Greetings everyone! Development on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is still going strong. However, prior to digging into the latest progress I would like to remind you that the demo is currently available on both Steam and itch.io. Additionally, to whet your appetite, clips are now debuting every Thursday. The first four clips can be found on Woodsy Studio’s YouTube channel. Be on the lookout for a new clip this week!
A lot has happened since the last development update. Jezu Grandil’s path joins Reuben Jeridar’s as fully complete. Nikolaos Perin’s path is fully scripted as well. That just leaves Valerie’s path as far as writing goes and creator Jenny Gibbons is excited that Malcolm Pierce (co-writer of Crimson Spires) will be contributing to the script!
While big milestones have been crossed in the development of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, it has been a lot of work to get there. Completing Jezu’s path involved not just a lot of blocking, but blocking action-heavy scenes. He is the General of the Royal Guard, after all. Many of these scenes have full voice acting, not just from Jezu, but fan-favorite Xavier Wolven as well. New music has also been composed for these action scenes.
As for Nikolaos’ path, the post-scripting work is well underway. The script has been converted into data tables and imported into the game. From there, a full scene list has been created and integrated with those data tables. This is the behind the scenes coding action that let’s the game know what to do based on the choices you make.
Speaking of choices, there have been tweaks to the game that allow you to customize your character when you play new character paths. You can change Serafina’s hair color and specify your current relationships with Arken and Belatrix. Serafina has a lot of fun hair color options!
From there it’s blocking, blocking, blocking to make Nikolaos’ scenes come to life. Nikolaos may not be as ready for action as Jezu, but he is quick to be sneaky. And I’m not going to spoil how he deals with these new fire effects… Anyway, as all of the script for Nikolaos’ path has been sent to the voice actors, the voiced lines are being edited into the blocked scenes as they arrive. Jenny is also looking for a new voice actress to give life to the leader of House Perin.
Arken’s voice actor, David Dixon, was recently interviewed by Woodsy Studio. The interview can be found with both text and audio options at the following links. Part 1 discusses David’s various roles at Woodsy Studios over the years, while Part 2 digs into other voice acting work in both video games and various animated series.
It’s all these parts coming together that bring Woodsy Studio’s latest game to you. Until next time, be on the lookout for new clips from Serafina’s Saga: Awakened every Thursday!
David Dixon has voiced Woodsy Studio characters for 10 years, going all the way back to the first voice acted Woodsy Studio’s project, the Serafina’s Saga animation (Arken Jeridar). Now we take a moment to talk to David about his overall experiences in voice acting and his own personal passions. This is part 1 of 2 in the interview with David (see Part 2 here). You can listen to the vocal recording of his response to each question, and/or read the transcribed text. Enjoy!
1. Your history of voicing Arken goes back all the way to the original Serafina’s Saga animation and you are reprising the role in the upcoming Woodsy Studios game, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. Has your approach to the role changed over time?
Hello there, I am David Dixon and I voice Arken (Serafina’s Saga: Awakened, Serafina’s Crown).
Yeah, for sure! After seeing more of his development from the end of the original games to the new installment I see new angles of his past so I’m definitely trying to push the sorrow and bitterness more, but also have a bit more fun with the sarcasm. I see he uses that as a deflection or even a wall when he’s uncomfortable. I also think the passage of time and changes in my life are helping me wade deeper in the truly emotional moments with Serafina.
I think that if I had to the narrow it down I’d say I’m kind of giving my performance HD Plus remaster, but yeah I’m definitely trying to use more of what I’ve learned as an actor since then to just really delve deep and really make Arken just come to life more. It’s one of these things as an actor you’re always looking back at your old performances and in the moment you could be like “Yeah oh that’s great I love this.” But then sometimes when you go back and you’ve learned so much since you look back and like “I would have done that differently, ah crap oh no I would have done that differently!” So kind of a bit of that, yeah. I just really want to push forward with what I’ve done in the past and just really flesh out Arken.
2. You have voiced villains in two Woodsy Studio games: Picard in Serafina’s Crown and Thomas “Tip” Wagner in Crimson Spires. What is your process for connecting with villains, and how much did it vary between these two?
I definitely like to think of what makes them tick in their everyday lives. With Tip I see him as a man driven by fear and paranoia. Now saying he’s driven by fear I don’t mean for him to be sympathetic at all, I’m more focusing on the ignorance that comes with fear, you know. He’s a bad dude in a very sadly relevant to today’s atmosphere villain. He’s a bully who wants to feel important, like he has the answers, so I latch on to that want. With all the goings on in that particular setting he goes from being a nothing and to now just looking for an opportunity to say, “Yeah yeah hey I feel seen I’m important.” But as I said earlier you look at the fact that he is a bully he is a jerk and so I’m layering that on to some of those natural wants of wanting to be heard, wanting to be seen. But also, I’m the bad guy, I’m a jerk, so I’m having that be corrupted into wanting to lord it over people be like, “Ah you don’t know anything, I know something, why should we trust you, you’re an outsider, I’ve been here all this time, and I know what’s what, so let’s put the microscope on you!” and I take it from there.
With Picard, I had fun with his hedonism and treated him like a bit of a brat, if I’m being honest. We’ve all had days when we feel we’re owed a bit of indulgence, a bit of extra pepperoni on our slice, a bit of Grace when we woke up before our alarm and it’s raining out and the forecast said it would be sunny. I took all of that and cranked it to 11, to the point where he’s basically saying “Let’s all indulge, let’s all get into a fun party!” And I have him get into a bit of a scary hissy fit where people just can’t drop what they’re doing and indulge. They can’t just say “Okay you know it’s time for a party I have work I have to deal with a sick relative.” It’s all of that where people have different motivations, different plans, different amounts of freedom in time, and he doesn’t see that, so he takes all the realistic feel of “Okay hey I want to have some fun,” “hey let’s all have a good time” and he turns that into just being angry, and just insulted. “Wait, you don’t have time to stop what you’re doing to have a good time with me?” And I crank it all the way up to a godly level so yeah I think it’s all about finding that little bit of an anchor.
In high school, my theater teacher–Mr Slate–talked about how the key to playing any type of character is finding some of those anchors so you know what drives all of us. So he would always mention, and it’s always stuck with me, you don’t have to be a murderer to be angry enough to murder somebody. If you’re playing a villain you don’t have to go out and do something horrible. You can just think of what made you that angry, and then add on layers and layers and then, you know, you’re cooking.
3. You voiced Heremon ir-Caldy in Woodsy Studio’s Echoes of the Fey series. Unlike most roles you’ve had in Woodsy Studios games Heremon becomes a romantic interest for the main character over the course of the series. Arken also became a romantic interest for Odell in Serafina’s Crown. Does this change your approach to voicing a character?
Oh yeah, *laugh*, a bit. I’m not used to romantic relationships in real life so I really focus a lot more and I really put a lot into wanting to get it right. I’m a lot more in my head when I’m prepping versus when I’m just playing like a salesman or something like that. I’m thinking a lot more of am I connecting well enough to the love interest? Am I being convincing? Is the audience buying what I’m putting out? Do they like what I’m going to be doing this performance? I’m having a lot more scrutiny on myself to make sure that yeah this is entertaining and this is authentic and this is doing justice to what the author, in this case Jenny (Gibbons), would be writing. It’s a different type of challenge but it’s a good challenge.
4. What are your favorite types of roles to play?
Villains are fun since I get to push the contrast between myself and–depending on the type of villain–I get to be hammy. It could be a lot of fun to just MWAH-HA-HA all throughout the production. I also really like playing mentor types and heroes. I really want to get a chance to play more idealistic heroes like a Superman type. I think those are incredibly fun, but challenging. You really have to sell the optimism and heroism without it feeling phony. We’ve all seen hero characters pop up in a cartoon show and not really like a superhero show but like something like a spoof, like a kind of like Angry Beavers or in Ren and Stimpy you had Powdered Toast Man. A lot of times you know it’s hokey, it’s fun, but it’s not sincere and I’ve got to go in a little bit of rant so you’ll have to excuse me.
I often times see people saying Superman is boring, but I don’t agree at all. I find the concept of one of the most powerful beings choosing not just to save the world, but taking a second to sit down next to you and ask if you’re okay and if you’ve had breakfast. I find that fascinating. The guy can lift mountains, but he stops to listen to people and he truly fully loves his neighbors. It’s not just PR. You know it’s all of that because his heart is just that big. Some of my favorite moments of Superman like in the media, and comics, animated movies… some of the most interesting moments are when he’s just not doing impossible odds but just sitting there and listening to somebody and like really really just caring about them and being like, “Okay I want to help, I want to make sure that you’re okay.”
I mean sometimes it’s like more emotional stuff and then sometimes it can even be lighter stuff. There’s times where he kind of gets into like a dad-like mode and he was just kind of floating there one time and a whole bunch of these guys were robbing a store and they just all just stood, looked at their guns, put them down, took off their masks and just turned themselves in.
On the more heartfelt but still just as impactful vein, there was an anniversary issue where all kinds of different people were saying how much they loved Superman. But the one that stuck out to me was there was a guy talking about how he was a career criminal in Metropolis and Gotham and other places, but he just kept running into Superman and Superman was like, “You can do better than this. I believe in you.” Eventually, it took him a while, but he got his life together, rehabilitated himself and just lived on the straight and narrow path, and I thought that’s a cool thing.
I mean you have all kinds of things like awesome super battles and superpowers but it’s something a bit special and different to see someone who’s like, “Yeah I get it, hey maybe you’re not in the best place there’s a reason why you did this, you signed up. Not everyone is as privileged as me. I’m a super-powered alien and I can do this but I believe you can be better and I want you to be better.” And that’s kind of the core of Superman for me, where he just absolutely loves everybody, he sees the best in everyone and he wants everyone to get that second chance.
To me that is an amazing character and I would absolutely love to get a chance to really juggle that where it’s like, okay the weight of the world’s on your shoulders but you’re still balancing being a guy who’s fighting for truth and justice: on the the lower levels as a journalist, on the higher levels as a guy who can move planets and mountains. All of those different things coming together to just make a really compelling narrative where it’s not about, okay can he punch this guy out? Can he stop this Armada of bad guys? It’s like yeah, okay, is he going to save the day on a personal level? Is he gonna be there, is he gonna help you through a terrible day? Is he gonna be a friend? I love that idea and yeah, more of that. I’d love to try more of that. It’s fun and compelling.
5. What aspects make a role extra challenging or difficult?
That depends. Sometimes it can be the subject matter. How dark is the villain going to get with their head space? What am I going to have to… What lines am I gonna have to cross? What is going to be informing my performance? What’s going to be driving the anger, the hate, the bitterness? Then there’s other things, where: is the performance itself gonna be challenging? Am I going to be slipping between English and a fictional language? Am I going to be doing a role where I’m playing dual roles?
There was a project where the game took place in the past and you saw me as a younger character, but there were chunks of the game that flashed decades forward and I was an old man. And so it was interesting to be balancing those two performances. But there are other times where some things can just be oh it’s kind of like it’s a marathon rather than just kind of like a jog. It’s like okay, there’s gonna be a lot I’m having to do, or they’re just even things that are just surprisingly complex. Is this character going to sing? Is this character presented as upbeat and happy, but they’re hiding a secret, they’re hiding sorrow, they’re hiding guilt or shame, and you have to have the audience start to kind of clue in. So that could be another challenge where you’re having to let the audience know there’s something about this character, but you can’t make it too obvious or you can’t make it too subtle that no one picks it up.
So, yeah! *Laugh.* Every role is a challenge, even if it’s a something you consistently come back to like a series, you can have an episode of that just throws a curve ball. It’s a lot of fun. That’s one of the reasons I love acting. There’s just so many things you can get involved with from project to project, from episode to episode, from chapter to chapter.
Greetings everyone! Welcome to the next development update for Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. However, prior to digging into the latest progress I would like to remind you that the demo is currently available on both Steam and itch.io The demo is a meaty morsel that offers about an hour of playtime taking your all the way through both the Prologue and Chapter One.
While the demo concludes at the end of Chapter One, the game is complete through the next few chapters leading to the point where your choice of paths will diverge into four choices. The status of each of those four paths is as follows: Reuben “Jeridar’s” path is complete. Jezu Grandil’s path is scripted and being converted into a playable story. Nikolaos Perin’s path is in the scripting stage while Valerie Sparkov’s path is in the planning stages.
While Reuben gets to kick back, relax, and focus his charms on anyone who calls him a bastard, Jezu has been going through some things since the last update. His path includes a Wolven on the prowl: Xavier, an assassin not unfamiliar to Castle Krondolee. This descendant of the god Belazar (more about the gods, or at least some of what I can reveal, to come in a future update!), is being brought to life in part by some excellent voice acting by Chris Heim which is currently being edited for Jezu’s path. Jezu is voiced by Jarvis Bailey, who has also sent a lot of great voiced dialogue for the scenes ahead.
As always, there are many parts to bringing a scene to life for you. In addition to editing the voice acting, a new room has been set up for this sequence to take place. While character portraits could simply appear on the screen, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened brings Darzia and Castle Krondolee to life as you guide Serafina through many different settings. Not only was a new room created for this particular Xavier scene this week, but the Perin hallway was set up for an upcoming scene. I wonder what Nikolaos’ family is up to on Jezu’s path?
Finally, last time I mentioned that if you are lucky we may just include a portion of a new Jezu and Serafina romance CG in this update. While we don’t want to show you the whole thing right now, it’s so much better to experience it as it happens in the story, here is a portion of what you will be able to discover as you play through Jezu’s path:
Until next time, I recommend trying out Reuben’s sleeveless look while it is still warm enough outside!
Greetings everyone! In the last few updates we’ve been talking about preparations for the SLICE expo and Woodsy Studio was proud to present there this past Saturday.
Before we get into that adventure though, work has also been continuing on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened!
Creating a game such as Serafina’s Saga: Awakened means dicing the various aspects into scrumptious bits and then figuring out the perfect combination to make a tasty stew, or moreso an exciting, intriguing adventure when you load up the game on your computer or elsewhere next year.
Jezu’s path is currently simmering on the stove as the spices are blended and sprinkled in to enhance just the right moments. I hope you like it spicy because the past couple of weeks have seen not just the drawing of a new Jezu CG, but also work on a new Jezu and Serafina romance CG! If your lucky we may just include a portion of that in the next Dev Update.
Nikolaos’ path has ingredients in various mixing bowls at the moment. This is where the planning and outlining of the path takes place. As parts of the recipe come together more and more pages of Nikolaos’ path are written each week. This will also provide direction for the visual and audio aspects so as to feed your senses in every way.
In other development, a long interview scene involving Kaifu has been blocked out. You might be asking, who is Kaifu? We haven’t revealed much about them just yet, but they are an angsty librarian descended from both the god of sorrow and the god of joy, eternally torn between the two. They are also voiced by a previous writer of Woodsy Studio, Malcolm Pierce!
Additionally, the process to submit Serafina’s Saga: Awakened to various publishers for consideration has begun.
Last but not least, Woodsy Studio had a great time at SLICE expo! We’d like to thank everyone who stopped by the Woodsy Studio booth to talk about the Studio’s games, check out the video montage of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened gameplay, and who took home new artwork for their walls. For those who could not make it to SLICE, this is the latest print debuted by Woodsy Studio:
The picture doesn’t do the iridescent foil of the print justice, but I know I cannot wait to get it into a frame! If you missed out on this print you can still see some of these characters in action by checking out the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened demo on Steam or itch.io Think of it as an appetizer for your full Serafina’s Saga: Awakened meal next year!
Greetings everyone! It has been a busy couple of weeks at Woodsy Studio as work continues on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened and preparations are made for SLICE expo.
Progress continues on writing pages of Nikolaos Perin’s story path. He is enthusiastic to have his story told, but is he someone who can truly live up to his promises?
Jezu Grandil’s story path is also coming together. With the writing of the path complete and voice acting received, scene blocking is the latest step in the process. The current focus is on interactions between Jezu and his older sister Belatrix Grandil. Belatrix is Commander of the Royal Guard at Castle Krondolee. Someone of Belatrix’ stature deserves an awesome pose and that is what we have to present this week, with assistance from Gene Kelly of Volcano Bean, a friend of Woodsy Studio:
Now that this new Belatrix art has been created, new expressions are being made to fit the pose. This latest Belatrix art is also being imported into Creature to be animated. The style of animated art seen in Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is new to Woodsy Studio’s games. If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to check out the demo on Steam or itch.io so you can experience for yourself how cool the animated characters look!
The Jezu and Belatrix interactions are not the only scene currently being blocked out on Jezu’s path. Another voiced scene featuring Jezu has also been blocked out featuring an action-packed training sequence! I wonder who wins the most when Jezu and Serafina spar together? Speaking of action, code has been tweaked to fix attack animations for characters further from the camera. There are so many layers that go into creating the desired look and feel you’ll experience when playing through this story. Additionally, sound is just as important and a new song has been composed.
As mentioned above, time has also been spent getting ready for SLICE and I’m excited to show you the brand new postcards you can pick up at the Woodsy Studio’s booth:
The postcards feature a selection of favorite characters from Woodsy Studio’s biggest releases. I know I cannot wait to hold one in my hands! SLICE is just a week and a half away. As a reminder, SLICE will be held on Saturday October 14th from 10 am to 5 pm at The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Ave, St. Louis, MO 63108. We are excited to talk to you in person then!
This week, as with many weeks, saw progress on many aspects of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. There are a lot of moving pieces in bringing a game to you. All aspects influence each other and thus it is never simply a matter of, for instance, completing all the writing and then moving on to the music. Creative inspiration comes from all directions.
I am not actually behind any of these creative decisions myself. You may have seen my name pop up as the author of last week’s blog post. I’m lucky to be privy to some of the behind the scenes work at Woodsy Studio and I’m just excited to be here relaying the latest on Serafina’s Saga: Awakened’s development to you. Seeing all the thought and heart come together amazes me. It’s much more than simply putting a game out there. When I play Woodsy Studio’s games I feel enveloped in the stories. I feel the need for these stories to be out there for everyone and I hope you experience them too. While I await Serafina Saga: Awakened‘s release with you, I highly encourage you to check out (or revisit!) Woodsy Studio’s most recent release,Crimson Spires, on Steam and itch.io, not to mention PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch.
Back to the topic at hand, I’d like to tell you more about what specifically has happened in the development of Serafina’s Saga: Awakened this week. Writing-wise, more pages have been scripted for Nikolaos Perin’s path. I have not read these yet, but knowing Nikolaos I’m guessing there is a flair for the dramatic. There is probably also some mischievous things in play considering he’s a follower of Lokke…
The “Perin” in Nikolaos Perin indicates he could be a significant member of House Perin, despite his current role as a Royal Scout in King Kallias’ army. The Duma House Leader of Perin will play a role in the story and I’m excited to bring you her portrait as the first of two new pieces of art this week:
Work also continues on Jezu Grandil’s path. As mentioned last week, scripting is complete. Turning the script into game scenes involves a process Jenny calls blocking, and some of Jezu’s scenes were blocked in this week. I’ll talk more about blocking in a future post, but suffice to say it probably isn’t what our favorite faithful general thinks of as “blocking.” It’s a combination of coding and decision-making that results in something akin to “blocking” for a stage performance.
Also as mentioned last week, scripts have gone out for additional scene dialogue. The voice talent is hard at work recording and returning their lines. Some of this additional dialogue is back already and new voice acting for Kallias has been edited into the game. I haven’t heard these lines myself, but knowing Kallias I can only imagine they are pure gold.
Music can be just as important as voice acting in generating the right feel for a story at any given point. Part of that can come from the key used with a significant difference to the feel of a piece of music just from adapting it from a major key to a minor key. This week saw the creation of a minor version of the Krondolee theme for dynamic music changes via FMOD.
Now I’m excited to share another new piece of art with you. This is the character art for the Duma House Leader of Pajari!
Finally, as we look to SLICE coming up on October 14th, progress has been made on the shiny art prints that we hope to have available that day. I’m very excited about these and hope to share more with you soon. Oh, and if you haven’t you can still check out the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened demo on Steam and itch.io!
Greetings everyone! Development continues for Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. If you are interested in romancing the General of the Royal Guard you will be eager to know that scripting of Jezu Grandil’s path was recently completed. This means it is time for more voice acting. Scripts for additional scene dialogue have been sent to the voice talent for Jezu, Kallias Jeridar, Xavier Wolven, Belatrix Grandil, and Arken. While awaiting the dialogue to come in, scripting has begun on the path of a character you’ve met in the demo, the playful–and perhaps deceiving–Nikolaos Perin.
In the Jezu romance path, you must help Jezu face the life choice he has made to serve King Kallias as a faithful General, never questioning orders. Should an oath be unconditional? What does it mean to be honorable? Help Jezu confront these difficult questions when you partner with him, and all while civil war erupts in Castle Krondolee.
Meanwhile, as mentioned in last week’s blog post, the Serafina’s Saga: Awakened Demo is available not only on Steam, but also itch.io. Itch focuses on independent digital creators and independent video games. In other words, developers such as Woodsy Studio! itch.io gives more control to game developers over how their content is sold, and more revenue from those sales generally goes back to the developers. Most Woodsy Studio games are available on itch.io.
Woodsy Studio occasionally steps outside the digital realm and next month we will be exhibiting at SLICE! Formerly the St. Louis Small Press Expo, SLICE stimulates the independent literary, small press, and indie publishing communities. We are excited to be showcasing Woodsy Studio’s latest visual novel, Serafina’s Saga: Awakened. You will have the chance to meet the creator, see choice sections of the demo, and take home some shiny art for your walls. Please join us for SLICE 2023 on October 14 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at The Sheldon, 3648 Washington Ave, St. Louis, MO 63108. While you are there you can also check out some of the other best independent literary talents from St. Louis and around the country. We look forward to seeing you soon!
Greetings everyone! It has been some time since I posted an update. But I’m happy to say that development for Serafina’s Saga: Awakened is still progressing strongly.
If you have been following me over the past few years, you know that I’ve hit a few creative hiccups. Finishing Crimson Spires and publishing with East Asia Soft was a gratifying achievement that I remain quite happy about. But as often happens after riding a big high, a rough downward slope followed after.
Malcolm Pierce left his role as partner of Woodsy Studio, leaving me (Jenny) as the sole writer and developer. Although this is how I originally began Woodsy Studio, returning to solo development after years of partnership has been a difficult journey. I was also in the midst of some heart-wrenching life changes that took a toll on my creativity.
Altogether, I had a year or more of very low creative output. I started and stopped projects that never got finished. But eventually, I decided to go back to my origins: the first visual novel I ever made. And since then, I have been completely remaking Serafina’s Saga. I’m writing all new scripts, drawing new art, building 3D environments, remixing old music, and composing fresh tunes. And I’m having a blast doing it. I’m also now working with an awesome voice cast to bring the characters to life, as well as some other creative colleagues (including Malcolm Pierce) who are helping me with some elements of the game.
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the trailer for a sneak peak at how it’s all coming together:
Thanks to all of you new and old followers who have played my previous games and encourage me to keep creating. I appreciate your patience as I work on this new journey for you, and I hope you will love it when it’s complete!
I cannot provide a solid release date as of yet, but my aim is to release in early 2024. So stay tuned!
It’s probably cliche at this point to say: we live in difficult times. Even so, it is true. For the past seven months (all of this year so far), I have struggled with creative inspiration. There are so many possible explanations for why I feel blocked. It’s all too easy to make a list of the prime suspects:
Existential depression from global pandemic
Year-long isolation from normal social structures
Loss of ambition due to reaching certain career goals (actually a good thing… ?)
Large emotional upheaval from experiencing huge romantic relationship changes in the last year
Loss of creative partnership
Post-vaccination restlessness to get away from my computer and related work
… I could probably keep going. But you get the point.
As this seven-month-long creative stagnation has dragged on, I have often crafted a mental list like the one above and tried to pick a single culprit. Once I do, I try to forge a plan to overcome that specific struggle, whether within my ongoing work or outside of it. But none of those plans have worked. Some of them are beyond my control. Others have no simple solution. In any case, fixing one would not fix the others.
One of the most confusing aspects of my blockage was that I normally obtain therapeutic healing through my creative process. How could I evolve from these life trials without my art? Had I changed so much that I no longer needed that creative outlet?
It was only through a long period of time, extensive talks with my former creative partner (Malcolm), and discussion with colleagues that I started to hone in on a singular problem I could fix.
The story I was writing no longer resonated with me.
Amidst life and world upheaval, this last problem hid more secretly, tripping all my attempts to wrestle the other demons. It was easier to blame my stagnation on the bigger issues in my life rather than the relationship with my creation itself. I DO process my feelings through story and creative expression. But the story I was trying to tell no longer expressed my feelings, even though I conceived it less than a year ago.
To give you a little more background, the story was called Incognis. It was a sci-fi romantic drama about a woman who found rare love and happiness within a polyamorous quad, only to throw it away for the sake of selfish ambition. The inspiration for this idea came from tumultuous emotions at a very specific time in my life.
I was nesting romantically with a quad during the pandemic
I wrestled with polar extremes of happiness and misery
I blamed myself for the misery–but would later realize it arose from toxic emotions from one of my partners
I was at the peak of self-focused ambition, having just lost my creative partner while trying to finish the studio’s biggest release yet
All of these intense emotions led to the conception of Incognis, and with good reason. During that specific period, the story of Incognis was a fitting expression of my emotional turmoil. But at the beginning of this year–around the same time I actually started working on Incognis–those personal emotions shifted. Life experiences and loved ones helped me overcome those struggles, rather than my art.
In retrospect, it becomes easy to see such patterns. But for seven months, I operated under the belief that I still needed to make Incognis. I blamed my creative blockage on that first list, rather than the nature of my creation itself. When you have been your own boss of your own studio for eight years, you learn to push yourself past periods of self-doubt and temporary blockage. But in this case, I pushed myself too far, and everything else suffered as a result.
At long last, I have decided to scrap my previous plans for Incognis. I will take some extra time to recharge and let some new ideas simmer. Most likely, I will still use a few scraps from Incognis in the form of assets and environment designs. But the story and characters will get a complete overhaul, leading to something new and truer to my current state of self.
As always, I hope you will enjoy the result, though it might take longer to create. What use is art if it doesn’t come from the truth within ourselves?
Hey everyone! It’s been a while since we updated y’all on Crimson Spires and other Woodsy Studio goings-on, so we thought we’d put out a post on how summer has been going for us. First off, it has been very hot and very humid. There’s a lot of great things about living and working in St. Louis, but the summer is definitely not one of them. Not for us, and not for our studio’s dog, a husky who dramatically changes her opinion on walks for three+ months out of the year.
Mira in the summer sun
Other than that, summer has marked a slow down for us, which brings me to leading with our biggest piece of bad news. Crimson Spires has been delayed until 2020, likely closer to the middle of the year than the beginning of the year.
This probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone following the project, as this is very clearly our most ambitious game. When we set out with this project, we thought that we would end up expanding the gameplay scope (to include 3D exploration) but have a similar-sized script to our Echoes of the Fey titles. We were incredibly wrong. Currently, the Crimson Spires script is approximately as long as Echoes of the Fey: The Last Sacrament and we haven’t even written 2/4 paths. The paths in this game are considerably more unique than anything we’ve done before, so we’re probably looking at a script close to twice the size of Last Sacrament.
We’ve also hit other difficulties. In the past, we released an average of a game a year and now we’re at slightly over the one year mark for Crimson Spires. Our quick turnaround wasn’t just about getting money from releases (although that was a necessary factor), but also our own fickleness with projects. We work hard and then we burn out–typically after about a year. That happened, and it sucks.
Finally, we both found that we needed to find other financial support for our studio beyond game sales. A few things happened. First, we didn’t release a game this year (duh, that’s a problem). Second, changes were made late last year to the Steam algorithm for recommending games to users. This has caused a rather dramatic reduction in views and wishlists for indie developers across the board. Naturally, it hit us hard as a studio that really relied on Steam sales of back catalog titles.
The growing 3D landscape of Crimson Spires in UE4
Here’s the good news: we’re not done. You’ll notice we’re not cancelling anything, just pushing it back. And we hope that it will be even better for the delay. To help support us, Malcolm has been teaching game design at a local university and Jenny has begun a full-time job in web development. This is going to slow us down, but it’s also going to give us the resources to make Crimson Spires even better. We’ll be able to ship with more voice acting, for one thing. And we’re not too proud to admit that we’ll use some of the extra money on assets that can improve the world of Bataille, Missouri. We always tweak any assets we buy to fit our game, but it’s especially easy with a game set in (relatively) modern day in a (relatively) realistic style to find useful ways to speed up environmental development.
So, what have we done recently? The 3D world of Bataille is considerably more built-out and explorable. Julian’s path has been almost entirely added into the game project. Maddy’s path is halfway written. New art for new characters has been deployed on the project, some of which we’ve scattered throughout this post.
And we’ve also made sure to start taking better care of ourselves. Jenny’s new job allows her to treat working on Crimson Spires as more of a passion project and less of a piece of work she has to finish to keep the lights on. Malcolm took a quick breather this week to participate in the UE4jam, a four-day long game jam put on by Epic Games. You can see his game here. Both of us know that if we stay burnt out, we won’t be able to provide the story and experiences we want to.
We pride ourselves at Woodsy Studio on finishing games. We don’t start something and just let it wither and die. Crimson Spires is coming, we just ask for a little patience while we make it the best vampire/serial killer romance about late capitalism in the Midwest that it can be.
