Sanity of Morris will launch Tuesday three weeks from now, on the 23rd of march.

We’re already seeing awesome reaction from streamers and YouTubers with sneak-peek footage, delving into Sanity of Morris, theorizing, detectiving and enjoying the thrilling story.

This is how the launch day will look like:

There will be a developer commentary stream RIGHT HERE on Steam. We’ll play through parts of the game, and give insight on how Sanity of Morris was designed. 16:00 GMT / 09:00 PDT is a great time to tune in, when the game goes live. But we’ll let the stream run for a while, so you can check in when you’re awake and/or not at work/school. 😉

Our publisher, StickyLock Games will be holding a Steamy Giveaway of no less then 30 Steam Giftcards. Info is on their channels, so be sure to follow them to stay tuned to the specifics!
https://www.facebook.com/StickyLockGames
https://twitter.com/StickyLockGames
https://www.instagram.com/stickylockgames/
They’ll announce the giveaway winners at the Virtual Launch Party later that day. 18:00 GMT / 11:00 PDT.

If you can help share the message around on Launchday, that would be awesome!

As always, feel welcome to join our discord and chat about games, VR, and whatnot!
http://discord.gg/5RMEKf6

Stay hidden, find your father.

So how are you supposed to find your father?

Sanity of Morris has a unique gameplay element where your flashlight reveals hidden messages left by your father, that has mysteriously gone missing.
In the game, footprints, secret messages and hints light up when you shine your flashlight over them.

But be careful, because your enemies are all around you, and if they spot either you or you waving your flashlight around, they’ll find and kill you.

This gives Sanity of Morris it’s ]unique balancing between wanting to find clues, evidence and leads, while risking your life.

We’ve been working on a new piece of hand-painted artwork to illustrate John’s search, trying to solve the mystery of the strange plants that seem to grow around the lake where his father lives.
So what’s happening in Greenlake? Why did his father call him over, and then disappear off the face of the earth?

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Join the Stickylock Discord Channel[t.co] for updates on the games, and any Giveaway actions!

Stay hidden, find your father.

With major gameplay falling in place, puzzle designs being tested and levels that start to look spooky, the time has come for us to finish writing the script.
Alterego Games LOVES to work with voice actors. We did it for True tales of Bloodstreet 13, we did it for Woven, we're doing it for Sanity of Morris and will probably always invest the extra time and effort to get voice actors on the team. It's why we were extra happy when Sanity of Morris was chosen to be highlighted by the Imagine Film festival, for it's narrative and cinematic quality.


The background story of the game was written a long time ago. We love to have a worldbuilder's approach to game design. Creating a world with a logical history and order of events first, so level design, prop design, game design and coders all work off the same bases. It makes for coherent storytelling.
A lot of the backstory is revealed within the collectable objects, taking you along for the ride.

The script we've been working on this week has nothing to do with that. Rather then focusing on history or why this building has this or that name, John has other things on his mind. He's driving home to meet up with his father, who has left him a strange and paranoid message via voicemail. His father won't pick up the phone ever since, and that's why John is making the long drive home.
Spoilers: Things don't go as planned. Before John knows it, he's up to his ankles in trouble.

We've the honor to work with talented people. One of them is Voice Arts award-winning voice actor Rex Anderson for the role of John Morris. Let me tell you - he does an awesome job in conveying John's bouts of terror.
These are the last weeks we have to edit the script, because once it is recorded, things are set in stone. Adding Rex's work to our development build of the game will instantly bring the game from feeling 50% to 90% completed and we can't wait!


A lot of the script from the alpha demo has been rewritten by now, but the alpha is still very much in the direction we're going for, so if you hadn't had the time yet, go play the demo here on Steam!

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Stay hidden, find your father.

World dressing; making designed-yet-empty levels look good. This is where the talents of our Lord Art Director come into play (yes, that is his behind the scenes title). One of our founder, game-dev, and main worlddresser; Vincent da Silva, has been spending looooooots of his time making the world look pretty scary, pretty well.

In the past few months our 3D team has been working hard at creating the 3D assets of the world. Guns, flashlights, guys with mask, chairs, skulls, you name it. As a small team, we don't have unlimited time or resources to do this, so we have to think smartly with what we can make. Making sure the worlds will have lots of interesting stuff to look out, while also ensuring our 3D guys and galls make it to launchday alive.
With the help of our concept artists, some pretty awesome stuff has created. But that's just the start.

As a wiseguy once said "A crop of letuce, tomatoes and a cucumber do not a salad make". The 3D models are ready, but they aren't yet a level. It's how they are placed in the world where the magic happens; It's all in the dressing.

The design for the first level was pretty much done, as large parts of it are included in the alpha demo here on Steam. But the second and third level are easily four times as big, so there's lots to be done, as every object is hand-placed. Check the screenshot above! Imagine placing each discarded paper and each floor-crawling man-strangling vine.

Where has John gotten into? Curious yet?ːsteammockingː

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So, you have to stay hidden, but how, and why?

Well, for the why you'll have to play the game, but rest assured, the game will give you ample reason not to be seen..

Early on in the development of Sanity of Morris, we said we wanted to do conflict-avoidance as a game mechanic. Hiding behind objects, with enemies patrolling around actively searching for movement and visual confirmation.
We gave the baddies a gun.
We gave the player a flashlight.
And there is where things got interesting.

See it's easy ducking into an airduct (you'll be doing that) hiding behind a desk (that too) or corpses of the ones who have gone before you (just saying...).
But as most of the game will be in dark rooms where the electical work is on the dodgy side of things, you will want want to use your flashlight to see where you are going.

But if you can see where you are going.... so can they.
Turning on and off your flashlight will make the difference between life and death.

This week we've set up several rooms. We have been placing obstacles around the level and seeing how avoiding multiple enemies will work for the player. Our gamedesigners are testing these designs on our coders and artists, as usually is the case in this stage of development.
We are looking forward to testing our designs with players or devs from other companies in the near future. But it's sure been an interesting week with some great progress.

Want to know more? Just ask in the comments!
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Stay hidden, find your father.


For our developers, this week has been all about drinking Coffee and creating Controller support . While the artdepartment is making some pretty cool promotional art, our coders are sweating to make sure Sanity of Morris plays as awesomely with a controller as it does with mouse and keyboard.

It's actually a lot of work. Not only coding the input, making sure all (or atleast most) devices are recocnized but also making sure all tutorials are correct across different platforms.
We did a lot of this stuff for Woven aswell, but in the end it often still boils down to coding a lot of things four times.

It seems to be working quite nicely with even the menu's being controller-proof and console friendly now!

Also, there now is a Y-Axis inverse option! This was a many many many times requested feature for Woven. As young developers, we didn't have the budget to add it in after the game was done, and not the experience to include it in the first place.
But, as turns out, small boys grow big and in Sanity of Morris this feature will be included from the getgo!

Now we can finaly get to testing our puzzle designs, which will be next weeks topic!

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Stay hidden, find your father.

This week we've been working on stitching the levels of Sanity of Morris together. (Pardon the knitting metaphore, old habbits...)

Sanity of Morris is a game aiming to give you several nights of thilling terror and intriguing plot developments. We're planning three seperate levels each with their own game mechanics, style, flavour perspective of the story.

As you might see in our screenshots, these area's have very distinct flavours. We knew from the very start of gamedesign that we wanted to to this, make the three levels and story told within, very distinct from eachother.
Doing so is one of the (hidden) core features of the game. You'll get why once you end up in level two .

One of the difficulities we had, was how to bridge these environments, and how John, our main character is going to cope with the change of scenery.

To make this as fitting as possible, we had to shift quite some parts of the level around this week.
As a player, these are aspects to development you'll probably never see. You encounter the world map as it is and there's little to indicate it was ever any differen.
But during our design sessions, some MAJOR locations got shifted around quite a lot untill we were satisfied it made sense.

This week saw the conclusion of that process as transitions between the levels are now in place. An exciting development for the team, as we can now play (and test) the game from A to Z, see where content is missing, or lacking the quality we think it needs.
Who knows, we might be on the lookout for alpha testers soon.


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We also updated the storepage. You like it? Leave a comment!

"Stay hidden, find your father."

Right. So we're hiding, and finding our father. That makes sense.
What do we do in the meantime? Well....
We get scared and pick up a bunch of stuff!

We already spoke about Collectibles in our blog about the Journal feature.
But one might ask 'is this stuff just for the achievement-buffs' ?

No!
(and yes!). We'll elaborate.

First off. Yes! Of course there will be achievements in the game. And seeing as how we're hiding all our special files, unique pictures and audio tapes throughout the level at the WORST find-able locations, of course we'll reward you with achievements for having found them all.
We'll make cool artwork to go with the achievements (because... hey.. we think that's cool) and make sure there is lots of challenge in it for you.

And no, the collectible-game mechanic isn't just a ten out of ten fetch-quest. Together, the collectibles tell a big part of the backstory in the game. A file you find might tell you more about your father's divorce, while a picture hidden away in box might contain the sketch of a secret government project. For those who have played the demo might already have found the audio tapes with Hank's soothing tones rambling about his old-man concerns.

The collectibles are all extra's that add to the story. Someone who found them will have a unique perspective of things, but we're making sure the story will be enjoyable (and hella scary) whether you're a hidden object hunter or not.

Check the alpha demo out for yourself, there's already seven hidden collectibles to unlock!

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Stay Hidden, find your father.

About staying hidden. In Sanity of Morris, being chased by bad-guys with guns is one of the first-minute plot-twists this game has to offer. There are people in Greenlake that don't want you around, and all you carry around is your journal and a flashlight. Life is like a box of chocolates and you have to run!

This week we've been working hard on the AI of the bad-guys. That's right, you won't just encounter these guys in the cinematics, but they'll be actively looking for you in the game as well. You don't have anything to fight them so staying hidden is important. Three elements of the AI we've been working on:

There always is that certain challenge when programming an AI. These guys are hellbent on taking you down, but as a developer, you want to player to have at least some chance of making it to the end of the game. You have to balance making them nasty and smart, but not too smart.
If you are hiding behind the corner, but you are waiving your flashlight around, it would be pretty dumb if they didn't see you.

Also, the AI needs to be robust (meaning that we're testing the sh*t out of it). In the game there will be doors you'll be able to close, paths you'll be able to block, and objects you're able to hide behind.
But with moving objects like that, you have to make sure the AI doesn't by accident gets x-ray vision and spots you behind a solid wall (or door) just because it wasn't there a minute ago. Sounds straightforward, but trust, you have to teach these guys everything. From taking their first steps, to pummeling down players.
They grow up so fast.

It's not only important to make sure the player can be in a safe spot, but also to have him or her know it is so. Player feedback is important. We're combining sound with audio-lines and visual effects to make sure the player knows when Jonathan is seen, but also when he still has that chance to get away if he's quick about it.

Creating an AI that offers fun and intricate gameplay is always a fun challenge, and one that only gets better and better with player feedback.

Want to see the bad guy's we're talking about? You might spot them in the demo on Steam! Don't forget to wish-list the game and follow us for more updates!