Joshua Mateer

4/2/2022

At Foray Games, we've finally decided to start making more of an impact on social media! It's the twenty-first century, I guess it's about time we did that. If you don't follow our Twitter and Instagram accounts, you should! We're definitely about to pop off soon with some fantastic content. We plan to divide content into six major categories:

• Promo: focused on promoting our own games and experiences
• Sharing Experiences: focused on engaging with the community and hearing their thoughts
• Getting Feedback: focused on getting feedback from the community to make our games better
• Spotlight: gives another indie dev some chance in the spotlight
• Exposure: reacting to content from a larger publisher
• About us: Show off some of the talented developers here at Foray!

Our main strategies will revolve around posting three times a day starting on April 10 and continuing for the next two weeks. Keep a look out for our very active schedule, coming your way soon!

PS: here's our full calendar, right click and open in new tab to view the full thing:

Joshua Mateer

3/22/2022

Here at Foray Games, we've realized something: Games are pretty awesome. We mean it! More and more people are turning to games in these times, which we think is really great. Unfortunately, that also means that people aren't going out as much, aren't taking as many risks, which leads to people missing out on some really important key events. The drop in social aptitude and rise in loneliness, is linked to the rise of smartphones and social media being easily accessed by students and young people. How can we combat this 'lonelieness epidemic?' We here at Foray Games, we believe the answer is... more games!

"But Foray," I hear you saying. "You just said that games were causing people to become isolated. Why would your games be any different?" Well, I'm so glad you asked. Here at Foray Games, we want people to overcome their loneliness, get outside, and meet more friends. So we are trying hard to create games that every one can enjoy while also focuding on multiplayer experiences, such as our signature build-your-own escape rooms or our upcoming online escape rooms, inspired by the wildly popular Jackbox games. We want to get people together by pushing people to look at each other and talk, rather than just talk through voice chat or something similar. Puzzles require sharing information and discussing strategies, so this helps you to meet friends and help young people to grow their personal social skills.

Games, especially tabletop games like 7 Wonders (shown above) have been proven to bring people together and help with depression and loneliness. Here at Foray Games, we want to incorporate aspects of these games into fun, unique experiences which anyone can enjoy. We're hard at work analyzing why different games make people so happy and what we can do to help with the rampant loneliness that is going around.

Joshua Mateer

3/15/2022

Picture this: you're a young professional looking for a way to spend your free time. The other games you've tried seem too easy, or don't offer enough exploration to suit your interests. You need a game that stimulates your brain without making you want to break a controller. Also, you want to get your friends involved, but most companies don’t have many good options for playing games with friends: it’s mostly either online battle-royale type games or solo-focused story games. Why can’t it be both?

At Foray Studios, we know that games are always more fun when you play with a group of friends. That’s why we’re hard at work revolutionizing the escape room genre of games. Our latest release, Jewel Heist, is the world’s first fully portable, replayable escape room. Small enough to fit in a backpack, Jewel Heist allows players to turn any room into an escape room game, and with 25 unique puzzles to solve with a variety of difficulties, you’re sure to not run out of things to do anytime soon. It uses the infinite arrangements of the pentomino style of puzzles (think Tetris but with five squares instead of four) to create puzzles with a similar premise but never the same result. It can be played with any number of players with multiple paths and ways to find the solution to each and every puzzle.

If you’re more into computer games, then Foray has got you covered in that aspect as well. Our upcoming game, Gravitas, promises a vast open world, multiple paths, exploration-based platforming and combat, and multiple playable characters. If you’re into any of these things, make sure to follow my social media if you want to learn more about this project as it develops!

Joshua Mateer

2/13/2022

Doing the Social Conversation Check made me realize how many different resources are available for people interesting in pursuing a career in game design, with many people posting opportunities for jobs, ideas, artwork commissions, commentaries on different mechanics or character designs, or just thoughts on companies in general.

One thing I learned from this exercise was what each social media platform thinks of game design. Facebook primarily treats game design as an opportunity to advertise your own work. Designers like Defy Reality Entertainment mainly use Facebook to advertise their Youtube channel and share game design progress updates. LinkedIn, like most things on LinkedIn, is mainly for finding careers in game design. Unlike a lot of platforms, LinkedIn views game design as an actual field and encourages developers to join projects or larger corporations. Instagram is probably the least interesting social media platform to investigate game design. Since the site is mainly limited to pictures, most people tend to engage the topic of game design by posting pictures of art assets or concept art, with the occasional shameless plug for a new indie game. (nothing wrong with that :P). I personally really hate TikTok, but decided to see what this platform had to offer in terms of game design. Unlike nearly every other platform I looked at, this platform wasn’t really for sharing your own games or assets, but sharing opinions on the game industry, such as this video. One of the main appeals of TikTok is that you don’t have to be an expert in your field in order to become popular, which is very clear here. Most of the videos I watched are people with no experience in designing talking about why different aspects of game design are horrible. Maybe it’s better to leave discussions like this to people who know what they’re talking about. Speaking of people that usually don’t know what they’re talking about, I looked at Twitter next. A lot of people had your typical “popular game bad" or “unpopular game good" posts, but I found this very interesting post exploring the concept of accessibility in video games. This is a topic which is often hard to do correctly but is becoming a thing which more and more developers are striving for. A very interesting read which I would highly recommend if you have the time. Finally, there’s Youtube, which I personally thought had the most helpful resources for designers. Channels such as Brackeys have incredible tutorials on all aspects of game engines to check out, and channels such as Design Doc have really great insights into what makes games fun to play, fight, and explore.

Overall, I learned a lot from this experience and hope to put some of the practices, especially some of the tutorials from Youtube on the technical skills required, as well as some overall design tips. One design strategy in particular I would love to implement more into my games and interactive experiences is the concept of accessibility, ensuring that people can enjoy my game regardless of colorblindness, physical disabilities, or mental disabilities. This often involves having to create a sophisticated texturing and sound system to support a wide range of experiences, but overall this is something worth doing to accommodate anyone who wants to play my games.

Joshua Mateer

2/6/2022

Hello, everyone! I'm a game designer working with the goal of creatung unique experiences that bring people together and force them to think outside the box. I've been working with games for nearly nine years now and love not only playing games like Metroid and Hollow Knight, but analyzing them as well, trying to pick apart every piece of their design.

The brand I'm trying to put out is someone who is a passionate and talented game designer. About me:

• 20 years old
• Caucasian
• Male
• Studying at the University of Pittsburgh
• Double majoring in Computer Science and Digital Narratives & Interactive Design

My interest and hobbies are playing, examining, and designing games. Each aspect contributes to my brand by helping me to understand what people like and howe I can design products that appeal to a larger audience. The kind of strategies I would use is getting people to play my games, going on social media and writing influencers in order to get them to play my game. I would also create demos and post them so that people could provide feedback on my games.

Joshua Mateer

1/24/2022

Technology is pretty cool! It allows us to do so many cool things, from surfing the web to watching shows to calling friends without them being there. But has technology permeated our lives too much? What if we took a step back and tried to figure out what our days would look like without all of these random distractions? Today, that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to breakdown all the ways I used technology on a partiuclar day and try to figure out how I could have done this in an analog fashion.

My day as it actually happened:

Time	Activity
9:00-9:30	I worked out using a workout app on my phone.
9:30-10:30	I watched Youtube and worked on a coding assignment on my laptop.
12:00-2:00	I continued watching Youtube and working on a coding assignment on my laptop.
4:30-5:45	I attended class virtually using my laptop on Zoom.

My day as it could have happened if we didn't have all this cool technology:

Time	Alternate Activity
9:00-9:30	I could have worked out in a workout group or at a gym.
9:30-10:30	I could have read a book to replace Youtube.
12:00-2:00	There's not many ways I could have replaced my coding assignment without technology!
4:30-5:45	I could have attended class in-person instead of on Zoom.

One of the benefits of electronic media is that it's a lot easier to do things, since everything is right at your fingertips. This means that we have access to do anything at any time, and we don't have to spend time tarveling to a different location or gathering supplies. It allows for instant communication and knowledge gathering, as well as being able to combine results from people that are physically distant from one another. However, one of the major drawbacks is that it often leads to people becoming distracted instead of being productive. Too many times, I've found myself getting dragged into a rabbit-hole on Youtube or Reddit when I should be working on a piece of work that's due soon.

Companies could use both the benefits and drawbacks of electronic media to reach out to their consumer base and connect with them more easily. This would allow them to form relationships with people that aren't even in the same country. They could also use the drawback of distractibility through things like pop-up ads to grab their customer's attention and pull them away from whatever they were working on.

Joshua Mateer

1/16/2022

This is my first blog post, stay tuned for more updates and project ideas here!