This is the traditional review of the past year. May the New Year's Eve bring many miracles into your lives. In the meantime, we're going to review ComonGames studio's year 2019. Coming up with a review is always challenging and intensive. We browse through our developmental archives and journals, recalling what we were up to, and planning for the future. This is the usual pace of the game development industry: as we're finishing this article, you must be setting the New Year's festive dinner! However, this is the only way to get the most honest review of the year.
It was the fifth year of working on The Uncertain universe. The year's been challenging, full of ups and downs. We redesigned many things. The more we throw ourselves into work, the closer we get to the release, the more things to improve and redesign we find! Something that's been there from the start might feel uncomfortable now. Sometimes we find better solutions and change the game, trying to make it as high-quality as we can. As is often the case in game development, deadlines were miscalculated, and the team has changed again. At the end of the day, we're good, but deep changes like these never go easy. The studio has grown bigger. Now that there are more of us, and we reorganized the process of development, we're looking to the future with confidence.
We developed a range of different skills and practices what we were good at. There were a lot of new fields that we tried out for. You can read more in the series of articles about the team, which will be continued in 2020.
The game is way more advanced and developed than part one. It's only natural: we gain experience, and The Uncertain universe grows up with us. Perfectionism might be a slippery slope, but still, we hope you'll appreciate our effort. We transformed and improved Emily's appearance almost a dozen times. Not to mention her hair... but you must have heard this epic story :)
We found a publisher, who also brought out some issues in the development process. It's always good for a project to acquire not only investments and marketing opportunities, but also "smart money": the past experience on different projects, the ability to identify gaps and deficiencies, and the knowledge of how to fix them.
While completing part two, we've already started part three! We're really looking forward to showing you a little something in the upcoming year. So far, this is as much as we can tell you. All in good time. We wouldn't want to spoil it for you!
We did a great job together with our new narrative designer Sergey Chekmaev. We finalized the story and narrative in 2019. Sergey worked outside his standard duties: together, we visited several showcases and events—our script even received the prestigious German award "The Greatsword of Northern Lands". We also went to the 108 Minutes space festival and fantasy and sci-fi festival Starcon in Kaluga and Saint Petersburg in Russia.
The game world is coming to life. Characters get animations and voices. We recorded Tatiana Sheetova for some of the VOs: she's the official Yandex Alisa's voice and Tissaia de Vries in the Witcher series. She's also the official Russian Emily's voice in our game.
We came to like writing long reads, and created over ten articles about the development process, the studio team, and the game universe. We hope that you like them too! Here's a question to our most dedicated readers: tell us what you'd like to read about in the upcoming year. Leave your comments in the comment section.
Our news readers, our players who play part one and is waiting for the release of part two—all of you are our community, who supports us and guides us through our work. We have a pretty big treasure by the end of the second decade of the XXI century: 1100 subscribers on Steam, 4600 followers on VK and 12 000 on Facebook. Thank you for your support!
We couldn't ignore the fan art we've been receiving from you! Just like other large-scale projects: we have drawings, paper models, and 3D-printed models. Seeing the game world growing beyond the virtuality is very important for a game developer. We deeply appreciate your creativity.
A thorough development is only one side of a project. Apart from that, it also needs testing. Otherwise it might become obsolete even before the release date and accumulate tons of glitches and bugs. We completed a Beta, which revealed some weak spots. There's a lot to do, but we aren't discouraged: we know exactly what we need to do.
Last but not least, here's some real-life news: we rented and equipped an office space in Moscow. It's a big step for us. Until now, the whole ComonGames team worked remotely. The project will surely benefit from our offline meetings. We won't lie to you, it's very nice to see our colleagues in person! :)
This is the end of the year 2019. 2020 is coming. The release date is planned. In 2020, we'll work on part three and complete the story of the universe. There's so much to do. We're very grateful to all of you who's been following the development of the game universe with us. It doesn't matter whether you can recall the very first demo versions of the game or have followed us just recently. Every player matters. May the New Year bring happiness to each and every one of you. Let the scary stories about the future remain a fantasy. May the real life keep your families together, and each day brings you hope. Happy New Year!
Lots of love,
ComonGames Team