilled to announce that Nightmare House 2 is officially out!
You can download it from our new official website nh2.wecreatestuff.com or check the mirrors.

That’s a good opportunity to thank the team who helped me raising this perfectionist’s project. It was a long challenging journey and I doubt I’d finish this alone. It’s been my pleasure working with you guys.

Nightmare House 2 is a free, horror-themed first-person-shooter game, and the direct successor of the first classic horror map pack “Nightmare House”. Nightmare House 2 started booting up in around 2007, two years after the first game came out. Development has been through many phases, resulting in scrapping a few of the first concepts in early development phases. And finally, you can now play it.

Hey everyone, we’re glad to announce you can now play Echoes: Operation Stranglehold (Act 1) on Echoesgame.com . Here’s a mirror for Echoes: Operation Stranglehold on Armor Games!

Echoes is an action-strategy game. It’s set in an extensive universe on a torn Earth almost three-hundred years in the future. It joins the famous Real Time Strategy genre with many elements from the Third Person Shooter genre, in a side-scrolling environment.

If you need help playing Echoes, you can hit our forums right here. Echoes: Operation Stranglehold is also on Facebook, in case you wanna follow the series and its next games.

Stay tuned for Act II

I hate to disappoint, the fans and myself, but as you can see we didn’t made it to the June release.
Of course it’s not meaning that Nightmare House 2 has been pushed back, being on hold, or anything like that, we’re still working very hard on making Nightmare House 2 great.

Right now for every week we delay NH2 it’s quality boosts up by another 10%, and we’re very close to 100%.

So as an apology for not releasing yet, here’s a bit of more media while you guys wait:

These screenshots are from the first, third, and fourth level, they are from the final version of the maps, which is already completed.
Also included are a few “new” screenshots of old areas, now with final lighting and color correction!

So once again, IT’S COMING.

Also, make sure to check the NH2 forums, here Forums.wecreatestuff.com and ask me stupid questions in the “A thread about NH2’s progress” thread!

On a funnier note – more and more people come to me and say how much the Nightmare House 2 logo is a copy of the game “Uncharted 2″ logo.
I can’t blame them of course, just look at it!

For my defense I can say that I’ve made the Nightmare House 2 logo more then a year before Uncharted 1 even came out, using a free public font called Base02.
Same goes for the Left 4 Dead logo.

Now that we’ve cleared that out… Have you guys noticed how much Nightmare House 2 is a copy of F.E.A.R?… I mean, it has a spooky girl in it!

Hey guys! Me and my team are still working hard on Nightmare House 2, but we’re happy to say it’s just around the corner. I might sound like a broken record by now, saying how close it is to release, but I can say this: The whole game is fully playable from start to end and almost everything is in. We’re polishing, fixing and adding last few features to sharpen things out. It’ll be out this May, worst case June.

With that said, we know you’re eager to play it already, so we’ve prepared one last teaser before the launch. It’s right below, have fun! You can download the trailer at 720p from http://nh2.wecreatestuff.com . Speaking of which, the new website will be up just before we release the game.

P.s I’d say, for the first time, you get a glimpse about Nightmare House’s storyline. Nightmare House 2 is the direct successor of the first classic horror map pack I released back in 2005. We spent a lot of time developing a deep story with a lot to explore, I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as we did making it

Hey guys, working hard here! I know you all got the impression that Nightmare House 2 will be out before 2010 but I doubt that will happen. Let me assure you, Nightmare House is close to be done, and I’m going to polish it as much as I can before giving it to the rest of the world.

So for now I’d say the release date is Q1 2010.

Now for a bit of media update! This will probably be one of the last before Nightmare House 2 will come out.

(Note – these screenshots are not final, and I am still working on adding more visual elements such as fog, color correction, lighting, and so on to make the final version of the maps look A LOT creepier.)
As you can see I’ve decided to show a bit more then just areas, without spoiling anything too much, I hope. That’s it for now.

PS- If you guys have any question, want to follow the progress from a closer perspective, or just talk with me you can visit the “Nightmare House 2 progress thread”.

PPS – A lot of people are asking me what are the game’s requirements, although I said it a lot, Nightmare House will require Half-Life 2: Episode 2 only, and will come with a remake of the remake that doesn’t require Counter Strike: Source.

PPPS – New website coming soon.

Progress is going good here. We’re at about 80% done, and it’s looking sharp!
Here’s a wallpaper Pedro (a friend and team member) made yesterday. The cool thing about this one is that it’s an in-game screenshot, no photoshop editing whatsoever

I found this screenshot so awesome, I just packed it for all resolutions and decided to throw it out here. Without telling too much about the storyline, it might look familiar to those who played the first Nightmare House and its remake.

Nightmare House 2 wallpaper

- Click here to download

Some of you may have noticed the date on the Echoes website. It says the first Act of Echoes is scheduled for Q3 2009… And, it’s also past September, meaning we’re in Q4.

We’ve already said that in the forums: Echoes is slightly delayed and will be released in this final quarter of the year (Q4 2009). Trust us, it is better this way. We’re a bunch of perfectionists, and we want our final product to be precisely as designed. This probably doesn’t mean anything to you yet, but I can assure you it will make all of the difference, eventually.

The good news is we’ve got some new Echoes media for you guys. Remember the awesome poster Axel made, before the website officially came online? Axel made a desktop version of it, for all the resolutions. Click to download.

I also captured in-game screenshots from the development. Here:

Echoes development screenshot #1 - Combat Mode, Dem in action selecting some units.

Echoes development screenshot #2 - Basic base up, purchasing some Combat Marines from the Unit Station.

Keep in mind some things seen here may change. Like the fog of war on the minimap, and Combat Mode’s ability icons. Axel’s touch is everything!

Hola!

Since this is my first blog post here, I just want to start off with a few words about myself. I’m Axel, and I do pretty much all of the graphics for Echoes. And the animation. And a bit of game design. I’m a twenty-something, from Stockholm, Sweden. I love music, photography, creating visuals, I love to write, cook, play the drums, create music, and many other things. Started an engineer program in Media Technology at KTH in Stockholm a week ago. But enough about me! (for further info, head to the ‘about’ section – coming soon)

I thought I’d say a few words about the building pods, an important (and really cool) element in Echoes. Here’s how they work – you select which building you want to construct and a location where you want to build it. Mother Earth (the huge temple ship hovering above you) then receives the data, and drops a pod with non-human precision on your desired location. It continues by unfolding, it builds using rapid construction technology, and voila – you have a building, readyto be used!

Just hearing about it and seeing a screenshot may not be enough to make your arm hair rise, but take my word for it – its awesome. Stay tuned!

Echoes pods (click to enlarge)

/Axel

Hey ladies, Hen here.

Recently I’ve been getting more and more emails and forum posts, asking about what’s up with Nightmare House 2, how the progress is doing and whether it’s still in development at all.

I understand your worries completely, especially because the current website is very, VERY outdated. Well, not anymore. First of all, a new website, full of fresh new info and media is being worked on, and will be up in the following weeks.

Until then, regarding the progress of the mod, I have a little surprise for all Nightmare House fans: We just put up a new temporary minisite for the mod, with a brand new HD trailer of NH2 at its best. It shows a lot of the stuff you may encounter in NH2, so I’m waiting to read theories!

Go watch it here:  nh2.wecreatestuff.com Change your pants and come back.

Nightmare House 2 official trailer

FAQ

Q. Damn it Hen, when’s the mod gonna be released?
A. I don’t want to promise any dates. The current progress indicates the release of the mod will be around Q4. I’ll update you guys otherwise. Speaking of which, if you’re interested in the development, follow it on: Twitter, Facebook, the official forums, and… this blog!

As a final note for this post, I’d like to thank again to all of you guys for expanding the ideas thread. It helped me a lot, even beyond just ideas – it was and still is a motivation fuel for me.
Cheers!

The website of Echoes, our upcoming Flash game, is finally up at echoesgame.com !

We filled it with a lot of information – regarding the universe and story of Echoes, a dedicated media page and a blog page to keep up with everything posted here. We will update the site occasionally and release more details and media about Echoes soon.

Echoes

It was designed by Axel, who is also the lead artist & animator in Echoes and is working very close with me on the game. I can’t help but love his style, it fits Echoes perfectly! Special thanks goes to the guys at SmartWD for the coding help and organizing the server-side stuff!

• Hit this link to get to the new website