Hello friends,

I’m writing to you all from my last day here in Vienna. I’ve mentioned it before, but I spent the last two months as a sort of “prototype”. My life does still feel quite directionless, which has me trying to figure out a path forward. And I have learned, that when I don’t have a clear idea, just trying out things can help me find an answer. Creative process and all.

Anyway, before I get lost in the weeds of that, here’s the table of contents:

So, let’s back into the weeds. Two months in Vienna. How did it go?

“Solid.”

All in all it was a good choice and has definitely helped my mental health. But as you can imagine, it was also challenging it is way. I was fortunate to have a nice place to stay (thank you Eva and Harald) and a desk in the office of an indie studio (thank you Causa Creations). I’m quite thankful for friends like these, that helped make the fundamentals of this stay so effort- and frictionless. Otherwise I might not have been able to do this, depression and all.

Vienna in summertime is also a wonderful experience - outside of the heatwaves. There is just a lot of life in the city. So without an active social circle here I did my best to jump into that headfirst, to try to form some connections with people. I even installed some dating apps. But (quelle surprise!) making friends is hard. I would have liked to find some folks to spend some time with, maybe sitting in a cafe or going for a walk but that didn’t really happen. I’m leaving now without any strong new connections.

But it’s not all a loss - I got to do a few fun things, such as:

And it’s not like I spent all the time by myself. I managed to meet a few of the lovely people I know in Vienna at least once, a few even twice outside of work stuff! Because of course there was work stuff. Beyond building Crownbreakers (I’ll get to that in a minute), there were a number of gamedev events I joined.

Oh, and I’ve used that opportunity of meeting a lot of new people to experiment with a new name :)

First up was Spielefest Wien. My friends at Causa had a booth there to sell their game Sefirot, which I didn’t know. So I quickly got some of my tabletop RPGs sent to Vienna, so I could offer them there too. I also got to play a round of Daggerheart there, which was nice.

Then there were two rounds of the Vienna Game Dev Meetup. In summer they switch out their regular program of talks for a loose gathering in the city’s parks. These were both nice as I’ve been in the industry long (and active enough) that on events like these, I tend to run into folks I haven’t seen in a long time.

I spontaneously heard of another meetup, this time the Godot Usergroup Austria. They held the event in a nice little hackerspace where the various devs showed off their games for playesting. Even though I’m still working on Unity, I do really like Godot as an engine and it was nice to do what I do so often: Pour out a lot of feedback.

And as the final capstone this weekend, I joined the 3W6 Con 2026, a tabletop RPG convention for storygames. It’s a nice community and a good chance to try out a lot of new games. Check the Media section at the end for a list of what I played!

This year they also did a round of workshops with Jason Cordova (Brindlewood Bay, The Between and more) and Nathan D. Paoletta (World Wide Wrestling RPG and more), which were nice. I came out of that with a new idea for a game, so that’s good :)

The most obvious thing is that the Crownrbreakers Kickstarter completed successfully. I’m happy for everyone’s support! There’s still a bunch of work on my end, like setting up the backer survey. But that’s logistical stuff and I’m sure I’ll get to that soon.

I’ve also put in all the the meta game structure in preparation for Kickstarter early alpha access. I wrote a steam newspost detailing the system and I’m curious if you have nay thoughts.

Much more importantly: In the last few months, Mauro (designer of Into the Grid) has joined me as a freelancer and it’s been a great collaboration! He started just before I left for Vienna and in the weeks I was here we spent a lot of time brainstorming, calling and playtesting.

Together we met our goal and created and finalized all the cards, relics and stickers for each of the four playable characters! A monumental, and important task! Super happy with how far we got in the time we booked. So much so that I am hiring Mauro again for a second stretch, this time focusing on the districts, enemies and bosses. I’m excited to have us tackle that after gamescom.

Speaking of gamescom: Crownbreakers will be playable there as part of the Indie Arena Booth. The mfg (local funding body for my region in Germany) has offered me a slot at their group booth so I’ll be there with four other teams from the region!

If you want to come by, you can find me in Hall 10.2!

And to celebrate the occasion I’m also going to run a little giveaway during gamescom! If you are signed up to the Sharkbomb Studios newsletter at September 9th, you have a chance to win one of my released games! The three winners can each pick one of the following:

Oh, and with the help of my artist Salene we’ve overhauled the key artwork for Crownbreakers,creating new artwork that I have just uploaded to Steam! Check it out :)

I’ll need to find some time to propagate it to the various places the game is represented visually (like the website, social media profiles, press kit etc.) but I’ll do that after gamescom.

The publisher search has been successful! I’ve found a partner and an offer I am happy signing. We’re slowly gearing up collaboration while we hash out the legal side of things. That kind of business always takes longer than I want it to take, and eats up more time (and money) than I’d like but there’s really no way around it. Better set it up right and get all the legal ducks in a row.

But since we haven’t formally signed yet I can’t announce any details yet. But I’ll keep all y’all posted.

It’s a newsletter. There are things you could do. These are them:

What did I read or watch?

And here’s a peek at the ttrpgs I played at 3W6 Con:

And yeah, that’s this mailing! As always, thanks so much for reading and hanging out!

💚 Martin