Hello everyone!
This post marks our first development update where we will be discussing various things related to The House of Hamelin to try and keep the community updated on what is going on inside Wither Studios. We will be shooting for doing a new post semi-regularly depending on how we busy we are.
So, let's get into it!
Wither Studios
We wanted to include a small introduction to our team in this post to provide more insight into the company. We are a small independant studio based out of Pittsburgh, PA in the United States. As of right now, we have 4 team members working on The House of Hamelin. Each of us do this on the side as we have since the inception of our studio meaning we are driven purely out of our passion to make (hopefully great) games.
The inner workings of our company is perhaps a bit more fluid than most. Each time we start a new project we do internal pitches and select amongst those to start as a next project. We then decide who is going to serve as the "director" of that project (typically whoever pitched it) which we have found is needed in order to maintain a consistency in what the project is. However, we all work in a more relaxed environment and are able to freely collaborate on the various aspects of the game.
So who are we? Well, our main team consists of...
Steve Gabry - Director, Writer, Game Design, Card Art
Michael Thomas (that's me!) - Programmer, Game Design, Enemy AI
John Cobb - Character Artist, VFX, Animation, Technical Art
DD - Level Designer, Environment Construction
Our Journey So Far
The House of Hamelin started its life known as Project Unending Death. This early version was a smaller scoped version than what we have now which saw players going through dark caverns battling monsters using cards along the way. It was meant to be infused with survival horror elements in order to try to bring something new and interesting to the deckbuilding genre.
Early on, we actually did a physical prototype to test out our ideas and develop the fundamentals of combat. In fact, we have a picture of just this!
After that, we started work on the game itself. During this phase, we played around with the different mechanics as well as presentation. It didn't take long for us to learn just how important UI is when it comes to deckbuilders! Here is a screenshot of the early prototype which was initially designed to be 2D:
Since that early prototype, we have went through many different ideas and iterations of the core mechanics established in those early prototypes. Additionally, we implemented what we refer to as "exploration" which is the part of the game where you wander the house between combat segments. At one time, this actually worked in more of a free roam style where you would move in a more typical first-person style (using WASD or an analog stick).
This brings us to now which has been (checks notes and gasps) almost 3 years since we initially started what is now The House of Hamelin!
Looking Forward
With the recent release of the demo through Steam Next Fest, the public got a taste of what we have been cooking up. We were able to collect some valuable feedback and now we are looking to re-work some aspects of the game alongside continued development of new content.
Some of you may be wondering when we plan to actually release into Early Access. Well, we are not ready to share any release date quite yet. I can say that it will not be coming anytime soon as there is still much to be done! When we do share a date, it will most likely be multiple months out from the announcement.
So that ends this first post! If anybody has any questions feel free to respond to this post or in our steam discussions. You can also follow us on social media (Instagram, TikTok, X), sign up for our newsletter, or join our discord where you can talk with us directly.
Thanks for being interested in our weird little project!
- Michael Thomas