The Road to Kickstarter

[Attached image is from the entrance to an area tentatively called The Coral Towerlands]

Hello, Patrons!

Today we’ll be laying out a summer roadmap which is intended to bring us to a point where we can produce a trailer featuring far more gameplay than the announcement trailer. At this point, I’d guess that nearly every supporter is enthusiastic about mermaids in general, and was drawn to the idea simply based on the concept and visuals alone. In order to kickstart, we’ll need to appeal to a much broader group of gamers, and this means pulling them in with engaging combat and gameplay (aka, we need to prove we can actually make a fun game, and not just a pretty environment to swim through).

Before we get into the roadmap, I want to talk about what will happen to the Patron page and Discord server after we kickstart: We’ll likely leave the Patreon page active for the diehards who REALLY want to put their whole soul behind the game, but any Patrons who are in the Discord server after a successful Kickstart will have permanent access, even if they cancel their monthly pledge. Donors who don’t currently have access will be granted access, along with the people from the kickstarter. Patreon members will not be expected to contribute to the Kickstarter.

So here’s what we want to have before we Kickstart:

• 1km decorated demo map covering all the depth-zones from surface to abyss. Progress: 85%
• Basic locomotion system for mermaid movement and breaching. Progress: 65%
• Basic combat so we can bop a few enemies in the demo and show off our surge/evade system (underwater dodging) Progress: 15%
• Basic UI/HUD to show player stats, compass, menu screen, etc. Progress: 30%
• Inventory system, giving us the ability to pick up items and interact with objects. Progress: 50%
• Quest and Dialogue system. These features are already in-game as third-party plugins, which just need some tweaks and modifications to be functional and integrated into the UI. Progress: 50%

Tentative Kickstarter ETA: end of August

I’d be able to manage most of this work on my own if I had to; the main thing I’d struggle with is building out the combat system to a point where it’s polished enough to look fun and engaging. This is why my main priority right now is finding someone with more experience in UE5 combat implementation. Doing it on my own could easily add a month or more to the process.

Once these systems are in place, creating a 1 - 2 minute gameplay video will be MUCH easier than it was to create the announcement trailer. The announcement trailer involved a ton of camera animation and a lot of level design (since we basically did a full redesign of the map while creating the shots), whereas the gameplay trailer will be simple screen-capture, and once the demo-level is ready it should only take a few days to put together, plus another few days for audio and editing.

We’ve got an exciting summer ahead of us! My work in-engine will be low for the next week or two, because we’ve had over 80 people email us to express interest in working on the project, and a decent amount of my next week will be spent sorting through the submissions and contacting promising candidates. I’m also looking for a co-CEO to run Loreseeker; someone with more industry contacts and more business experience than I, allowing me to focus solely on creative direction and development.

I just realized that the announcement trailer is at over 460k views, which is completely mind-blowing to me, and is a very good sign. When an unknown studio can pop up out of nowhere and get attention like that (with a 98% like/dislike ratio), it just proves that our core concept is very strong!

That’s it for today!