Here’s what I’ll probably be working on this year. Life is unpredictable and details may change, so don’t take this as dogma. It’s more like a weather report.
Leftover from 2011:
- Traitor. My casual shoot ’em up with RPG elements and a strange setting. It’s been done for a while, but I’ve been polishing and improving it. Hoping it will find a decent sponsorship soon.
- Catroidvania: Communist Space Cats of Venus. I was almost done with this game before a series of events derailed me a bit, but I’m going to go back and clean it up, make it more streamlined and straightforward. This will also be up for sponsorship.
- Untitled Twine Game. A text game made with Twine. Not revealing details yet. Not a huge project, but I’m really fond of it.
2012 projects:
- Our children’s book (in Greek), currently titled In the Shadow of the Invisible King. I need to send the publisher my finished draft, but I honestly think this book is going to be awesome. Verena’s illustrations are stunning. If it does well in Greece, we might be able to get out an English edition.
- Nexus City. The insane RPG I’m making with Terry Cavanagh. A big project, but one that you won’t regret having waited for.
- The Nexus City prequel. A smaller game introducing the world and some of the characters. Not really a prequel, actually, but more of a standalone story. Great fun and featuring a protagonist I’m really looking forward to sharing with the world.
- Untitled Lands of Dream game. A commercial (not very expensive) Lands of Dream game, similar in some ways to The Strange and Somewhat Sinister Tale of the House at Desert Bridge. To be released somewhere around late March. I’ll be posting more information about it soon.
- Ithaka of the Clouds (previously referred to as the Troll Game). The other big project of the year, this will be an enormous game set in the Lands of Dream. The graphics alone will take Verena many more months to complete. It’s an adventure and a love story and I’m greatly looking forward to it.
- The Starving Artist Cooking Show. Yes, this is definitely happening. People really seemed to like the first episode, so we’re putting up an IndieGoGo campaign to help us finance a website for it. If that works out, episodes will appear on a regular basis.
- Commentarium. Our film site died an ignoble death last year due to issues with the server, but it’s going to make a comeback this year. Possibly with video reviews. We have to do this, if only to be able to share all the film-related thoughts clogging up our minds.
Potential Projects:
- A Candle in the Dark. I was hugely looking forward to this project, but then I found out Multimedia Fusion couldn’t really do Flash platformers (or rather it could, but there were inexplicable slowdowns on many systems). It’s still going to happen in some form, but that might depend on our financial situation.
- Rise Like Lions. I rarely have good ideas for game mechanics, being more of a story/content kind of guy, but this one is too good to pass up. The form it will ultimately take will depend on how other projects go. Besides, it forms a sort of thematic trilogy with Traitor and Catroidvania, so I’m definitely not abandoning it.
- Untitled Exploration Game. A new take on the original, unreleased version of Phenomenon 32. A game about exploring an alien world and learning to survive in it. As above, details will depend on finances.
These plans are ambitious, of course, and the list doesn’t even include some of the film projects I’d like to work on; hell, it doesn’t even include some of the game-related things I might do. Much of it will depend on how much money we’ve got available – we’re looking at every possibility right now, including grants (if you know something relevant in Germany, please let me know!). I’m becoming increasingly aware of needing to treat the business aspects of game development more seriously, but I think that I can get to a place where we turn the making of art into something we can survive doing. 2011 was a struggle at times, but we’re not willing to surrender.
Your support in all of this will become increasingly important, and I’m not just talking about donations (though the Oneiropolis Compendium will keep going, because I love it). Our biggest problem with The Book of Living Magic was getting the word out, and it’ll be the same with many of these projects. There’s an audience out there for what we do, but we’re not going to reach it without word of mouth. We’ll need you to write to your favourite sites, to vote stuff up on StumbleUpon, to spread the word on Twitter and Facebook. Games are nothing without players, after all.
That’s it for now. A lot more might come up; if we can get some kind of funding, all sorts of other possibilities will open up. Either way, it’ll be an interesting year.
