Hi everyone!
Release date set!
Big news first: Spinnortality, my cyberpunk management sim, now has a final release month! It’ll be out in January 2019. It’ll have German localisation, too, because I got a public grant! Woop!
Kickstarter ending very soon!
Hi guys,
Just a reminder for anyone who hasn’t pledged yet but would like to: Spinnortality is on Kickstarter for only a few more hours! If you’d like to grab a pledge, you’d better be quick quick quick 😀
The campaign has already been a big success, though: not only did we make our goal, we also made our stretch goal of colonising the moon! Wooo!
So what does this mean for me and the game’s development? Well, this means I’ll be able to work on the game full-time, which is FANTASTIC. I’ve wanted to be a real-life make-enough-to-do-this-full-time game developer for years, and now I at least have enough to make it to the game’s launch (which should be in August, but that’s just a rough estimate right now).
Anyway, like I said, the Kickstarter’s here for anyone who’s interested, I hope you guys have a nice holiday season (rapidly approaching) and a great new year 🙂
Spinnortality is on Kickstarter!
The title says it all, really:
That’s right, after 2 years of part-time development Spinnortality is now on Kickstarter! Follow that link to see the campaign and maybe perhaps make a small pledge? 🙂
Spinnortality was in PC gamer! And some updates
Hello everyone! A quick update:
In case anyone missed it, Spinnortality has a landing page! You can go there for screenshots, videos and general info about the game.
It also made it through Greenlight, so will be on Steam. Thank you so much to everyone who voted for it! 🙂
Spinnortality’s going well. I took it to Vienna’s ReVersed festival where it was well-recieved – I also got a lot of very good feedback, so thanks to everyone who played and commented! It was also previewed in PC Gamer, which I’m thrilled with: I’ve been reading PC Gamer for years but never hoped one of my games might end up there.
Continue reading “Spinnortality was in PC gamer! And some updates”
Spinnortality’s on Greenlight!
Pretty lights and tentative release date!
I’ve been making steady progress on Spinnortality. Some highlights off the top of my head:
Everything is prettier! The menus, the earth, the space background. I’ve tried to work on the game’s “fanciness” and I’m pleased with the results.
Continue reading “Pretty lights and tentative release date!”
Music! (and other updates)
I haven’t posted recently (soorrryyyy!): I was either rushed off my feet or hard at work on Spinnortality. Here are some things I’ve done!
- The game has music now, thanks to the very talented Anthony Kroytor of City Nights Tracks! We’ve decided to go with some eerie, drone-y synth music; different music layers fade in or out depending on what the player is doing. We’ve got a few tracks in-game and it seems to work pretty nicely! After wading through hours of not-quite-right Creative Commons music it’s such a relief to have Anthony on board: each piece he produces brings a different mood or ambience to the game, and they’re all a perfect fit for the kind of mood I want to create.
Spinnortality updates
Spinnortality is going pretty well! Here’s what I’ve done recently:
- The research tree is done for now. If I realise there aren’t enough branches later on I’ll add to it, but it’s good enough for the moment.
- You now receive “decision” emails. Functionally these are just messages with choices at the end: “An opportunity has arisen! Should we take it, or ignore it?” They’re a bit basic right now but I want to make them more complex and allow for more expressive, interesting decision-making down the road.
Sidequests and other distractions: the erosion of meaning in CRPG quests
[Note: I wrote this a while ago and forgot to publish it. I still think it’s quite interesting, so here we go!]
What is a quest?
A thing to get distracted from.
We’ve all been there, whether the game du jour was a Fallout, an Elder Scroll or an Assassin’s Creed, where icons dot the map like tempting candy – or pepper it like buckshot. Replaying Knights of the Old Republic recently I received an important quest: investigate an ominous grove infested with dark energy, a focus of evil drawing things to the dark side. Surely it should have been my number one priority? But I wasn’t at all surprised that it was literally the last thing I did – after working through everything else on my to-do list.
Continue reading “Sidequests and other distractions: the erosion of meaning in CRPG quests”
Announcing: Spinnortality
So I’m working on this right now:
A game about spin, culture and control. At least I hope that’s where it ends up.
james patton 