Hello!
Just wanted to take a moment to talk about the release of Dream Cycle.
It’s been a long and rewarding road to get here. From the initial concept of making an Indie Action Adventure game to here has been a windy and sometimes obscure path.
Action Adventure is the most costly and time intensive single player genre to make. Teams typically start at 100 people (our team was 2 plus some amazing short stint contractors) and the costs are astronomical for publishers and consumers.
With Dream Cycle I was wondering whether it would be possible to make an Indie version of that. A game that could stand up in that extremely premium field, and deliver on the gameplay and experience for a price point that would typically be impossible.
The trick would be to lean into the incredible tools and assets available from Epic and their marketplace, coupled with proceduralism to deliver the breadth of content that an Action Adventure game requires (let’s say 10-40+ hours worth?)
Since there aren’t any other examples of procedural Action Adventures to learn from, we had to feel our way through the Early Access period before we could really nail down how to create the story and puzzle elements that make up two of the corners of the Action Adventure game rhomus (the two others being platforming and combat.) I have to give a massive, huge extra loud thank you to everyone who bought into Early access and took the time to give us feedback, both good and bad, so that we could navigate that path to release.
Now that we are here, I can say that the game continues to surprise me (especially Zar) with crazy layouts the likes of which I’ve never seen before. Even with a fully upgraded Morgan I have to be careful, because at higher Tiers, things can go very wrong very fast. That genuine sense of not knowing quite what you’ll find, along with a wide set of mechanics that can be challenging to fully master is the goal that this game has always been aiming for.
Whether we got to that goal successfully is a question for you to answer, and if you take the time to, I very much hope you enjoy yourself along the way.
Toby