Sneak preview of our Team Wasabi Jam! Team Wasabi has been busy working on our next mini project. It's an animation trailer featuring the main characters and themes of Hungry Whispers and we're incredibly excited it. Keep an eye out for creative opportunities!
Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas / Happy Holidays! This is more like a personal greeting card to Team Wasabi and everyone else who has supported the group and the project for a while.
Thanks for sticking with me Team Wasabi! Thanks for all the support followers/supporters! I appreciate it ^_^.
This post is a little late but better late than never!
One of our original Team Wasabi members was recently featured in the UK Neo Magazine dedicated to anime, manga, Asian film, games, life style and culture (issue 105 to be exact!).
You know what else? Hungry Whispers was mentioned too! Our goal in JDWasabi Studios is to primarily work on awesome projects and use it as a stepping stone into a creative career. Having Michelle Vinall featured in print and knowing that Hungry Whispers has helped somewhat, is a wonderful achievement.
As special thanks, JDWasabi Studios is proud to do a little feature on Michelle Vinall's work in celebration of our team member's success! With some words on her Team Wasabi experience...
“Working on Hungry Whispers was the best step into the industry I could have hoped for. It pretty much simulates how the game industry functions, just with a looser time limit and you don't have to specialize in one area, you can explore whichever one you're interested in. Not only that but the team itself are like-minded, friendly and supportive and genuinely take interest in your ideas and suggestions. It's as ideal an game company as you could want and has become the shining star of my CV - it's thanks to Hungry Whispers I got my internship at another game company. All in all, it's just perfect! ^^” - Michelle Vinall Dec. 2012
I recently attended the Gadget show convention and it was a blast!
There were a lot of emphasis on mobiles/smart phones which got me thinking about mobile games. Mobile gaming is more about short-play games so would the Hungry Whispers world work on a handheld?
Are you guys even hardcore mobile gamers and interested about using smart phone features integrated within a mobile game? Not sure how it would pan out just yet but if people are interested in mobile game, I'll definitely look into it in the near future. Who knows!
To elaborate on my last post, I thought I would write a little bit more about the original inspirations for Hungry Whispers.
My main aspirations is to write music for games.
Theme: Chinese Ghost Month / Festival
The Ghost Festival, also known as the Hungry Ghost Festival, or Yu Lan is a traditional Chinese festival and holiday celebrated by Chinese in many countries..
...In Chinese tradition, the fifteenth day of the seventh month in the lunar calendar is called Ghost Day and the seventh month in general is regarded as the Ghost Month (鬼月), in which ghosts and spirits, including those of the deceased ancestors, come out from the lower realm. Distinct from both the Qingming Festival (in spring) and Chung Yeung Festival (in autumn) in which living descendants pay homage to their deceased ancestors, on Ghost Day, the deceased are believed to visit the living. - Wikipedia
I have been interested in the horror genre in movies since I was a child. I watched loads of films that contained monsters since I was fascinated with how people designed monsters and created the atmosphere in scenes.
Since studying music and music technology for the majority of my life, I found that the horror genre gave me a lot more freedom in terms of music composition as well as sound design.
Halloween has been done to death so I focused on Asian horror, and basing Hungry Whispers on the Ghost Festival (almost like the Eastern equivalent to the Western Halloween), it was the perfect theme.
Music/Sound Design: Silent Hill
I have also been an avid gamer which influenced the direction in which I wanted to take my music in. After playing Silent Hill 2 and watching the making of and appreciating the depth of the audio detail, I wanted to create my own. A moment in (game) time in which the player/listener has such a strong subconscious relationship with the audio along with the game that it practically dictates the player/listener emotions.
Art/Gameplay: Phoenix Wright / Hotel Dusk / 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
I remember the first time playing these games that I was utterly blown away by the story and feeling emotionally attached to the characters in 999. I love that feeling in which as a player you are so engrossed in the plot that after you finish playing, the experience of your adventure sticks to you.
The art and gameplay style of the puzzle/visual novel genre is also the most fitting technical aspect for Team Wasabi's first full game. It doesn't require any psycho-level programming or animation but many aspects of playability comes from reliving your favourite scenes.
Obviously with due time, I hope Project Whispers would expand and reach many more fans of games like Silent Hill, Phoenix Wright, Hotel Dusk and 999. I also hope that by working on this project, Team Wasabi members will be a step closer to their own creative goals and that I will be the next Akira Yamaoka a game music composer with an actual game title under my belt.
It has occurred me to me that I have not yet written about Hungry Whispers itself. Here's a little blurb.
Hungry Whispers takes place during the time of 'Ghost Month': a period in which it is believed that the dead roam the earth among the living for a month before they are sent back to Hell.
You play the role of Dr. Yu Ling who had accidently killed a young patient under his care and is on indefinite leave to mentally recover. Things take a sinister twist when he finds that his sister Kemi disappears which begins his search to uncover the mystery of her disappearance However the more he uncovers, the more he finds that he may not be entirely safe either...
The game itself takes inspiration from many games such as Hotel Dusk, Phoenix Wright and Silent Hill. It is also greatly influenced by the Asian Horror and the Chinese Ghost Month/Festival which is celebrated in many different parts of East and South-East Asia.
I find that Halloween has been done to death so I wanted something new to work with in horror terms. Hopefully everyone will enjoy the full version as well as the journey in reaching our goal of completion.
Hungry Whispers is a work in progress project produced by Team Wasabi of JDWasabi Studios and Art.Unanimate. We are a bunch of artists who are united by our desire to someday work in the Games Industry. Our goal is to use Project Whispers as a stepping stone in achieving that dream.
"On the other hand, we denounce with righteous indignation and dislike men who are so beguiled and demoralized by the charms of pleasure of the moment, so blinded by desire, that they cannot foresee the pain and trouble that are bound to ensue; and equal blame belongs to those who fail in their duty through weakness of will, which is the same as saying through shrinking from toil and pain. These cases are perfectly simple and easy to distinguish. In a free hour, when our power of choice is untrammelled and when nothing prevents our being able to do what we like best, every pleasure is to be welcomed and every pain avoided. But in certain circumstances and owing to the claims of duty or the obligations of business it will frequently occur that pleasures have to be repudiated and annoyances accepted. The wise man therefore always holds in these matters to this principle of selection: he rejects pleasures to secure other greater pleasures, or else he endures pains to avoid worse pains."
