Hey all, I figured this would be a nice final bonus post after the reveals of some of the animatronic redesigns I have been working on! I’m glad a lot of you really like them!

I put a lot of time into these guys and I strongly believe these are the best iterations of the characters. I am very, very happy with how they have turned out! These images were done in Unreal Engine 4, meaning that this is exactly how they will look in the games! That’s assuming my switch to UE4 is successful, but I’m doing everything I can to make sure that happens lol. I like the engine so far!

A good chunk of this is going to be stuff I have said in a few previous posts, but there'll be some neat new and updated things I'll talk about here. This is also a great post to come to if you need a refresher on what my current plans for the series are!

Update on SHOWMAN'S: Helen

As of typing this, SHOWMAN'S: Helen is nearly fully planned out. All the important details I need have been refined and are there, and I am pretty much in full throttle development on it now.

This game is the next one that will release, and it is only a little smaller than SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening. It's a side chapter that focuses on a part of the story that the other games will not have the time to. It started off as a "maybe" project, but after some thought I quickly realized it absolutely needed to happen. I still don't want to give away many details of this game so soon, but assuming development continues to go smoothly, I should be able to share some very exciting stuff once it's all ready.

I can say that I love what I have come up with for this game. With almost everything being fully written down, it feels complete, and I can't find much else to put into it (which is a very good thing). Its gameplay is somewhat different, but I'm hoping it turns out right, because if it does it has a fairly good chance that it could be my scariest game yet.

SHOWMAN'S: Helen also requires almost all of the assets from The Awakening, and since I want to finally make the switch to developing games in Unreal Engine 4, I have to remake pretty much everything to both make them work better in the engine, and also to improve their quality and concepts overall. This is why the redesigns of The Awakening's cast exist!

You can visit Helen's game page here!

SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening 2.0

Since SHOWMAN'S: Helen requires a majority of The Awakening's assets, I'm taking advantage of that to make a "2.0 version" of The Awakening. At the most, I'll only need to make a few new models before I start working on the programming and animating side of the game. Initially I thought about making this sort of a simple graphical remaster of the game, but I decided to take a step back and think about how I really felt about the version of The Awakening I released last year.

While I am happy I got that game out there and that people really enjoyed it, I was very burnt out, and I pushed myself to get it done just so it could be done. By the end of The Awakening's development, there were things I really wanted to change, but I had zero idea if I was even going to keep working on the future of the series at that point, so it didn't matter to me so much. I also just did not have the heart or energy to further delay the game to make those changes.

Now that I can revisit this game as a full-on remake from the ground up rather than reskinning a previous version of it, I can make those changes. 2.0 is basically the version of the game I wanted to release last year.

Most of the major changes are obviously going to be the visuals, designs, and models, but almost all the cutscenes and tapes will stay the same aside from getting the obvious visual improvements as well. There is like one cutscene and two tapes I'm planning on changing, just to execute them better!

The biggest change is going to be the gameplay. This is something I have thought very deeply about, because I know both the original and Phobia: The Awakening's gameplay is very smooth and very much enjoyed. The best way I can describe it is that it has very similar concepts, and only slightly different execution. It will also be a lot more consistent with the vision I have for all the other games as well, and I personally love what I have in mind. It feels fresh while not straying too far from the original gameplay, something that The Awakening should have had when it released last year.

So considering SHOWMAN'S: Helen requires many assets that'll also be used in this game, I won't have a whole lot of modeling work to do, meaning that SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening 2.0 will very likely come out after Helen. If I can get to this point, I'm hoping its development goes smoothly, and maybe even rather quickly!

This version of The Awakening will take over the game page of the old version. The original will still be available to be downloaded, of course!

Update on SHOWMAN'S: The Calling

Keep in mind I still talk about this game only because everyone knows it exists and I don't want to leave everyone in the dark about it. I am very focused on the other projects at the moment.

I feel so bad for delaying this game so much, but I seriously appreciate the patience for it. It was in active development for a while last year, but honestly I am very, very glad I pulled back and focused on Helen first.

Don't get me wrong, I really want to make this game. It still has some of my favorite ideas out of all of the games yet, and during all of these years it has slowly grown into something very special to me. I want to make sure this game is the best I can possibly make it.

When I was developing Phobia: Long Hours, I made some pretty big mistakes of having a lack of proper plans, and making big changes to some parts of the gameplay without putting much thought into them. The game was a huge mess and is the reason why so much of SHOWMAN'S is being planned ahead of time.

That being said, as I develop The Awakening's "2.0" edition, I am going to be refining and finalizing all of my plans for The Calling. I know there already has been some teasers of an endoskeleton and Showman, but once I get around to fully working on the game again, those models are going to be refined and improved as I have obviously learned more things while working on The Awakening's animatronic designs!

If I'm lucky enough to get to starting development on The Calling, I'll have the experience in UE4 from making both Helen and The Awakening 2.0, and I should feel a lot more confident tackling a game that is fairly over twice the size of The Awakening.

This is a lot of damn work.

Please keep in mind that I'm not doing a million things all at once. I'm taking everything one step at a time, thinking and planning ahead of myself to ensure each step lands at least okay. I do not want to walk around in the dark with developing a big project of any kind.

I also don't want to say anything is absolutely set in stone.

Anything can happen, I make these games almost entirely on my own and like it that way, and they are nothing but passion projects because I am a big FNaF fan. I'm not trying to make the next big thing, and I'm not trying to make anything super special. I'm just making some games I think would be cool to make, hoping I can get some good experience as a game developer so I can do my own fun little original games in the future. I can't say when these games will come out, simply because I do not know. I only know that when they are basically in their final testing phases, which they are lightyears away from right now, lol.

I do hope development on these games goes smoothly. Right now I feel pretty good about them, better than I did when I released SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening last year, and far better than I did over the past six months or so. Things are actually moving forwards again after a very long time, too! Let's hope it stays that way...

The reason why The Awakening took so long to release (announced in October 2023, released in May 2025) was because I was unhappy with it almost all throughout its development. I wanted to start over not just right before the game was done, but many, many times before that. I even got so stressed and said it was cancelled at one point. I'm finally restarting now, and I feel good about doing that!

I have tried to let go of these games more than a handful of times before, but for whatever reason I can't. Maybe it is just hard, but even when I'm frustrated or feeling down I still have such a huge passion for them. They're special to me and I want to see them happen.

Happy first anniversary to SHOWMAN'S: The Awakening! The series has an interesting future to say the very least. Here's to hoping things continue to go smoothly and I can finally get into doing the exciting stuff soon!