I'd like to take a moment to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of Outer Brain Studios 🥳
Roughly 10 years ago, Kory and I started brainstorming a small game project idea we came up with while working at a miserable bowling alley together. The concept originally titled Hook Arena was supposed to be a simple little flash game focused on hook shot mechanics, but feature-creeped into Scum Lord, a platforming adventure over several levels with monsters, puzzles, bosses, and an amazing retro soundtrack by Anadale. We launched our first kickstarter to failure, and eventually abandoned the project after other priorities took over. Some day we might return to Scum Lord...
In 2014 after Scum Lord, I decided to try and develop some games on my own. Abandoning Flash, I discovered Unity. I had a very basic understanding of programming at this point (I didn't even grasp the concept of arrays) but I quickly was able to get some experiments playable. My main solo project at this point would be an open world RPG inspired by Diablo, Dark Souls, and Bullet-Hell games (sound familiar?). This project would be titled Lunatic's Bane, and would feature an amazing dark medieval soundtrack by Anadale. We launched our second kickstarter to failure, and eventually abandoned the project after other priorities took over. Some day we might return to Lunatic's Bane...
In 2016 after Lunatic's Bane and a bit of uninspiring IT tech support work, I was becoming obsessed with the new VR headsets and felt extremely motivated to create a VR game. Learning a bit about scope-creep after two failed projects, I decided a simple retro survival horror game would be a perfect fit. Inspired by games like Resident Evil and Silent Hill, I was able to finish a basic half-hour concept demo called Organ Quarter in a few months just in time for Halloween. Featuring an amazing dark and surreal atmospheric soundtrack by Anadale, this small demo got a lot of positive reviews and buzz. It eventually attracted the attention of Alex who sent me a message seeing if we could use any help with narrative or production. Also a fan of survival horror, 80's horror movies, and featuring an impressive portfolio already working in the games industry, Alex was a great match and proved invaluable in expanding the Organ Quarter concept into a full fledged adventure. A bit pessimistically after several failures, we anxiously decided to launch our third kickstarter. Third times the charm, we hit our goal, and after a year of production we finished Outer Brain Studio's first complete shippable video game. Organ Quarter was a quiet success, and I was finally living the dream of being a professional game developer. Some day we most definitely will return to Organ Quarter...
In 2017 we moved our developments to Seattle and began prototyping an ambitious new concept titled Project Guilt-Diver. Kory would return to the team to help develop complex multiplayer and networking features. Inspired by games like Ultima Online, RUST, and traditional Roguelikes, GUILT would feature real-time open-pvp multiplayer with permadeath, dungeon crawling, and an amazing dark medieval soundtrack by Anadale. A bit over-ambitious, we would launch our fourth kickstarter to failure. However, invested in the potential of the mix of ideas and after cutting quite a bit of scope from our original concept, the project would eventually evolve into GUILT: The Deathless. Some day we might return to our original concept...
A long and rocky road and several years of development, our seemingly simple idea turned into a massive mega project. Today it has been just over 5 years of development, and we likely have more than a year to go. In that time, however, my love and trust in the potential and ideas of GUILT only continued to grow.
Thank you so much to everyone that joined us during any part of this journey. Especially during the tougher moments of a less than stellar early access launch, I'm not sure if I'd be so motivated to see this concept to completion without all the kindness and support. I hope you all stick around to see GUILT turn into a real treasure, and I hope you stick around afterwards to see what we come up with next. There are some great ideas we might like to return to some day.
With love,
Outer Brain Studios