Hey everyone,
After releasing our first game, Tether Brawl, we spent some time taking a step back and thinking about where we wanted to go next as an indie studio.
Tether Brawl taught us a lot and became an important stepping stone for LEVEL 126. While we’re proud of what the game became, it was difficult to continue justifying putting huge amounts of time into it from a business perspective. Moving onto a new project felt like the best decision for the future of our small, indie studio.
Even so, we are genuinely proud of what Tether Brawl achieved.
Once we had that break and some time to reflect, starting the next game felt like the natural step forward.
There were definitely doubts at first. Questions about whether beginning another big project was the right move.
One of the first things we did was create an early prototype using assets we already had sitting in our backlog. Seeing everything come together into an actual playable environment was honestly really exciting.
The idea behind the game is this:
You wake up inside an abandoned sci-fi facility with no memory of who you are or what happened there. As you explore, you fight hostile robots and uncover the mystery behind the facility, the disappearance of its people, and your own identity.
Since then, we’ve been steadily developing the project, now called ECHO CORE.
One of the bigger challenges recently has been reworking a lot of the game’s programming and systems behind the scenes. In simple terms, this means rebuilding parts of the game so they are cleaner, more scalable, and much easier to work with long-term.
It took time, but it will help the project massively move forward.
Something else that helped a lot was taking that break after Tether Brawl and talking more with our local game development community.
Even at this early stage, seeing the first level come together and actually look good feels like a small but exciting win for us.
Getting positive reactions from people we showed it to has also been really motivating.
More than anything, we’re just excited to eventually get the game into people’s hands.
The next major milestone for us is Steam Next Fest this June.
We’re also moving toward having one shared Discord server for all LEVEL 126 projects instead of separate servers for each game.
We’d love to have you there ❣️: Discord Community
Thanks for following along and supporting us. Stay tuned.