So this month, we’ve thought we better start a bit of a blog to log all the changes and share progress we’re making over the next few months/years. It’s also serving a way of us noting our monthly goals and sharing them with you all. This is particularly important, as we’re currently all bootstrapping the game, we hope it’s a good insight for everyone to see how much commitment and passion it takes to create a game on a limited budget, as well as the hiccups and learning curves on the way to gaining some funding (fingers crossed).
Currently, the team is 100% focused on finding funding for Project Grove, as well as keeping our eyes and ears on the ground for new ventures. So for November we're concentrating our efforts on creating a slick, polished and flawless demo to give to potential funders. Our monthly goals at the moment are built towards a larger aspiration, of getting our demo ready to share by January 2019 *gulp*.
The majority of November was focused on changing our art style. Apart from core characters and intractables, previously Project Grove was created using assets bought from the Unreal Store... this was causing us huge problems: performance was terrible, the visual aesthetic was disjointed as we had different assets created from a mix of artists, and all together it just looked very dated. It looked like we were trying to go for AAA standard graphics, but failing.
We originally always wanted to go for a stylised look, but we only had one artist on the team and just didn't have the time to create our world with all the necessity assets. So we reached out to a guy called Math, who alongside with our art director Charis, transformed Project Grove in to the world we always imagined it would be. It's worth noting these guys did this, in approximately 20 days - a huge huge achievement!
check out the difference between our old and new style below
Here’s a summary of our Nov' goals, the ones in bold are what we’ve managed to achieve!
Art style change
Bringing on an additional artist to the team (check out @Mathsgameart, he's sick)
New controls for L-Pin
Social media presence increased
Dream Hack Winter 2018 attendance
Winning ‘Best Adventure Game’ at the Indie Stand ... this is still TBC, Dreamhack haven't announced any winners bizarrely
Funding Plan List (targets of all types of funding we can approach)
Website monthly blog started
New Trailer created
Credits: Math Roodhuizen <- check out his work on Art Station!