Nick Lives
@slicknicklives
Spooky Game Dev. Creative Director of @nightsignalentertainment.com. (Home Safety Hotline, Forbidden Solitaire, Night Signal + More) He/him/Bi
Please Insert Disc will probably be our most polarizing game, but I can't deny the shape it's taking. It's out of my hands at this point, it wants to be this way. Sorry in advance. We're gonna make you write things down, read code, and do math. We'll add warnings. 😅 💙Wishlist: tinyurl.com/bd6kd4xb
I didn’t properly coordinate with the title screen but I’m playing Going Under from @aggrocrabgames.bsky.social which I got fresh off the Steam Summer Sale!
My wife @supervisorcarol.bsky.social and I are settling in tonight with the ultimate combo - handheld games and Frasier. 🥗🥚
The proof is in the pudding too, because I've seen interactions here and on Reddit where people just accidentally seeing the title/key art present in a Steam screenshot is enough to draw interest!
And since the title/genre juxtaposition is inherently funny, it often served as a great punchline in a given video or pitch. Leaning into that juxtaposition is how we arrived at the entire structure of our first trailer!
...but it actually HELPED it by allowing us to focus on the 90s CD-ROM horror messaging everywhere else! We could now just throw up images like this on social media, and say 'Wishlist Forbidden Solitaire' - and it was instantly understood what made our pitch unique.
We worried about the title early on because one of our goals was to market the game as a 'horror game with solitaire gameplay' rather than a 'horror-themed solitaire game' and the title seemed to go against that goal...
Honestly the name 'Forbidden Solitaire' wound up being SO useful for marketing in many ways. Having the gameplay right in the title meant we could focus pitches, key art, etc. on the dark fantasy/horror framing, since the mechanics would be self-evident!
Painted this during a themed ‘paint night’ with friends yesterday evening! The theme was “Vacation” 🍕🫧
Home Safety Hotline movie update - Studiocanal has now joined the fray! 🥳🍿
Did a thing I’ve been wanting to do for ages today - got my first tattoo! ⚓️
And if I were to give this the full FS treatment I'd scale it down to 640 x 480 as a gif with a limited color palette and pattern dithering, with this as the final result:
Just like all Forbidden Solitaire assets, this one was made by stapling together a bunch of random stuff. In this case, a ridiculously unoptimized custom head model I sculpted, 3D primitives (torus), and a free unrigged model of a 3-headed snake I found.
I'm not truly over the Forbidden Solitaire art style. It's too fun. So today I made a Medusa. 🐍 This isn't for an update or anything, to be clear. Just made it for shits and giggles.
Continuing my post-launch tradition of rewatching some shlock that helped inspire the latest project. For Home Safety Hotline -Troll (1986) For Forbidden Solitaire - Wishmaster.
FORBIDDEN SOLITAIRE COMES OUT TOMORROW!! 😵💫 Dive into a lost 1995 CD-ROM that should have never existed. 💙Wishlist on Steam: tinyurl.com/ywj43ptj 💜Wishlist on GOG: tinyurl.com/2s3sv45j
TWO DAYS UNTIL FORBIDDEN SOLITAIRE DROPS! 💿 Unearth a controversial 1995 dark fantasy CD-ROM 🩸 Fend off dungeon horrors in solitaire-based combat 🔎 Discover the dark history behind the game's development 👁️ Purchase invasive upgrades from the eye in the walls 💙Wishlist Now: tinyurl.com/ywj43ptj
FORBIDDEN SOLITAIRE RELEASES IN 3 DAYS!! 😵💫 Anyway I'm very glad the new 1995 style trailer is being received well! We planned and shot that shit like half a year ago, incredibly gratifying to finally showcase it! 💙Wishlist on Steam: tinyurl.com/ywj43ptj 💜Wishlist on GOG: tinyurl.com/2s3sv45j
Had some truly cursed data moshing happening while editing a new marketing video for Forbidden Solitaire. What horrors are we about to unleash upon the world? 😨
Then again my favorite film of his marks seemingly marks the divide between his Prestige and B-Movie eras by existing between them simultaneously, so I'd have to watch THAT, and at that point why not watch the Prestige era in its entirety.
I'm half joking because his Spielberg-y prestige era is only half as interesting as his "fuck it we ball" era. Though Signs is an all-timer.
Updating Forbidden Solitaire's content warning guide today with some color guides used to determine which content is opt-in or toggle-able, with descriptions on how exactly those toggles affect the content. We realized that things like "Jump Scares" can mean different things to different people!