What's up dudes. I promised I'd write a bit about how making an adventure game in 2018 is. Spoiler: it's hard as hell.
We started working on Gibbous back in 2015, working on the concept and demo in between contract work. It was really only in 2016, when we were funded on Kickstarter, that we could say to hell with client work and dedicate our lives to this game, and that's no exaggeration. I've taken 3 weeks of holiday in a bit over two years, and have been working 10-12 hrs straight for about a year now.
If you're making an indie game, an adventure is about the least cost-effective genre you could work in, other than maybe RPGs. You have 30 scenes in your game, that's 30 high-res detailed environment to paint (we have almost 70). And we're talking resolutions anywhere from HD (1920x1080) up to 6000x5000px. Some backgrounds in this game took me two weeks to paint.
Did I mention there were three of us for most of production? Two artists/animators/musicians and a programmer. I've got a lot of creative inclinations and I love wearing many hats. It was cool to do music and artwork one day, animation and writing/designing the other... On the other hand, we've embarked on making a game that would realistically probably take at least 15-20 people to make. How do you make up for that? Work some more! Screw social life, screw everything, this is your dream, make it happen. I'm not 20 years old anymore - I'm freakin' 36, and this insane work ethic has taken its toll on me. I could barely even notice my tinnitus back in 2016, now when I go to sleep it's like a stack of old TVs tuned to static and turned up to 11 in my head. But that's Ok, we're close to the finish line, and I'm super proud of what me and my team have accomplished.
This is a to-be-continued, I need to get back to editing voices and mixing music and cutting cutscenes and doing social media and ---
Anyway, this week we finally put our new trailer and Steam page up. Super proud right now, I won't lie.
And this is our Steam page. If Gibbous looks like something you'd dig, we'd truly appreciate you wishlisting it. Launching on Steam (which we hope to do this Autumn) is a super scary thing, and the more people wishlist our game the better the chances of getting eyes on the game are.
That's the thing - I'm convinced we've put enough passion and love and work into this project that people will buy it and support us in our dream to making games; what is scary is having to fight over gamers' attention with thousands of other projects, and being in a super niche genre. That's why every share and retweet counts. Telling someone really helps.
Thanks for reading, guys. I'll be back with more adventure-making thoughts later