Hello!
First, apologies for the year long silence. If you only follow the development of All Living Things here on Steam and you don't follow me on twitter or instagram you might be unaware of what is going on with the game.
As a solo developer I have spent the last year trying to find a publisher or an appropriate grant that would enable me to hire fellow animators and coders to help bring All Living Things to its full visual and gameplay potential. Initially, the intent of the game was to create more complex puzzles as the game progresses. Some of you have accurately assessed that the puzzles are too simple. While I personally have nothing against designing a game that is by design and intent simple, I understand that there are some expectations of games on Steam to be of a certain length to be considered "worth the price".
In All Living Things each clickable element has to have a an animated idle and transformation animation between its stages. If we have three clickable elements like most of the current puzzles in the demo, that amounts to 24 transitions (a factorial of 3) to animate. Not bad! But, if we want to make a slightly more complex puzzle of 6 elements, this number grows to 720! There are many design tricks to work around this, but even then I knew I would need help.
When the demo came out I was approached by many publishers who all eventually pulled out after several meetings and me explaining the costs and goals of a game like this. I do not begrudge them, this is certainly an experimental and risky project to invest in.
What am I doing to fix this situation
I have since applied to several European grants. While i've received some initial funding to help kickstart the project, the major grant, Creative Europe, has declined my proposition for this game. Writing these grants is a job and expertise on its own (and it takes a big chunk of your time!) but I am excited to learn it. It is to be expected that I will be rejected a first couple of tries. I am also taking every job I can as usual to keep my head above water.
Many have suggested crowd funding! While I personally have nothing against crowd funding, I do not feel confident in running a Kickstarter campaign. I would struggle to deal with community updates and creating side products as rewards that are of respectable quality while also balancing the trials of game development. I also do not feel comfortable with speculative investment. If you give me money I want you to get something in return.
On that note, enter Ibis VR!
The development of All Living Things has pushed me to develop many unique tools that I love using.
One unique selling point of the game is its stop-motion aesthetic. VR Stop-Motion animation is something I've been developing for half a decade now and it has become a staple of my style. With the acquisition and death of one significant VR tool, I was forced to make my own VR sculpting app, except this one has animation fully integrated in it!
This is an in-house tool I planned to release with All Living Things, I have done some work to make it more user friendly and will be releasing it on steam on Early Access. It is now being tested by a select group of VR artists and I am excited to hear their feedback before release.
I understand that many of you are not artists and see no use for this, but if you want to help fund development, this is an avenue that I feel is fair towards you. And for the artists among you, I hope this will contribute to your workflow!
Feedback
With that out of the way, lets address some feedback we received from the demo!
I am very happy with both positive and negative feedback, I am also very grateful for the press the game has received and the kind words. It really keeps the project alive and makes me push myself to find a way to finish this.
Initially, I insisted to make this game difficult to parse. I think it's important for our media-diet to have art that resists you and makes you sit in the cloud of unknowing. Ive meant to emulate my initial experience with the Hermetic tradition - isnt it nice to be surprised by something and to find something that haunts you, as in, it is unresolved in your heart?
That said, I agree the game lacks a certain thread or conveyance. I have addressed some design limitations in the beginning of this post and since I doubt I will be able to make the game I initially planned I am going back to square one and I am designing the first set of puzzles again.
I still intend to follow the alchemical tradition but it will now be framed as an allegory!
Future changes and new demo
In this new iteration of the game we will follow a hare in his journey into the underworld! While I dont want to reveal too much too early, we will still follow the 12 stages of alchemical transformation inspired by the Ripley Scroll (and by the Egyptian Amduat).
The game will maintain its aesthetic and mechanic, but the framing changes. I feel this is a significant enough change to necessitate a new demo. I understand many of you might have wishlisted the game based on what it is now, so this will give you chance to sample the product again and see if you agree with your wishlist. I expect that this will be a much shorter game in the end (my estimate is between 30-60 minute gameplay) but I hope I am making a game you will return to every couple of years to extract something new from it.
Finally, thank you for your patience and support for this project, I was surprised and delighted by the reaction. I am learning the ropes of game development so there are many stops and starts and bad decisions.