First of all, Happy New Year ːcleahappyː! All of our lives from start to finish is barely a blink in the grand scheme of things. For us to share this period together, and to live in an era where games exist? Life is good ːcleasunniesː.
Clea truly saved me. Not my life, to be clear! Well, kind of. I mean my game dev life.
Back in the Unhack days, to be honest, no matter what you created, once you made it onto Steam, you are guaranteed to sell at least moderately well. As the years ticked by, things took a downturn for a lot of us. Visual novels especially became less and less viable (for me at least).
I believe The Last Birdling is better than Cursed Sight. Also, I think Without Within 3 is the best in that trilogy. The sales numbers, however, do not reflect this. I in fact lost money for several years because of those titles.
The Last Birdling won VN Nows’ game of the year, and some players who read it felt inspired to share with me some personal stories. I even received a physical gift (a painting) from a fan. These obviously brought me great joy. Unfortunately, they did not translate into money/survival. If I wished to make more visual novels, I would have to change the type of stories I told, switch genres, or do something else.
I picked the last option.
Clea did not arrive smoothly after that. If you follow our social media channels, you may have seen glimpses of a game named “Gaia: Birth of the Motherland”.
Gaia was produced from start to finish. I put in the hours, paid for the art, music and voice clips. Unfortunately, when all was said and done, I had to say no, this is not a good game. The gameplay is extremely stock. You go through the motions, and when my own game fails to make me respond emotionally in any way, I cannot possibly put it out there.
The fault was my own. My bad design choices. Everyone else on the team did a great job. Aside from the sunk costs, I also shouldered the guilt of everyone’s works never being shown to the world.
First, we have the visual novel crash (or mine anyway), followed by a year of work, only to result in a mediocre, unreleased title. Things were looking dire.
So, how did Clea come about? There is no dramatic backstory to it. I demanded myself to do a better job, and I just so happened to have played Alien Isolation and the Resident Evil 1 Remake during that period, so I felt inspired. Truly, I never associate any romantic notions with game development. There is no muse I am waiting on. When it is time to grind, we will grind.
Fortunately, the codebase from Gaia did not fall to waste. Clea was in fact programmed on top of Gaia’s foundations. Some players are surprised Clea only took about a year to create, but as you can see, there is a story behind it.
For my sake, Clea thankfully turned out well. The presentation, gameplay, ambience—everything is several steps above Gaia. This means I felt happy enough to ship it. Still, it had been a few years since I last released a traditional game (since Unhack and Bermuda). With the current market situation, will this result in another failure?
To my relief, Clea outperformed The Last Birdling and Without Within 3 combined within the first few weeks. Best of all, thanks to Clea, I have at last achieved my goal of publishing a title onto consoles. Clea, and all of you, have made my dreams come true.
In return, I have offered plenty of free updates through the past few months. Clea now features a chaos+ mode, invisible challenge, a camera feature, and even an arcade mode where you can compete for high scores. On top of all that, Clea’s dress is moddable, and I (along with other gamers) have piled a decent collection (not to mention the unlockable in-game costumes):
https://steamcommunity.com/app/981020/guides/
Clea is a 2D survival horror without jump scares. The Whitlock Mansion is infested with Chaos Servants who dynamically roam the floors in search for their prey. As Clea, players must outwit these hunters and escape from this nightmare. Clea is available on Steam, with the Switch and Xbox One versions aimed for 2020. The game is on discount while the Winter Sale lasts:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/981020/Clea/
Many thanks ːcleachaosː!