Earl the Tomb Robber

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• Announcements·12 Jul 2025Official

  Earl the Tomb Robber Devlog 6

  Ok, I know you hear the name “Earl the Tomb Robber” and immediately think “Ooh, a new Tomb Raider clone. That’s cool.” But did you know that Earl the Tomb Robber actually came out about 6 years BEFORE Tomb Raider? That’s right, long before there even was a Lara Croft, the only booty to be found in ancient tombs belonged to Earl!
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• Announcements·4 Jun 2025Official

  Earl the Tomb Robber - 1st Level Milestone Reached!

  {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45491602/063edffdc7cc349f743132714c130d8f17e1f652.jpg Happy June everyone! Time to check in and let you know what’s happening with the latest in development of my video game: Earl the Tomb Robber! (Don't like reading? Watch the video here!) If you’re tuning in for the first time, Earl the Tomb Robber is a story driven, single-player, 3rd person adventure game! It started with the premise, “What if Pixar made an Uncharted game without all the shooty-shooty bits?!” First Major Milestone reached! Firstly, I’m so excited to announce that the First Major Milestone has been reached! I have completed the initial pass on the Desert Plains level of the game. The level is fully playable from start to finish, but it still needs more polish, and plenty of bug fixing. Eventually I’ll be replacing much of the music and fully replacing the temporary AI voice acting with professional voice actors. {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45491602/1135645dc793c8f6421037eb7391ce54ed382184.jpg The Desert Plains level is one of 5 planned environmental stages in the game including jungle ruins, mountain pass, tropical coastline and a haunted forest. Each environment has several tombs to explore, challenging puzzles to solve and unique enemies to defeat! I’m not sure if anyone else does this when designing their game levels, but the Desert Plains are NOT the first level of the game, it’s actually right in the middle! Because this genre is fairly new to me, I have a LOT to learn. I don’t expect the first levels I learn to build to be the very best. So my personal philosophy is to build from the middle out. This way by the time I’m designing the first and the final levels, I’m far more experienced and am able to make something much more exciting! Those first and last impressions a player has of the game are the most important after all! General Updates Additionally, I'm still looking for ways to make the combat more satisfying WITHOUT making it become a major component of the game. At the mom...
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• Announcements·28 Apr 2025Official

  Covid KILLED my Gamedev Progress!

  Okay, let’s get this out of the way… Covid SUCKS! This month has been pretty much a bust for game development. I caught Covid 19 at the beginning of the month and have been down pretty much every day since then. As a result, yeah, pretty much nothing got done. So I guess this devlog is more of a non-update than anything else. During my downtime, I did have a few friends play the game and give me feedback. Besides finding a bunch of new bugs to fix, I also got some interesting feedback that I wasn’t expecting regarding the Ladders in the game. Climbing ladders is a regular part of navigation in the game and is required for exploration and reaching elevated areas. Climbing DOWN ladders however, is NOT part of the game mechanics. This is mostly because there is no fall damage in the game, meaning you can simply jump down from any platform to reach an area below. But people were still telling me that they couldn’t figure out how to climb down ladders! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45491602/5609835a9f6627a06b718b282f989ff9b50fd946.jpg {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45491602/28e09cc8726af9843550e3225c563ba3ad150e69.jpg So what do you guys think? Should I add the ability to climb down ladders even though it serves no practical purpose? And as a small bonus this month, here is a quick peek at one of the latest Tombs I was working on before Covid slowed me down. Hopefully I’ll be able to get back to my regular pace of productivity soon! {STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45491602/00bac387a9a33488fea38f41db418218a281c1b7.jpg
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• Announcements·19 Mar 2025Official

  Earl the Tomb Robber Devlog #3: Let's talk Combat!

  Hi! Welcome to Earl the Tomb Robber Devlog number three! Let’s talk combat! I’ve already mentioned that while Earl the Tomb Robber will feature enemy combat, I don’t intend for that to be a major mechanic in the game. What does that mean exactly? Let me explain. I grew up playing narrative and puzzle based adventure games and that’s where my love of video games is rooted. Those games rarely had any combat mechanics at all, so those skill levels never really advanced as my gaming matured. These days I love the modern cinematic, single player action/adventure games like Uncharted, God of War or The Last of Us, but I enjoy those games the most when I play them on “Easy” or “Story Mode”. I love the storytelling and the player agency in the gameplay, but can do without the frustration of dying over and over until I “get good”. I play video games for the fantasy of it, that mean I want to feel like a Bad-Ass right out of the gate without having to spend countless hours training and actually becoming skilled. That’s too much like real life! Ugh!! But having enemies in a game does more than just provide a potentially frustrating challenge. I use enemies to convey a number of different ideas important to game design. One of those is “signposting” player progress. Many games use enemies to let the player know where they need to go next. It’s a common expression that if there are enemies in the area, you are going the right way! Earl uses this same ideology to help direct the player. Enemies are also an important aspect to making the world feel alive. The different areas on the “Island of the dead” are each inhabited by different kinds of surprising creatures out to do Earl harm! They are also important to the storytelling aspects of the game. Who are they? Why are they there? What do they want? And while we won't be exploring these questions in depth for every enemy, their presence in the world helps to expand the overall mysterious nature of the island. Combat is still very ...
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• Announcements·1 Mar 2025Official

  Setting Gameplay and Narrative goals - Earl the Tomb Robber Devlog #2

  Hi! Welcome to Earl the Tomb Robber Devlog number two! Today, let’s talk about what this game is and what my goals are as a game designer and writer. Most of my life I’ve been an adventure game designer. In the 90s I fell in love with Lucas Arts graphic adventure games. Before too long I was making my own adventure games in FLASH and that led to a career at Telltale games where I continued to develop and explore what narrative driven games could be. At the same time, some of my favorite games to actually play were 3rd person single player action-adventure games! Tomb Raider, Uncharted, the latest God of War games, and smaller games like Kena: Bridge of Spirits, Stray and Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice are some of my favorites that I never get tired of playing.. And because I’m “THAT” kind of gamer, I generally play in Story Mode! Not sorry. I’ve always wanted to make a game like that but most of my professional experience was with adventure games with deep roots in their Point and Click origins. Instead of allowing that to be a hindrance, instead I hope to use that knowledge of interactive storytelling as a strength and make the kind of game that I really want to play. A game that takes the exploration and adventure elements of the action games combines it with the challenge of puzzles and narrative choices that traditional adventure games offer. Narratively, the themes of this game are more personal, dealing with what it’s like to feel like a broken person. What kinds of things do we do to cope with isolation and loneliness? How do we go about discovering who we are as a person? This is my personal journey as well as Earl’s (and maybe by extension… the player’s?”). It’s a journey that I’m currently on, so I don’t know what the answers are yet, or where this will ultimately lead. Making this game is sorta like drafting a map as I go. In future devlogs I play to go deeper into detail on the actual building of the game. I have a few ideas for upcoming topics, so let me ...
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