Foundations

Hi everyone!

As promised, I'd like to talk to you some more about the Foundations project. What it is and - more specifically - why it is.

When I introduced Astortion in my first devlog, it was meant to be a simple game "so it won't take too long to make." Well, we all know how it went. Although the scope of the game didn't change that much, my initial time estimates were definitely too naive. On top of that, I've become attached to the game, and so have many other people. To the point where I feel motivated to make it as good as possible.

At the same time, I'm aware of my lack of experience. And the same need to "start simple" from my first video is still very much here. Foundations is meant to help with this. The idea is to make a simple game, for real this time - no attachment, no perfectionism. Just make a fully-fledged game, start to finish, in about three months. To facilitate this, Foundations will be a story-driven walking simulator - no advanced gameplay/combat/locomotion. The game will take place in a limited area and feature a short story (approx. 30 minutes).

During the development, Astortion will take a back seat. My reasoning is that Foundations will let me quickly go through all stages of game development, such as testing, releasing, and marketing. Which will then help me make more educated decisions about Astortion itself. I'll also be able to reuse a lot of knowledge from Fundations: about menus, key rebinding, bug reporting, music integration, and the internal testing setup. So even though it will slow down the development of Astortion for a while, it should be worth it in the long run.

Volunteers

I want to start working on Foundations right after the release of my next video.

After the unboxing stream, I'll begin the search for a volunteer who will craft the game's story. They'll have the creative freedom to tell whatever story they'll like - I won't impose anything. The only limitation will be the length and complexity of the game. After I find the writer and the general theme of the game is known, I'll start searching for a composer. I've considered organizing more members of the community to cooperate on the soundtrack together, but I believe that it will be much less stressful to have only one person take care of it.

I'll go into more detail about the cooperation when announcing it on my social media. Unfortunately, I want the game to be free, so there won't be any profits to share. But I hope the perspective of making a game together will seem fun enough for people to participate.

Typewriter

The dialogue in Foundations will be implemented using Typewriter. This will serve as a rehearsal before Astortion. It will also be a good opportunity to finally share Typewriter with you.

Testing

I'll be looking for people who'd like to test the game as soon as it becomes playable. Starting within the Compute tier and expanding to other tiers as the development progresses. Testing will be organized using Steam Playtest.

Release

Foundations will be available for free on both Steam and itch.io (Windows, Linux, and MacOS). The source code will be publicly available on my GitHub.

If you have any questions or would like to discuss this idea feel free to do so on our Discord server.

Thank you for reading. And as always, thanks so much for your support!