Oh hey there, youngster!
People say that time moves faster and faster as you age. My last Ballyhoo marked 4 weeks to the Crashlands 2 launch, and I was so excited about how close that was. The blink of an eye! But 4 weeks was still an eternity for the youths, who only rolled their eyes and yelled, "That might as well be next century, old man!" as they vaped off into the sunset.
But now we're only 2 weeks away, which is truly Soon™ no matter how old you are! I think?
As the launch approaches, I've been feeling rather nostalgic about the original Crashlands and how far we've come with Crashlands 2. So this issue of the Ballyhoo is a little journey down memory lane.
Crashlands 1
Back in 2016 my two brothers and I launched the original Crashlands. It was our first game that paid any bills and is still the game we're best known for all these years later. It's been played by literally millions of people, which is both amazing and terrifying. Making Crashlands was a harrowing experience (there's a whole documentary about it), and honestly I'm still amazed we pulled it off!
(If you never played the original, or just want a refresher, someone did a delightfully-narrated 100% playthrough video edited down to a mere 2 hours!)
The success of Crashlands gave us all kinds of cool opportunities. From giving talks at the Game Developers Conference, to getting a tour of the Nintendo of America HQ, to being nominated for GOTY awards alongside juggernauts like Pokemon Go and Clash Royale.
Crashlands 2
We were super proud of what we'd made with the original game, but we were also quite aware that it wasn't the game we wished we could make. We'd only been making games for a couple of years when we started working on Crashlands, and we frankly didn't have the experience to make the game we imagined.
So we spent a few years retooling our studio, skilling up, expanding our team, and learning through launching another game (Levelhead). And then it was time to tackle Crashlands again, this time to make exactly the game we'd always wanted Crashlands to be. It still took a few years of research & development to become possible, and then another few years to finish the thing, but we did it!
You can get a sense of just how far we've come between the original and the sequel from some of the videos we put together over the past year:
- The release date announcement trailer shows off the benefits of changing from a procedural world to a hand-built one.
- Base-building probably has the most dramatic upgrade in Crashlands 2. Walls are tall! And buildings have roofs!
- Combat got the biggest experience upgrade. We made sure there's room for more casual play (my own preference) but the ceiling for just how interesting things can get is now a lot higher!
- Pets got more interesting, too!
Fin
Crashlands 2 is almost here, and the best thing you can do to support the game right now is to wishlist it ahead of time on your favorite platforms to let the stores know that they should be featuring it!
That's it for this Ballyhoo! As always, you can stay up to date with how things are going by listening to our podcast and hanging out in our Discord.
💖,
Adam Coster
Webslinger @Butterscotch Getoffmylawnigans