Hello again!
I can’t believe it’s already time for the second quarterly update of 2025! Development has been zooming along on Hello Again. Let’s dive in!
The Galaxies Showcase
Hello Again was featured in the “Galaxies Showcase” on Apr 17, which was a massive marketing boon. Appearing in showcases like this helps us spread the word about the game to players and streamers alike. Huge shoutout to Hello Again’s publisher, Tiny Dragon Games, for making this moment come together.
To fill our 45 second slot in the showcase, we worked together with a production company to create a professionally-produced trailer for the game. Check it out below:
Did you like the music in the trailer? Then you’ll love this next announcement…
Welcome Michael Darling, Hello Again’s Official Composer
For the first few years of development, all of Hello Again’s music was written by me, Dwight Davis. However, since I’m also the game’s artist, programmer, writer, designer, UI artist, animator, sound designer, etc—I decided a while ago that I should find somebody more experienced (and available) to take over music duties.
Jump cut to a sunny day last summer, when me and my friend/coworker Michael were hanging out at a renaissance fair, airing our life woes. I was sad because a musician who I was hoping would write for Hello Again ended up not being available. Michael was wanting to pursue creative work outside of his 9-to-5, but was too exhausted from being a full-time game programmer to also spearhead a side project on his own. We started chatting about Michael’s extensive past career as a full-time musician, and suddenly the puzzle pieces started snapping together. We quickly started figuring out the details so that Michael could come on board as Hello Again’s official composer.
As we’ve been laying the administrative groundwork for our partnership, Michael has been chipping away at a number of tracks for the game. For many musicians it would be difficult to compose for a game like Hello Again, which wraps silly dialogue, cartoonish visuals, ancient mysteries, and complex emotional baggage into a bizarre time loop. However, Michael instantly grasped the game’s identity, and has translated its themes and elements into sonic packages that far exceed my previous musical offerings.
Below is a WIP snippet of one of the tracks that Michael has been developing. I love how this track balances sticky melodies with a calm, contemplative atmosphere.
Michael is a genius with chord progressions, transitions, and finding ways to balance repetition with novelty. I can’t wait for you all to hear the other tracks he’s cooking up! In the meantime, search up Michael Darling on your streaming app of choice and give a listen to his backlog. “Coffee”, “Somebody”, and “Straight” are my personal faves :)
Artwork
So far this year, I’ve focused much of my time on building out the visuals of the game’s world. This was largely because I wanted to show off a variety of neat environments in the trailer. Below are a handful of brand new areas, alongside some old locales that I’ve recently spruced up:
I also overhauled the artwork inside the game’s journal menu to have a more colorful, abstract style.
New Feature: The Snapshots Menu
Hello Again’s puzzles sometimes require you to keep track of various details, such as numbers and symbols and instructions. In puzzle games of this genre, players often have no choice but to write clues in a physical notebook to keep everything straight. Although physical note-taking can be fun, it shouldn’t be a requirement for all players. After all, not everyone has particularly legible handwriting!
Hello Again’s snapshots menu will bypass this problem by automatically snapping a photo of any important clues that you find and saving them to an easily-accessible album, meaning the information you need is always just a button press away. These snapshots can be pulled up at any time and will display over-top of whatever you’re doing—so if you need to reference a clue mid-dialogue, you won’t need to exit the conversation, open a menu, find the clue, and then talk to the person again. No matter where you are and what you’re doing, you can always look at your snapshots.
If only all puzzle games made life this easy (looking at you, Blue Prince 😉).
The snapshots menu is one of the 5 support tools I’ve built that will make Hello Again the least frustrating puzzle game you’ve ever played:
Snapshots Menu — Catalogues visual clues, like notes, drawings, inscriptions, and murals.
Journal Menu — Catalogues the descriptions and locations of loose ends that need to be resolved, such as a mysterious key or a locked door.
Objectives Menu — Catalogues your current mission(s) so that you can remember what you’re doing (especially if you haven’t played in a few weeks).
Hints Menu — Provides optional hints for journal entries or objectives which range from “spoiler-free” to “full-spoiler”, allowing you to get only as much of a nudge as you want.
Clock Menu — Allows you to easily skip through time, and logs time-based events in a handy timeline.
(BONUS) Good Puzzle Design — Hello Again’s puzzles are difficult and satisfying, but don’t require unfair leaps in logic like many point-and-click adventure games of years past.
“Ugh!” you might say. “This all sounds too handhold-y! I don’t want menus or hints—and I love physical note-taking!” That’s totally fair. For players like this, I hope to create difficulty modes which disable some or all of these features, allowing puzzle veterans to get the most satisfying detective experience possible without having to sort through a bunch of menus they’ll never use. My goal is to make Hello Again fun and stress-free for players of all stripes, not just for hardcore investigators with impeccable handwriting.
Closing
Stay tuned for more updates later this summer! In the meantime, I’m happy to report that morale is high, progress is steady, and lots of exciting things are around the bend!
Thanks,
-Dwight