- Riley & Rochelle Devlog pt.5 - 6 October 2022
Once it was established that I would be a good point of reference for Celine Dion, Tim and I casually took a deep dive into pop culture in the 90s, and 00s, researching all the tropes and rock and roll cliches. There was a lot of listening to stuff: listening to the music of that era and also refining Tim’s early song sketches. We really found the story in the music. Ironically at the same time I was writing for R&R I was invited to join a writer’s room for a very different project. My homework for that project had me watching a bunch of 90’s music-adjacent canonical films, including Empire Records, Britney vs. Spears, and Josie and the Pussycats. Throughout the first half of 2022, I was fully immersed in 90’s culture. I was a teenager in the 90’s and by the time I was moving away for uni in 1998, I was already in deep in the music scene. I was playing in bands, writing music reviews fo…
- Meet the Voice Actors - 6 October 2022
Fiona has been an incredibly important collaborator. First appearing in Rivals, she has since been in Conspiracy! and now plays the steely Sabrina in Riley & Rochelle. Tirelessly dedicated, versatile and precise, she is a brilliant person to work with.
- Riley & Rochelle Devlog Pt.4 - 4 October 2022
Most of my previous games have had a soundtrack at their core. In the case of family, the soundtrack contained homages to the bands of the late 80s UK indie scene - The Smiths, Elvis Costello, Tears for Fears etc. In Rivals, the style was that of country and alt-country, taking in groups like Wilco, Son Volt, The Shins and Grizzly bear. While Echo Beach had been more varied and focused on a pop sound, Riley & Rochelle was a return period pieces, which would encompass the breadth of the 90s. Rochelle's Music Rochelle's music represented the biggest step outside of my tastes yet. In other ways, the music was not particularly difficult to conceptualise. After all, I was a child of the 90s - growing up with stars like Celine, Whitney, Mariah, Toni and many others. Another thing was that the UK Britpop I grew up listening to was inherently melodic. As such, I've always had a taste for strong…
- Meet The Voice Actors - 13 September 2022
Dashiell was a real find. Like many games I've made, his character was initially small but grew as the game developed. He brings great wit and energy to Trent - the media gadfly.
- Songwriting Diary - Waiting for Love - 13 September 2022
Listen to Waiting for Love Riley's first song 'Waiting for Love' was written when he was 15. It is in many ways a deeply precocious song for someone that age to write, however, it is not impossible, nor does it feel like the work of an older artist. Kate Bush wrote the Kick Inside at 16 and since Riley is meant to be a generationally important indie artist, it made sense to me it the writing was great from pretty much the get-go. The Story Waiting for Love takes in a range of lo-fi singer-songwriters practising at the same time as Riley, in the late 80s and early 90s. These include Neutral Milk Hotel, Daniel Johnston and mostly importantly Elliott Smith. Elliott was the initial template for Riley - a model of indie realness and passionate DIY music-making. Several key qualities bind the artists I mention. The first is the use of DIY or low-quality recording equipment, frequently the hom…
- Riley & Rochelle Devlog Pt.3 - 7 September 2022
I would not be a proper Montrealer, nor a good résidente du Québec if I didn’t adhere to the cult of Celine. She truly encapsulates the Quebec vibe: unapologetically dedicated to the fun of performance and art. I think in her heyday Celine rose to the occasion of super-stardom and embraced it as a performance artist more than anything else (see: backwards tux). I mean, Montreal is the home of Cirque du Soleil (which we tip our hats to the game if you get *that* ending), and is maybe the only place on earth where you will see fat-tired unicycles all year long, including in the dead of winter. I definitely took the lead on writing Rochelle and wanted to make sure she was authentically Canadian and Quebecoise. And while I know I was taking a risk writing a biracial character, I felt I had enough of a voice to impart as a woman in the music business who had professionally (and personally) e…
- Meet The Voice Actors - 7 September 2022
Phillip is a wonderful actor who took on two big roles for us - Riley and Brandon. Here he is talking about the role of Riley.
- Riley & Rochelle Competition - 1 September 2022
We would like you to create your own Riley & Rochelle poster. To do this, we have created a Photoshop file with a selection of images of the key characters, which you are invited to use in whatever (decent) way you want. Feel free to make the film any genre. Click here for the file (link) To enter, please post your entry up in the art section and also tweet it with the #Riley&RochellePoster and a link to the steam page (shorturl.at/cdfrv). We will award the 5 entrants we think have put in the most effort by the 14th with an advanced copy of the 16-song soundtrack. Here are some examples to give you inspiration.
- Making The Artwork Pt.1 - 1 September 2022
Base image Add smoke and helicopter Added figures Final video Drawing The key artwork in Riley & Rochelle is the storyboards for the various life events in the game. This example depicts a scene from the film What It Takes, for which Rochelle is nominated in the best song category. Mack would always start with a series of photo-bashed images to provide the background. We were able to use these as ultimately the background would be blurred, meaning we could apply less hand-drawn detail. Mack would then typically apply more elements and finally the hand-drawn figures in his trademark style. As the game went on we started to focus more on closeups and action scenes, as these resulted in more kinetic motion graphics. Motion Graphics From this point, I took the layers and put them into After Effects. Not being a specialist, I applied some quite simple, zooming camera movement, as well as som…
- Riley & Rochelle Devlog Pt.2 - 1 September 2022
In the Fall of 2021, I was, like Tim, in a wilderness of my own. Aside from being in a rock band, I’d been spinning my wheels trying to become a novelist (!). I’d published a handful of short stories and then written a science fiction book that I couldn’t get published. I wanted to focus on writing fiction and telling stories, but could not find a meaningful avenue for it. I had discovered Twine, which led me to itch.io which led me to the grossly entertaining Sleeping with the NME, which led me to Echo Beach. I played Echo Beach, got the bad ending, and had a bunch of Tim’s songs stuck in my head. I joined Tim’s Discord and soon after was working on a group project, a Knives Out style murder mystery called Jericho, which we never finished. Halfway into making that game, Tim pulled me out of class and asked me to collaborate on this other idea he had. Our first meeting was on November 2…
- Meet the Voice Actors - 1 September 2022
Zaida is our voice of Rochelle. She is a Jamaican-Canadian voice actor who brings wit, verve and compassion to the role. She was truly a find and we feel so lucky to work with her.
- Songwriting Diary - River of Roses - 1 September 2022
Listen to River of Roses (Click) River of Roses represents the high point of both Riley & Rochelle's artistry and their romance. I knew that I wanted this song to be grand, sweeping, powerful and full of longing. Coming from 1998 and written by Riley, I also wanted to bring in elements from one of my favourite bands - Radiohead, who at that point had released OK Computer. It is, in my opinion, one of the high points of the soundtrack and a song I'm very proud of. The Story River of Roses is based on a four-chord loop that cycles throughout the entire song. The loop is a minor descending pattern that you can hear in songs from Fever to Feeling Good. These sorts of patterns are the bedrock of much pop music, but can also risk becoming repetitive when paired with a melody that does not evolve sufficiently. To balance this out, Riley's melody goes through several stages, growing in intensit…
- Riley & Rochelle Devlog Pt.1 - 1 September 2022
Getting there slowly By the time Natalia and I thought of Riley & Rochelle, I’d been making games for around a year and a half. I had started making extremely stupid games about typing, robots, moles and eggs with moustaches. I jammed these all up online for the praise of no one and the concern of my parents. Then everything changed. I made a game called Family, which I managed to con much of the UK games press into reviewing it, despite it being on a single screen and costing £200 to make. This filled me with enough entitlement to become a developer. Rivals and Conspiracy! followed shortly after too, respectively, some praise and great disdain. Mindful of my family obligations, I spent a torrid year working freelance in the games industry with some of the worst people and projects that I had ever encountered. A full career up to this point in education could not prepare me for the mixt…
- Riley & Rochelle Announcement - 1 September 2022
We are very excited to announce that Riley & Rochelle will be released soon. We can't give the exact date yet but be assured that it will be in your Steam Library in the next few months. In the meantime, we're looking forward to sharing more about the game, how we made it and what inspired us. Riley & Rochelle is both a love story and a love letter to the 90s. It has 19 songs, plus a wealth of homages to chat shows, Behind The Music, Buffy, college radio and much more. We put our heart and soul into it and hope you love what we came up with. Check out our other posts that shine a light on songwriting, art, game-making and lots of other things. Also please feel free to ask any questions or discuss things in the comments section.
