A Near Dawn - The Far-off Daydream

My name is Leon (@LeonDaydreamer), I am the creator of A Near Dawn - a dark, humorous character-driven psychological adventure game about a charming and intelligent Seattle attorney struggling to do the right thing while also fighting his sinister internal demons.

When it came time to it, I named my studio Far-off Daydream Games, because I feel that is what I've been doing my whole life - chasing my dreams. I was inspired by a beautiful Japanese anime just before entering high school (Vision of Escaflowne), it was like nothing else I'd seen up to that point. I dropped everything and decided I would work on becoming an artist. The dream was to become a great animator! I got into Fine Arts, but I didn't get into animation school multiple times. It wasn't all what I had hoped or expected. It was hard, and I put a lot of pressure on myself, and I felt like a failure for not getting into animation school. When I graduated, I refused to seriously look for any other kind work. I have a dream, I'm following it. I sent applications into every studio I could find in the city, eventually someone gave me shot. I did Scene Setup (a department that mostly doesn't exist anymore in TV animation). I learned a lot about the process and conventions - composition, silhouette, stretch/squash, overshoot, settle. I was close to my dream. By my next production I learned enough to be an animator, my work at the time may not inspire many people, but I was finally doing it. On the following project I was doing broadcast quality animation, that was the dream wasn't it? My art would be on television. I worked through several productions and was praised, even promoted on one of them.

But there was something missing. This was not the dream. I realized I didn't want to be a great animator, I wanted to be a great storyteller. And the stories I was helping to tell were not my own, they never would be. Finally, on one project I was very disappointed with the quality of their writing. It was disillusioning, and I began to look beyond this. I started writing more. My dream was to tell my own stories, create my own characters. A Near Dawn represents that Far-off Daydream I have been chasing my whole life.

I take full responsibility for A Near Dawn. I do the Writing, Direction, Character Art, Animation, Lead Design, Programming and even Voice Direction on this project, as well as illustrating the backgrounds in the opening sequence. It is the project that I secretly wanted to make since I was a kid and the project I never could if I didn't have all of the skills that I picked up on the way here. I've only ever dreamed of doing long-form fiction writing before, telling my own stories, and it was liberating and beautiful to be able to express situations, characters' thoughts and reactions just as I intended. I never designed a full cast of characters before, and I gained a great respect for the intelligence that goes into good character design. I never illustrated an entire skyline down to the smallest deliberate detail, and having done so I gained an appreciation for architecture and structural design. I never led an artist, composer and a team of voice actors to execute my story just as I envisioned, and then there we were - all working together to bring my project to life.

This project has been one profound lesson after another, and I have learned so much already making it. I don’t want to stop learning and growing the way I have been, that is my dream now.

*Our project A Near Dawn is Live on KickStarter. Anything you can do to help share or support our campaign would be greatly appreciated!

Dark Adventure A Near Dawn is on KICKSTARTER!

We just launched the KickStarter Campaign for our dark humorous psychological thriller adventure game A Near Dawn! This is the first crowdfunding campaign we ever took part in, and it has been both a blast as well as an amazing learning experience! Please have a look at it, we have some really nice rewards in a wide assortment of tiers.

And, of course, you can download and play the Full Prologue to our game on Steam, Itch.io, and Google Play - on Windows, Mac, Linux, or Android!

The Pouch Master is a parody that appears in our game. We may have gone a little overboard...

Dark Fun Adventure Game A NEAR DAWN (Prologue) is out on Android and Steam!

The Prologue to our dark humorous psychological thriller A Near Dawn is has been released on Steam and Google Play (that's right, there is now an Android version)! You can download A Near Dawn: Prologue on Windows, Mac, Linux, or Android on these websites, or all of them on Itch.io!

If you haven't checked it out yet, perhaps you should - one particularly clever reviewer said that it was "A funny, charming and creepy adventure with a great sense of style" in his review.

We are so proud of how this project has come together, and there is still so much we would like to do with it. That is why we are going to be launching a KickStarter campaign on October 24th to help get support to produce the full game. You can take a peek at our campaign proposal, we are still working on it a bit, but it mostly feels right.

As we mentioned earlier, A Near Dawn is inspired by traditional Point & Click Adventure games such as the Broken Sword, Blackwell, and Ace Attorney series, as well as darker stories like Steins;Gate and even Twin Peaks. It proudly inherits some of their charm, wit and humor.

The Prologue introduces some of our key characters and certain things you can expect from this story. If you give A Near Dawn a try, do reach out to us (Twitter | Instagram) and let us know what you think. And we would love to hear your feedback about our upcoming campaign!

Dark humorous psychological thriller A NEAR DAWN (Prologue) is out!

The Prologue to our dark humorous psychological thriller A Near Dawn is finally out! You can Download and Play it on Itch.io now!

It has been quite an adventure wrapping things up and getting ready for this release. Now that it's out in the world, we have been very happy with the response we've been getting - for instance, Alpha Beta Gamer wrote an astounding review for it, and everyone that has gotten in touch with us had some positive things to say. We are pretty ambitious with this project, and are hoping to gear up our KickStarter on October 24th to help get support for it! If you have a chance, take a look at our proposed campaign and let us know if we missed anything or if there is something we could improve on.

A Near Dawn is greatly inspired by traditional Point & Click Adventure games such as the Broken Sword, Blackwell, and Ace Attorney series, as well as darker stories like Steins;Gate and even Twin Peaks. It proudly inherits some of their charm, wit and humor.

You find yourself in the shoes of a Seattle attorney who is trying to do the right thing for his friends, despite having an inexplicable darkness inside of him - you will decide whether to unleash this darkness with the choices you make, which will greatly affect your relationships with other characters in the story. What begins seemingly as a slam dunk case for your boss's struggling firm spirals into a dark web of conspiracy that will pit you against some of the vilest human beings imaginable. You can read some more input from the creator (Leonid Pilchin) on his blog here.

The Prologue introduces some of our key characters and certain things to expect. If you give A Near Dawn a try, do reach out to us (Twitter | Instagram) and let us know what you think. Also, have a peek at our upcoming campaign! We would love to hear your feedback!

A NEAR DAWN ~ PROLOGUE VISUAL NOVEL ADVENTURE RELEASING SEPTEMBER 25TH!

The following things are done for the PROLOGUE (which will be our free-to-play Demo):

▫ Writing - 100%!

▫ Character Art - 100%!

▫ CG Art - 100%!

▫ BG Art - 100%!

▫ Animation - 95%

▫ Music - 100%!

▫ Voice Acting - 75%

▫ User Interface - 85%

▫ Programming - 95%

This all can really only mean one thing - WE ARE SUPER CLOSE TO RELEASING A NEAR DAWN ~ PROLOGUE! At this time, we are tentatively setting the Demo release date to 11:00 AM on Monday, September 25th, 2017, but we hope to have it ready even sooner! Please follow us and sign up for updates to stay informed about our project, and look forward to it soon!

A NEAR DAWN ~ Announcement Trailer!

Without further ado, we are excited to present the A Near Dawn announcement trailer:

A Near Dawn is a multi faceted psychological adventure that aims to capture different sides to your world as you investigate the darkness that lies beneath its surface. There are mysteries to be solved and the things you do and say will affect how others look at you, even how you look at yourself. We are making great progress in putting together the Prologue to the first installment, which will be available for free download. And we hope to eventually bring this project to KickStarter to help fund the production. Wish us luck!

A Near Dawn is an adventure game inside a visual novel interface - it features puzzles, dynamic decisions, and multiple endings. You will be in control of your character’s actions at every turn. You will explore the environment and speak to other characters to learn about what needs to be done.


@LeonDaydreamer

A NEAR DAWN ~ A Psychological Thriller

We're starting up production again on our larger, more epic project - A Near Dawn!

It is a psychological thriller adventure with humorous highs and gut-wrenching crashes. A Near Dawn is planned as a series that starts grounded in our reality and takes a sharp turn towards the bizarre as elements of science fiction and supernatural emerge over the course of your journey. We are hoping for a demo release of the first chapter "A Day in the Life" early 2017.



The story places you in the shoes of our main character - Seattle-based attorney Sam Nichols - who seems to be experiencing some disturbing psychological difficulties and is exposed to progressively dire circumstances that threaten to unravel his reality and destroy those closest to him. Though haunted by personal demons, with your law firm struggling and on the brink of collapse, you take the helm on an important new case involving a ruthless multinational corporation, defended by the vilest people you have ever encountered. The odds already seem stacked against you and as you learn things are not as they appear, a deeper conspiracy begins to emerge. Where will you end up if you continue untangling the threads? You will have to be brave to discover the truth.



A Near Dawn is a visual novel adventure game with puzzles, dynamic decisions, and multiple endings. You will be in control of your character’s actions at every turn. You will explore the environment and speak to the other characters to learn about what is happening and what needs to be done. It was important for us to give as much freedom and put as much detail into the content of the story as could be managed, as such you will have the option to skip key elements of the game not necessary for advancing the main plot if your character chooses to ignore them or fails to explore them.


@LeonDaydreamer