Bromlebass

Short answer: we had no idea! Even though we were optimistic (we naturally love the concept ourselves!), we pressed the green button, crossed our fingers & had a beer.

Hei Petter, and thanks for asking :)

1. Thats right! TG 2011 was soo early in the process, during our studies and just after we had transferred from our own engine to Unity3D. That feels like forever ago, probably because it is. Since then it's been an absurdly awesome ride! The first big leap happend last summer, when we published the first in-game teaser. None of us managed to concentrate at all for a week after the resulting hype! But it really reinforced our feeling that we were doing something right with Among the Sleep, and reinforced our initial motivation to work with! If you are isolated it's hard seeing the project with fresh eyes, but with all the attention from the outside, you start seing what they see, and it becomes much easier!

2. For us it's a really long list of reasons! In a way it feels like the logical endpoint of helplessness in horror. There are at least two times in everyone's lives when we have been authentically scared - and that’s while we are dreaming and when we were children. Among the Sleep combines the two, which we think constitutes an interesting premise. It provides huge amounts of creative freedom, which is both challenging and liberating, but still allows us to explore what actually evokes this fear and confusion in the child! Another aspect of our motivation to work on Among the Sleep is a wish to create things unlike anything we've seen before. We think the medium is in grave need of more diversity, something we would love to contribute towards.

3. We've been experimenting with it, and it seems like a perfect fit! Not only would it be awesome for really seeing yourself as the child, but you can even simulate the child's distance between the eyes - actually warping the perspective into what a child sees! (this is not only placing the camera closer to the ground). Unfortunately, it takes some time to implement properly though. We won't do it unless we can commit to it 100%, so it will be the first stretch goal of our kickstarter.

GDC was really great, we even got to talk to some idols like ThatGameCompany, Giant Sparrow and NextLevelGames! I heard Volant had a great TG as well, was great fun hearing about his success in the rendered graphics competition :)

We do want the player to feel like they are the child, and not that they are merely observing some other child. But at the same time, we realize that we are making a game for adults and not a baby-simulator. I.e. we are not aiming for hyperrealism in the way we depict a child’s perspective at all.

On the other hand! We have been in touch with people of competence within the field of child psychology and development, as well as reading lots of books/research ourselves. In addition we have numerous nephews and nieces that have been patient (and unknowing) research objects. We've even had our own recording sessions like this one!

But even though this research have provided a lot of inspiration and context, we deal with adult interest, motivation and fear to drive the experience itself.

I think the biggest hurdle was our lack of experience. We started working on Among the Sleep as part of our study, and continued working on it straight out of school! As a result, we've spent a lot of time down paths that was ultimately wasted work. Luckily it's now one and a half year since we graduated, so we've learnt our fair share the hard way. The last year we've seen some amazing progress, and we've learnt to always iterate on our process.

Tacos! (Now we seem really harmonized externally guys!)