Musical greetings, dear friends!
In the coming weeks we want to tell you more about Symphonia and its backgrounds, and we will do this with the making-of series “Behind the Symphony” here on Steam. And for today's first making-of, let's dive deeper in the conception of Symphonia. As you might already know, Symphonia started off as a simple student game before becoming a more ambitious project.
Everything started in 2019, in the French video game school, ISART Digital … There, 13 students in their last year of studies gathered together to work on a 2D platforming game. At the time, the only elements that we already knew about Symphonia were that this would be a 2D platformer in which you wield a tool in order to bounce on the ground and catapult yourself along the walls.
With a lot of brainstorming, we decided that the tool would be a violin bow, wielded by a violinist in a musical world. It proved to be an enticing decision, as it raised intriguing questions about the context of the game: What is this musical world? Why is this violinist traveling? Are there other musicians?
Just like that, Symphonia was born.
We spent the whole year developing the original student game version of Symphonia, finally building a complete 30 minute experience, with a beginning and an end. Our objective was to earn our diploma, but most importantly we wanted to showcase how our creativity and technical knowledge could lead to creating wonders. We wanted people to delve deep into the world of Symphonia, and we already felt that there was potential to tell further interesting stories in this wonderful universe.
It was then released on Itch.io in the summer of 2020, and on GOG in the summer of 2021. After that, everything went fast: we participated in many student awards ceremonies and even won some of them; e.g. "Best Student Game" at GSA BAFTA 2021, Pégases 2021, BIG Festival 2021, finalist at the Unity Awards … this recognition was very heartwarming, but it also helped us realize further that the project had potential to be more!
We finally decided to found our own company in 2021: Sunny Peak 🌄. Together, we would embark on a new adventure and try to create a much more ambitious game as an indie game development studio. To make it happen, we are accompanied by our publisher Headup 🗿, who understood our vision very early, and helped us with numerous tasks like helping with marketing, and funding our development process among other things.
Of course, we have many more people to thank for helping us create Symphonia and for supporting us for so many years. But that will be for another making-of perhaps! Until then take care, and see you soon for the next update - this will be an exciting one. Promise! 😊
Talk to you again really soon!
Sunny Peak
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1865960/Symphonia/