Dear Scholars,
Welcome to the very first development update! In this periodic series of posts we'll be highlighting some of the features and content we've been recently working on. Sit down, relax and read the first part of the story behind a quest to bring back the long lost essence of fantasy RPGs and introduce the most intriguing take on the roguelike genre you've seen in a long time - a game that's ambitious, deep, challenging and unlike anything you've seen in past years. A game that's already almost 6 years in the making. "Why so long?" - you may ask. Let us continue and find out.
Prehistory
In order to start from the very beginning, we need to go back a whopping 9 years. Let me put plurals aside for now since there was no "us" back in the day. It was just me - Wiktor - and I had already decided that when I start my own studio, a roguelike would be my debut game. Not just any roguelike - one that would combine modern action with strategic and tactical gameplay known from cRPGs and traditional roguelikes. Moreover, I wanted to make a game that would had that serious, ominous tone to it - something I miss deeply from the oldschool cRPG classics.
So I made some spreadsheets, wrote down some basic gameplay ideas, made a couple of rough 3D models and quickly realized I wasn't experienced enough to take up the ambitious project I had dreamt of just yet. In fact, I was just entering my 20s and was about to find my first gamedev gig.
That little 3D mockup of a dungeon I had made bacame one of my portfolio pieces that landed me my first 3D art job. Thus, my project has been put into a long slumber that lasted over 3 years.
The child's birth
At some point I felt it's finally time to go indie and start a project for real. I told my friend Squallu about my plans and we started brainstorming on things we could create. We wrote down some initial ideas regarding a sci-fi game we had in mind but shortly after I started feeling like I'm not actually very excited about it and that I still want to make that dark fantasy isometric action roguelike. I pitched my vision to Squallu and he immediately got filled with enthusiasm about gameplay I described. Soon after we laid down first ideas for the game's story.
On August 11th 2016 I officially started the development of Project Anxiety - a game that would later become Selenwald. I saved enough money to survive the time needed to make a quality demo that would enable me to fund the rest of the development. Or so I thought..
Turned out a couple of months wasn't even close to being enough for me to make something good enough to dare show it to publishers or to you - the players (eg. via Kickstarter). The project was still in its infancy and I needed to get a job back to sustain myself. I was naive but at least I knew hiring all the people I needed to finish the game in reasonable time without sacrificing quality and retaining cohesion of my vision would cost a lot of money and nobody would give it to me based on what I had at the time. It's not entirely that I still lacked the skills (though of course I wish I was as experienced back then as I am now) but the sheer amount of work required to make a quality demo of an AA game is overwhelming for one person. Things didn't look optimistic but I would never give up. Instead, a slow climb up the mountain began - one that took a couple of years.
Another question that might have popped up in your heads by now is "Why alone? Why didn't you seek like-minded people that would join you as partners, not employees? And what happened to your colleague Squallu?"
Well, I didn't seek to build a team for several reasons, actually.
Going solo
First of all, that's much more difficult than it sounds. I know it sometimes happens in indie gamedev but I heard of much more examples of when it didn't pan out. Sadly, I've been personally disappointed by people more times than I can count. Some people are just lazy. Some get quickly discouraged when something doesn't go as originally planned. Some just don't have the motivation to pursue a goal that is years away.
Most importantly though, people have lives - things happen, priorities change, hearts get broken. Very few people are willing to sacrifice their financial stability and put relations with their partners, families and friends at risk for several years. That was the reason Squallu didn't end up commiting after all (though he was the only person I was willing to co-found the studio with at the time). He had a lot of other responsibilities in life, as well as two jobs that he didn't feel he was ready to abandon in the sake of a project he had no way of knowing would succeed. After helping lay down the story foundation, he stepped down to only serve as a helpful hand in times of need. After getting experience in the industry as a producer, he decided he would happily stay in the project as an executive producer, which means a person who isn't directly involved in the project, but steps in once in a while to consult stuff like budgeting, milestones, business negotiations, etc. And that's great too!
Secondly, splitting decision-making between people equally is always a huge risk that the game stops being coherent and true to the original vision. In practice there's rarely more than one vision-holding person who knows precisely what fits the game and what doesn't. I really wanted to created something exceptional and I didn't want to let it get compromised.
Lastly, I have a solid vision on what direction I want Unnamable Arts (the studio) to head in once Selenwald gets released. As you've probably learned to expect, those plans are very ambitious. And as we all know by now, ambitious plans are costly. No matter how successful Selenwald becomes, I want to put the vast majority of the revenue into the production of more games that are even bigger and better. This is more important to me than personal wealth. Again, that's not something I would be in a position to expect from others if the studio's ownership (and revenue from the game) was split between several people. In practice, my ability to take the studio to where I want could become crippled.
About to get big
That period from 2016 to 2020 was a slow but gradual build-up. One of my goals was to make solid foundations in preparation to finally get some other people to work on the game with me. 2020 marked the beginning of a new era for the project. Project Anxiety, from that point known as Prime Delusion was about to accelerate with a lot of new people getting involved but that also came with a whole host of perils. Make sure to read the next entry of this diary next month to learn the rest of the story so far.
Thank you for reading,
Wiktor