Busy times!
I had promised to myself that I would write as we go, documenting our adventure as a new indie studio from the start. Turns out we've been busy enough to completely forget to note down any of it and here we are 6 months later!
So what's been happening since day 1 of No Code? Well...
- We moved into comfortable office space in Glasgow, and got ourselves a water cooler.
- We started and finished development of our first mobile title Super Arc Light, which in December was signed by the mighty All 4 Games at Channel 4, and due for release sometime in March!
- We stated development of our passion project prototype 'Observation', and are frantically trying to finish it off before GDC, where we hope to show it around.
- We've also been working full time on AAA contract work at the same time!
What is sleep?
Right now we are down near London, and recording dialogue for our prototype with Side. It's a scary and fascinating thing seeing script you've written being performed by good actors. You feel like the least talented person in the room by a massive stretch, which is probably the case. This game is massively different from our usual quick-arcade-fix and will live or die by its dialogue and performance. We're lucky to have Side helping us out, and our two actors are wonderful, exciting people.
So 'Observation' is at prototype stage, and this short playable thing will hopefully be finished soon, with top quality performances, amazing visuals from the truly incredible Stefano Tsai (seriously, look at his work!), and a feel and gameplay I've not really seen before. I'm really excited to show people, and incredibly nervous about it too. It's a true passion project, something that's been in my head constantly for a long time now and really dear to me.
Realising a dream is a funny thing. In my head, the game is amazing, atmospheric, beautiful, and flawless. Actually building it takes that security away and makes it something with bugs, lighting issues, pacing issues and whatever else. It's no longer the perfect thing in my head and now a very real, flawed creation that I have to work very hard to improve. In a way it's safer and more comfortable having it tucked away in the folds of the brain, so making this real is really quite terrifying!
Let's see what happens! Next update in a week or two as things rapidly evolve. Until then, keep an eye out for Super Arc Light related goodness!
J