Fellow Industrians,
today I want to tell you a little bit about how INDUSTRIA started all these years ago, and especially how the team found itself. This is going to be a loooong reach into the past, so fasten your seatbelts and follow me into the year 2014.
Everything started when me, David, and my friend, colleague and business partner Steve met in an independent game development team working on a third person shooter called “Dark Dorm: Ascension”. The team was huge, sometimes up to 30 people. But it appeared that Steve was taking care of a huge level as a level designer and I was assigned as a prop maker working exactly for this level. That's how we started to work together.
We’ve never seen each other in real life at this point, but we quickly realized we shared the same love for Half-Life 2, Bioshock, atmosphere and very unique designs. As the project began to struggle, Steve left the team after contributing to it for 2 years. I left the team as well shortly after, being not satisfied with the creative vision and work environment.
This was the perfect moment to start something together. 2015 came around and the first experiments were done in the new Unreal Engine 4.The project was called Project 15, often referred to as just “P15” and the first maps and mechanics were created. We had some crazy design documents, yes, but we changed everything all the time (because we essentially did not know what we were doing), resulting in various types of levels, genres and mechanics. We did not know exactly what we were creating, but we always had the same base ideas and mood in mind: a game about danger, story, loneliness and despair with strong influences from Resident Evil, Half-Life 2 and Amnesia. Here are some of the first level concepts I drew back then:
“Project 15, Rough test scene” - This is the concept I've ever created for INDUSTRIA, back in May 2015. It's crazy to look back at this, as while it's a different art style, it still transports the feeling the released game will strive for.
“World 2 Trainstation” - from May 2015 as well. Alone the name that refers to multiple worlds is very moving for me to read again.
With weeks and months of activity but also downtime due to my final school exams, slowly but steadily something like a game emerged from the depths of the Unreal Engine. When my long time school friend Lukas Zepf aka No Bloom Now joined the party, we even got the first music and sound ideas combined with the first test maps and props:
Some suitcases and the UE4 mannequin. This is literally the first ever screenshot, ever, taken from anything created for INDUSTRIA. The JPG is dated to the 17th of january 2017, evening time.
This is one of the first tests of creating a modular set to build the city the game should take place in.
I also have something to listen to from that time. Here is one of the first soundscapes Lukas created back then. It still holds up so well in communicating what INDUSTRIA is to its core, even today:
https://lukaszepf.bandcamp.com/releases
When I look back at this, I understand why Industria took so long, and to be very honest, I still wonder how it all came together to an understandable product that will soon be released. So many loose ends. We really only had a rough mood as a reference, everything else just developed itself over time.
Then came december 2016 and I went down to Wales where Steve lived back then. We saw each other for the first time in real life at the airport, drove to his place, made some tea and created the first actual cohesive level plans and deeper game concepts. It felt great to work together, in one room, face to face, and discuss our exciting vision.
Back in Berlin and being stuck in an apprenticeship, my girlfriend pushed me to focus on the project and actually start to work on it fulltime as much as it was financially possible (being a student back then brought me quite a few advantages obviously). This was mid january 2017. Since then, this project, soon to be called INDUSTRIA, is an integral part of our lives. We never had any other bigger project next to it, nor did we ever stop to work on it. All freetime, weekends and holidays were filled with INDUSTRIA from now on. We identify with INDUSTRIA and we reached a quality level and direction of it, we never dared to dream of.
This is actually a snapshot of the Steam Greenlight page.
And this is our first public Alpha hosted on Itch.io. The first moment of publishing INDUSTRIA to a wider audience.
The second Alpha followed, accompanied with a moment where we nearly dropped the project out of being completely overwhelmed by the sheer size of it. But we went on and got our publishing Deal with Headup Games came around. The first Steam Next Fest, the second Steam Next Fest. And now we are here, closer to release than we ever were.
The only question that remains is: what will happen after INDUSTRIA? How will our private lives change? How much do we identify with working on this game? Every friend and family member in the last years always got the same answer to the question of what we are doing. “You know, I am working on this game. Not sure when it's out”. This will be over soon. It's scary, but damn is it exciting to see what's next.
Next week we will talk about the collaboration with Headup and how that, yet again, changed the project and its scope. See you then!