Hello. This is Bae Sang Hyun, director of Chasing Light.
It has already been five springs since I created Chasing Light.
Vittgen began almost like a college club, and after 7 abandoned projects over the course of 5 years, Chasing Light was finally born. In other words, it took exactly that long to arrive here.
Around August 2nd, for reasons I still don’t know, sales of Chasing Light suddenly surged.
I’m writing this letter to thank those of you who have, even belatedly, decided to chase the light with me. Shall we start with a bit of background music?
As you journeyed through the game, did you find your own light? What is your light? Through this work’s relentless, precarious path that never takes a step back, I sincerely hope you discovered and rekindled that spark that surely exists within all of us.
Let me share a little of what has happened since release. In the past five years, whenever I met someone who had played my game, there wasn’t a single person who didn’t ask, “When is your next work coming out?” The truth is, there hasn’t been a year I wasn’t making a game. Two years ago, when an air raid siren went off in the morning because of a mistake by the Seoul city government, my first thought wasn’t ‘Where should I evacuate to?’ but rather, ‘I need to make my game…’ — that much. The only difference was that the projects didn’t always make it to release.
Chasing Light received multiple honors, but in terms of sales, it didn’t do well.
It never earned enough to grow the team from a small club into a company, and I couldn’t stop the two friends who had developed the game with me from leaving for other paths. All of us graduated from university right at release, and they had to start building careers. I couldn’t ask them to gamble on indie game development yet again. Even now, they’re dear friends with whom I share strange jokes in our old college banter every week, but precisely because of that, I couldn’t hold them back.
Thanks to that—if that’s the right phrase—they are now all Master’s and PhD graduates, and Chasing Light has become a “graduate-level” game. I, meanwhile, am steadfastly bringing down our group’s average level of education.
Not long after the game’s release, I found myself alone. Though the things I wanted to make — and the works I had yet to show — were still piled high like mountains, I had neither the revenue nor the investment to begin the next project. Yet, as someone who had once created “a story of moving forward even through the deepest darkness,” I could not simply collapse where I stood. Even without money, I tried to gather people, little by little, and make a game together — but it was far from easy.
Unlike before, there was no longer the centripetal force of “university friends,” and with neither bonds nor capital, indie development starting from such emptiness could not last long. That cycle repeated, and one year, two years, three years passed, until I reached a point where I simply could not endure any longer.
And when I was told I could go no further, the game demo — into which I had poured every bit of energy from January last year to April this year, painstakingly piecing it together by scouring the internet and sending recruitment emails even to complete strangers on the other side of the globe — was met with the assessment: “The game is good, but we doubt whether it can be developed stably through to release.” As a result, we failed to secure investment. In other words, they could not trust a team made up of just a few young people lacking experience.
I do not agree with that view. History advances through courage that fears neither youth nor novelty. The renaissance of Korean cinema came thanks to ambitious but inexperienced young newcomers, and the veteran producers who dared to invest in them. Its decline, on the other hand, came from decision-makers trapped in the stale formulas of past successes, mistaking stagnation for stability.
If their true intention is to invest in the AI industry, then I have nothing more to say. But wait—A↗I↘...?
Before Chasing Light came out, there were 7 projects in 5 years that never saw the light.
Since Chasing Light’s release, there have now been 7 more.
A story of a play that begins anew endlessly, where everyone in the world is an actor.
A story of people in a history destined for collapse, each in different timelines, recognizing one another and struggling to save each other.
A story about human faith and myth, woven by a shaman mother and her actress daughter.
A story of a scholar who crumbles while watching the seasons repeat on a planet dispatched for domination.
A story of a blinded king in a castle above the clouds, chasing a runaway heir into a dream within a dream.
A story of a disgraced producer, retracing the fading, shattered fragments of memories and emotions one by one, as he prepares for an idol group’s final performance.
A story of the stars, struggling on the eve of another destruction, ten thousand years after the end of the universe.
In creating all of these stories, there has never been a single moment when I did not love the act of making, nor a moment when I was not sincere. Solely for you—the ones who would enjoy and be moved by them—I have always written stories that never existed in this world, driven by a sense of calling, and I take pride in having created games that had never been made before. I have never created through compromise, nor through servility. And yet, here I am. This situation feels so much like the days just before Chasing Light was released. At times, I’ve had to borrow money from friends and sell even my most treasured books and games secondhand just to keep going. Before parting with them on the store shelf, I always take a photo, promising, “I’ll come back for you someday!” …But when will I be able to see you again guys?
Still, as they say, it’s darkest before the dawn. Just the other day, I completed a story that I feel surpasses everything I’ve made before, Chasing Light included. With the resolve that this may be my last chance, I’ve begun developing it alone.
I first came up with the concept right after Chasing Light’s release, but it’s taken years to figure out how to weave it into a perfect, complete flow. Now that I’ve found an answer I’m satisfied with, I’m working to bring it into the world.
This is my first time making a game completely solo, and there are things I’m nervous about—but more than that, I want to place it in your hands, to see that moment when your emotions catch fire. Right now, I hope to finish within a year, though that may change depending on circumstances.
I had resigned myself to the thought that it was my fault that Chasing Light did not sell well—believing I had made a game too well-suited to simply be watched via streaming and set aside. But now, I’d like to allow myself to say something a little shameless.
But now, I’ll allow myself to say something a little shameless: if you enjoyed Chasing Light, please recommend it to others, and support it with your purchases and play.
My next work will be about the hope we may have lost, and the emotions we never dared face head-on—an experience far more powerful and moving than anything Chasing Light gave you.
I still carry untold stories within me, and I long to create feelings the world has never known.
To everyone who has chased the light,
Bae Sang Hyun