A Painful Decision Has Been Made

Hey guys, the title may be a bit alarming but we’re at a bit of a breaking point behind the scenes.

Project Oni/Almageist is Getting Reworked.

We recently had an exit survey that confirmed our fears that supporters aren’t liking Project Oni and where it’s heading. This coupled with the natural bleeding of pledges over time since Cappuccino’s launch is kind of forcing us to come to terms with some hard truths about the industry and the game we’re making.

Game development is a constant battle. Big name studios secure funding through large publishers, whereas for indie teams, it’s usually either all done out of pocket or crowdfunded. With the development process being so long, crowdfunding stands on shaky ground due to the fact that we have to constantly draw new eyes to what we’re doing or face running into financial problems. This was what eventually led to Doku’s hand injury during Project Cappuccino’s development. The eternal crunch and pressure of releasing public builds to outpace the pledge churn rate took its toll.

When we launched the first playable build of Project Cappuccino, the game had already had about 6 or 7 months of development time. This means that the starting point for what people got to see wasn’t actually 0, whereas Project Oni is starting completely from scratch with an audience. Making it a race against time.

With that said, Doku and I are at the point where we can no longer continue doing development exclusively full time and need to make ends meet in other ways. Sales from Project Cappuccino allowed us to prolong full time development of oni longer than we expected, however, that too is dropping when combined with the blindside that was Covid. Doku has taken up commissions here and there but we’re realizing that that is simply just putting a bandaid on a gushing wound.

So here is what we’re faced with. In a perfect world, we would keep working 100% on oni, but unfortunately it’s clear to us that we need to change our direction.

Basically, the gist of this announcement is this: Project Oni/Almageist’s development is being paused for the foreseeable future. Instead we are taking the systems I’ve made for Oni and reworking them into a different game that we are both more confident that we are able to make, with shoter development time.

As much as we love Oni and want to bring it to life, right now is not the right time for it. You can read on to see what we’re planning on doing instead.

Playing on our Strengths

Doku and I both have our strengths and weaknesses in our respective fields. Mine being that I struggle to program complex systems such as AI and can’t animate with bones/meshes as well as Doku does.

Doku’s weakness is that she struggles to design and draw male characters. Designing a male takes us about a full week as opposed to only a couple of days (or less!) for a female character.

Because of this, we decided to cut combat entirely and shift the game in a more slice of life direction. The game will most likely be pure Yuri but we are still in the talks when it comes to male characters.

We always try to bend towards requests of including male/trans or body type options but more options and more customizability always extend the scope of the game. The added scope also makes what would be a simple task into a battle because there are more moving parts to consider behind the scenes. We know it’s possible to do, but for now it seems to be beyond what Doku and I are capable of doing by ourselves, especially when we’re constantly reminded that everything needs to happen fast.

Reduction of Scope

The size of the world is being reduced along with the dramatics of the story. We are making a shift in tone from a grandiose adventure to a more slice of life game. We’re talking romancing/farming and building up a home instead of fighting the destroyer of worlds.

Graphical Change

The isometric angle has proven immensely difficult to work with and we ourselves aren’t happy with how it’s coming out. We’re changing to a top down view akin to Pokemon or Stardew Valley. This is the only feasible way that we can keep an element of roaming and exploration without expanding the scope even further into a full 3D game.

More Focus On Characters

A big thing that made Project Cappuccino entertaining was how the characters had their own charm. So with this rework, we’re changing how we approach NPCs and putting NSFW content more front and center.

The Player character will not be a complete self-insert, but instead a more vital character to the world. We aren’t able to go with the faceless protagonist this time around, so it’ll be more as if you were playing as Sophie. There will still be customization such as hairstyles and potentially clothing, but there will only be a female player as part of the core design.

But all is not lost!

A vast majority of the scripts that were made for Project Oni/Almageist are fresh and ready to migrate to this project.

Here’s what’s being salvaged:

• Day night system
• Outfit System (With Tweaking due to sprite base changes.)
• UI System
• Inventory System
• Input/Movement System
• Quest System
• Sprite building transparency (When walking behind things.)
• Pathfinder AI (NPCS will still need to walk to places.)
• Dialogue Portrait Animation System

Some characters from the original project will also be migrated over if they fit the new ideas, but unfortunately, a lot of them will be axed. It hurts to do this but knowing that a lot of the back end code and designs will be carried over makes it feel like it wasn’t all for nothing.

We’re unsure if we’ll be keeping the name Almageist but we are putting ourselves on a concrete deadline. We aim to have something playable for you guys in a month’s time. If in a month it’s still looking like it’s not promising, then we’ll need to have an even harder look at whether this is the right career path for us to continue.

As for rewards, Patrons that have been supporting us during this development time will be grandfathered into new tiers when ready. Meaning you will be getting a copy of the new title if you supported us between February 2019 and beyond.

We are open to answering any questions you guys may have so feel free to post them in the comments.

Thank you for understanding and for your support. Failure is a difficult pill to swallow but it’s ultimately part of the process.

-Vanis & Doku