Hello all,

This is going to be long winded and might get a little emotional so I aplogize. Today, and I'm not even exagerating, I had the most amazing moment in my career as an indie game developer. A YouTube channel which has been a significant part of my life for over 8 years shouted out my game. I own the merch, I watch the live shows, and the Game Theory community was a big part if not the biggest part of what inspired me to make this game.

Beasts of Burden was my first official release and it has the roughness of a first game, there are many things I don't like about it. A little over a year ago I first started encountering Evertale ads and was sucked in by the promise of a deep Pokemon inspired psychological horror game with lore and layers to unpack, and like many others I was dissapointed to find that the promise was a lie. I took to the Game Theory subreddit to see if others had encountered it and if there was any truth to the game or even the lore of the ads and that post got over 700 Upvotes and 4 awards and in a moment that, without exageration, would change my life forever I decided to take the plunge and though I had tried and failed to learn Unity in the past I would put everything I had into making the vision of this game a reality.

With the help of a friend I made on the subreddit, Angry HotDog who aided with marketing, and my good friend Ram99 who aided with music and pixel art I began to design my own version of the Evertale promise. I focused on the Pokemon inspired aspects and attempted to create a GameBoy Advance inspired horror game based on my own childhood. I used the looping and repeating nature of the ads to shape the repeating level PT style of gameplay. I used my own love of The Game Theorists to craft deep lore hidden within an ARG that can be found in the game if you look hard enough and have a flayer for solving difficult puzzles. What I got? A broken, imperfect, first attempt at a game but a game nonetheless. I gave it my all and as you can see the response was... Mixed. But nevertheless I was happy.

The biggest thing I learned from my first attempt at Beasts of Burden had nothing to do with game development, and everything to do with achievement and creation. I have struggled my whole life with PTSD, anxiety, depression, and a whole host of other mental issues and struggles that would be too long to write about here. So many times I had started projects and abandoned them, too scared or lacking motivation to see anything through, and for the first time ever I truly put in the work. I came home from work and spent another 8 hours every night working on Beasts of Burden. I was utterly determined to make it a reality no matter how difficult. Was it good? Was it polished? Did people love it? No to all of the above but it was a game that I had finished, a working game that I was unbelievably proud of and finishing that game gave me the true sense of purpose I had been seeking.

So I made more games, I learned more, and I pursued a career as a fulltime developer. I came back to Beasts of Burden and gave it a massive update which added lighting and fixed many of the bugs but it was, and is, still an imperfect game. There are many bugs, visual glitches, and gramatical errors throughout and the looping nature doesn't do enough to keep itself interesting. These are issues I was aware of and planned to fix in time, but the game had not gained any traction and in my pursuit of fulltime game development I found that I had little time to work on my own games as I wanted to, instead spending most of my time doing freelance work for others.

I met someone here on Steam who kindly offered to help me form a plan to polish the game more, but once again it had faced such a lack of success I could not justify taking time away from paid work to work on a game that wouldn't further my overall goals. And then something incredible happend.

My game was mentioned and shouted out in the first 2 minutes of a Game Theory video and I am suddenly left with the justification I need to begin updating this game again. As a loyal Theorist the ARG and lore aspects I added were all inspired by The Game Theorists and it remained a pipe dream that it may one day end up in a Game Theory video but with how much time passed and how little attention it ultimately got I truly didn't believe this day would come.

I want to give the deepest and most humble thanks to MatPat, the entire GT crew, and the entire GT community for this amazing opportunity and make the most sincere promise that I will do everything I can to live up to chance I have been given. So let's talk about THE FUTURE:

My current plans revolve around fixing the gramar, and rebuilding the game from the ground up with polished visuals, improved Unity systems, and completely optimizing the code. I also would love to add more lore and secrets, maybe spice up the gameplay a bit. Or possibly this should serve as a demo and a full scale game is in order, let me know what you all think. I will read any and all comments to this anouncement or on any of my social media so please make your suggestions heard.

I would like to once again thank everyone involved for this amazing chance at publicity, it truly means the world and I will do everything I can to live up to it. Lastly, if you would like to see future versions of Beasts of Burden played on GTLive, or the lore of the game covered on a Game Theory, mak your voices heard because I know I would.

Love you all, and let's make this game into something I never thought it could be!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xM8J_AUHo