Well Told provided creative direction, animation, cinematic execution and narrative support for this Apple Arcade-exclusive from Night School Studio
Next Stop Nowhere was an ambitious narrative road trip through space, blending stylized visuals with heartfelt story beats and cinematic storytelling. Night School Studio brought us in to take the reins as a full white-label team, providing creative, narrative, and animation direction from early development through release.
Nightschool came to us with a great pitch that they had some funding for, but with their staff split across other projects they lacked the production power to get it off the ground.
The initial character sketches and environment concepts were compelling. A wild road-trip through space, with futuristic diners and roadside attractions, all the trappings of charming retro Americana vibes. Oh, and bounty hunters!
Now it became Well Told's job to take that loose idea and, under the direction of Nightschool, make it into a whole game!
Though Nightschool provided some style-defining key art, we worked autonomously in creating the look and feel of most of the characters, key locations, and iconic space ships in Next Stop Nowhere.
Our incredible concept art partner, Michaela Nienabar, did a beautiful job designing the characters and the world based on art direction input from Night School.
Our art and animation teams collaborated to create an unconventional, highly optimized character workflow that used simple but effective "face cards" to allow the game's colorful cast to be vibrant and expressive on the most low-end devices.
We worked closely with the writer and concept artist at Nighschool to not only develop the look of the characters, but to give each one a full expression sheet and animation guide to ensure their personality would be expressed in their design and in their expressions, as well as the way they move.
Nightschool's writers provided the initial loose concept and, eventually, the final written dialogue of the story. Well Told filled in everything in between. From a full draft of the significant start-to-end story beats, creating and designing significant in-game locations, and moment-to-moment interactive narrative gameplay design throughout the whole story.
We wrote and designed everything with Nightschool's distinctive quippy bantering dialogue in mind, in order to make things run smoothly as we handed off design documents for a final dialogue pass.
Well Told produced the cinematic storytelling moments in Next Stop Nowhere; From storyboarding to final in-engine implementation.
The realtime cinematics add texture to the gameplay and bring a player closer to the characters to better feel their struggles and triumphs.
Next Stop Nowhere launched as an Apple Arcade exclusive and was celebrated for its warmth, pacing, and thoughtful visual storytelling. As the sole creative and production team on the project, Well Told successfully translated a strong narrative vision into a charming, polished final experience.
The team at Well Told has delivered on every front with flying colors. I am not exaggerating when I say that we trust their crew with just about any facet of our games' production.
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