PROJECT UPDATES!
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【未取得授權(quán)，但我覺得說的很好，有空會考慮翻譯一下】
Posted on?May 16, 2022
Since people often say we’re not transparent despite me writing almost daily in our?dev log site,?and baring our souls naked in?heart-wrenching blog posts, I’ll do an honest-to-god attempt at getting folks up to speed with what we’re doing.
Nirvana
This is a hard one. Whatever I write will get misconstrued into something that’s not, which I find beyond annoying.
It will release. Eventually.
Fernando (Valhalla’s writer) wrote a post about it ages ago?here, but some of the issues that were presented in that blog persisted, while some others arose. Fernando hasn’t been involved in active game development for a time now, and we are hoping for a comeback once they’re in a better place.
I’ve been trying to push the project ahead on my own in the meantime but there’s only so much I can do with the amount of things on my plate while still being a human being with 24 hours a day to manage.
Anyway, Fernando needs time away from game development. Please respect that, since we’ll never put some video game above their health. As good as said video game might be.
Codename Next Game, aka The game with the cute girl wearing a funny hat
Not many know or remember this one but I’ll address it too.
Next Game was supposed to be our second release after Va11halla. A spooky adventure game with graphics resembling those of the original PlayStation.
Fernando was also supposed to write it, but if you’ve read what’s above you get a pretty good idea of what happened. Plus we severely underestimated how hard the transition from 2d visual novels to full 3d games would be.
We also overestimated our organization at the time, and thought we could ship both Next Game and Nirvana in the span of 3-4 years. Alas, a number of things happened. Had to deal with Venezuela’s bullshit, move countries, adapt to life abroad, deal with COVID, etc.
On the bright side, the game has a fully working set of tools and we can build it anytime as soon as we have the time and a dedicated writer on board again. This will also see the light one day.
The actual work being done
Our current focus (due to the severe lack of Fernando) is on a single game internally known as Project D. It began pre-production when it became clear Fernando was not fit to work for the foreseeable future. Officially started development at the tail end of 2019 and it’s been steadily becoming a real thing as we learn about the intricacies of 3D action game development using Unity.
We’ve settled on a final game design and we aim towards a content-complete build (albeit with near zero polish) sometime this year if nothing goes wrong.
Valhalla additional language support?(spanish, french, brazilian portuguese, etc.)
This is one that needs to be reiterated over and over, but Valhalla’s code is a logistical nightmare. Adding languages is hard, and we don’t have the staff to do it. PLEASE pester?Ysbryd games,?not us, if you wanna see your preferred language being added. If they see there’s a good demand they’ll do the appropriate moves to outsource it like they did for japanese and chinese. I’m really sorry but this is simply beyond our scope and I wish it wasn’t a thing. Future games are being made with actual localization support from the very beginning to avoid a similar situation.
Stuff we’ve done since Valhalla came out
As a team we’ve been working on short, free games for game jams. These are some of them:
Xermatt Redux
ONE SHOT IN THE DARK, NOW I’M DEAD.
There’s more?here.
As a solo dev I’ve also been doing small games.
I released THE RADIO WAVE BUREAU at the start of the year and?you can check it out here.
The Future
Aside from finishing Project D we have no idea. There’s a lot of projects that have been prototyped internally; lots of concepts, ideas, stories, characters. We never stopped creating, we just don’t show or announce nothing as to not repeat past mistakes. It sucks hyping people up for things that won’t be finished for reasons beyond our control.
Once Project D ships we’ll be able to assess things properly.
The game industry is changing a lot, too. Perhaps not in regards of the contents inside the games, but the business side that never stops being all fucked up.
We are heading towards subscription models, heavy consolidation. Games being another medium on the way of becoming just more “content”. Large conglomerates love that shit.
Streamers, vtubers, etc. are also here to stay, and they won’t play games that don’t attract an audience, or are not tailor made to be watched rather than played. If they don’t know your game, you’re basically screwed.
It’s scary out there, and the more time we spend without releasing new commercial games the more scared I get.
Will people even remember we exist by the time we ship Project D?
That said, I’m not against these business models and the performers per se. Valhalla was available on Game Pass after all, and we help lots of small streamers by clicking that hot retweet button whenever we can. My issue is seeing new game developers struggle to find an audience (and money) to sustain themselves. Not everyone will be connected with someone at Microsoft or whatever the fuck big company is willing to give them a chance to get paid. Lots of devs don’t know how, or can’t shill their works to Mitsubishi Toyota the eldritch car girl with a million YouTube subs. It’s all very uncertain.
One thing I’d love to do is to ship our big games and then dedicate ourselves to small scale games that can be completed in a matter of months. Our Game Jam library above is proof we can ship cool things in short order, but I don’t think small free games can sustain a whole business.
Perhaps a Patreon where people can get new games from us every so often? That one sounds good. Comfy even. Let me know in the comments below if you’d be interested in such a thing.
I’ll always appreciate the concern (it means people care, even if it’s a small sample), but shit can get to me so it’s better to have this as future reference.
tl;dr we are relatively healthy at the moment. We still make games, we still spend most of our time working on games. Project D is on the way (won’t announce it properly until we know for certain it’s going to be finished), and the future harbors some interesting possibilities even in the middle of an uncertain time to be alive. Let Fernando heal and live his life too, please. The life of someone should never be below a game release.
I hope you all show up when the time comes!
Posted in?Kiririn's Corner,?Sukeban GamesTagged?n1rvanna,?next game,?project d
