Digging, digging, digging - out of a Hole

Hello friends,

my last message was in September so it’s about time to check back in with everyone. Since I talked about my downturn in mental health last time, let’s start off with that:

I’ve been doing a lot better lately. I’ve started psychotherapy and after some trials, the second antidepressants I’ve started taking have helped somewhat. Unfortunately they also have a terrible side effect: greatly amplifying my tinnitus. I’m currently reducing the dosage to get off of them again in the hopes that the annoying ringing will go down again. But besides that, things are looking up.

A big part of that was my participation in The Rabbit. What is that, you ask?

The Rabbit is a rare thing: An artist residency aimed at game developers. A residency generally means that you get lodging, sometimes meals, and/or a stipend to work on a project. I applied for this at the beginning of the year and was lucky enough to get selected.

So I spent the month of November holed up with 14 other game developers in an old farmhouse/manor converted into the co-living/co-working space Coconat, about an hour from Berlin, in the middle of nowhere.

Once I got the good news that I was accepted, I eventually found myself looking forward to it. I hoped that getting out of my usual surroundings and being in a social structure with other game developers might help break me out of my rut. And thankfully it did that, eventually. All the folks I’ve met there have been incredibly kind and lovely!

Here’s the other teams:

As part of the program we also joined the Games Ground event in Berlin and pitched our games in front of a live audience. It was a great experience and the feedback from the judges was really good and useful. I’m thinking of uploading a cut together version of my pitch on the Sharkbomb TikTok.

At the moment, the focus for Crownbreakers is the demo. The game overall is shaping up well and this November I put a lot of work into the tutorial. Frequent playtests with copious notes after each one…

All of that culminated in showcasing Crownbreakers at Comic Con in Stuttgart, which was a great experience. All the hard work has paid off and people were having a great time playing. Of course I took more notes to improve things but the changes get smaller every time…

My biggest question about the demo right now is how and when to release. I do want to put in a little effort into marketing that moment, so I’ve started posting on reddit more actively. I finally started using that TikTok account with some short videos, too.

My two interns Ivan and Kylie have jumped on board in the middle of September and it’s been good to have them on board. They are both remote so that create a need for a good communication discipline but so far it’s been going quite well.

Ivan has been working on more districts, helping me flesh out more classes while Kylie has started with new graphics for the relics, so that they’re no longer placeholder icons.

I’ve also finally gotten the time to start overhauling the city screen. It’s another one of these placeholders up until now. It took a while to figure out the right scale and level of detail but now it’s starting to come together! It’s quite a lot of fun, especially that orbit camera that feels nicely responsive.

It was a lot of fun to put that together. Probably because it finally gave me a reason to experiment with blender’s geometry nodes: A way to procedurally generate 3d models. In this case I use simple 2d outline to generate 3d volumes of various height. Quite happy with how that turned out. However there’s still lots to do until it looks right, currently it’s a bit boring and doesn’t fit the overall vibe, but I think we’ll get there!

That said: I’m super curious about your ideas: How do YOU think it should look?

Aside from working on the city visuals, I also delved deeper into the structure of the districts: The places controlled by the tyrants that you go to to try and break their hold on the city. So far each district had a sequence of stages, each one capped by a boss. That felt solid but it also lacked variety and player choice a bit.

So together with my intern Ivan we thought about possible ways to solve it and came up with the concept we called the “hitlist”:

Now each district has one tyrant and multiple lieutenants. Each of these has their own route, with slightly different mechanics and configurations. Say one has lots of burning areas that are quite dangerous, another is wide open but has unique constructs present. All of that create a texture of different situations that want different solutions from the players, by modifying the generator that builds the levels.

It also gives each of these places a different texture within the larger district. It gives more windows into these places. Plus it lets the player choose boss to go up against! And once they caused enough mayhem they can finally face off against the Tyrant! 

It’s one of those nice moments where a mechanic comes together well, solving problems in the game design and also making the narrative connection stronger.

The Ex Novo crowdfunding campaign is now almost done! The books have been printed and most of them have been shipped to folks all over. Only about 40 backers haven’t filled in their information yet. Everyone else should either have their physical rewards already or should be getting them soon.

So far everything went quite smoothly. We even managed to solve the tariff problems and get some Ex Novo copies sent to the US! Now all that’s left is waiting for the stragglers, sending out the remaining packages and rewards, and then wrapping up.

Here’s a chunk of things you can do to support and/or stay in touch!

The best thing to support my games stuff (short of buying them) is to wishlist! So if you haven’t already, go and wishlist Crownbreakers on Steam!

I've started uploading some short form videos and I've been having fun with them. There are more to come! For example, I'm planning to upload some insights into my time at the Rabbit and Comic Con! So make sure to follow! Make number go up.

It's still a bit away but I am planning a crowdfunding campaign for Crownbreakers in the beginning of next year. Subscribe to the pre-launch page on Kickstarter stay up to date!

This one is even further away but I am also planning a printed edition of my (solo) tabletop game Ex Umbra that has you build dungeons as you play. As above, if that sounds interesting follow along on Kickstarter!

And to close it out, here’s the media I’ve checked out since last time:

I’ve probably missed a few things but that’s all for now.

See you soon.

Martin