New Gameplay Trailer! And Public Demo Incoming!
We have a new gameplay trailer!
And our public demo comes out April 7! We can’t wait for everyone to play it. Stay tuned!
NPC Life Scheduling and AI + Demo Incoming!
This devlog is all about the secret lives of Npcs. How we make them feel alive, how we manage all of them, how we control where they go and what they do, and things we’ve learned about npc ai over the last decade and making two big games with lots of lively characters.
I also make a very special announcement in the video! If you don’t want to watch, it’s about our DEMO! Our demo is coming very soon ladies and gentlemen! Stay tuned!
More Devlogs!
Hey everyone! It’s been a while. Do people still read this blog? Do people still use RSS? And if so does the feed even still work? I have no idea! This website has been through some stuff. You know, for something absolutely everyone has to use, the internet sure is a house of cards. I’ve been through SSL certificate issues, my host randomly breaking stuff (all kinds of stuff!), wordpress dependency issues and code rot… But as I scroll through my old blog posts, as infrequent as they are, I realized this blog is a chronicle of my whole damn life. This blog has been going for ten years. So I’m not gonna stop now!
Despite our relative quietness from a public-facing perspective (“are you dead?” the people ask), we are still full steam ahead on Songs of Glimmerwick. Everyone in this industry knows how much work and focus it consumes to keep the hype machine going. So we’ve just chosen to not try. Just heads down working on this world, building something to eventually knock some socks off! I have been putting out meaty devlogs periodically on our YouTube channel. If you haven’t watched them check them out (if you’re okay with some mild spoilers)!
We’re Starting a Video Devlog!
Hello everyone!
Development is going strong, but release is still a ways off. To tide you over in the meanwhile, we’re starting a devlog! In this series of videos we’ll cover what we’ve been up to, behind the scenes clips of our process, as well as some philosophy and just generally things we think about when designing the game. We hope you like it!
And please feel free to subscribe to our channel on YouTube if you want to catch the future devlogs! And of course liking and subscribing helps us out in the YouTube algorithm so we’d greatly appreciate it!
Our New Game!
And FINALLY! We’ve been bursting to show it to you all! Don’t forget to wishlist!
It’s been 3 years since the initial release of Eastshade. Time has flown! Jaclyn moved on to our new game soon after release, but I didn’t officially move off Eastshade until September 2020, about 1.5 years after its initial release (patches, porting, admin, ugh!). Jaclyn played a massive role in the development of Eastshade on nearly every level, but Eastshade was my baby, my dream. Songs of Glimmerwick is Jaclyn’s! She is helming the design, writing, and art, and I do programming/technical direction and some design/writing.
The game looks different from anything we’ve done (perhaps different than any game I’ve ever seen period?), which is hugely exciting! Despite its different appearances, I think people will feel our distinct life force in the game, particularly in our commitment to building a sense of place, explored through non-combat mechanics, which is the mission statement for our studio after all! We are so excited to be able to talk about it. And I am personally excited to get back to streaming on twitch!
Not Eastshade 2
Okay folks. I’ve got to get something off my chest. We are indeed working on a new game. And its not Eastshade 2. In fact, its not connected to Eastshade at all. It will look nothing like Eastshade in its rendering or its art style. It isn’t even first-person. There will be similarities. Its another lively world full of characters and stories, and once again will not have any combat loops. We feel it will again be a place you’d want to live. It will, of course, still have plenty of books and tea (we’re not monsters). I can’t tell you how excited we are about it.
We’re asked weekly if we’re working on number 2, sometimes even so bold as “so when is Eastshade 2 coming out?”. I’ll admit I often ignore the question, as I know there are some folks who would really look forward to a number 2, and I don’t always, in the moment, have the heart to crush that hope so thoroughly by answering. But occasionally I have answered folks with the truth, and despite my fear of disappointing, so far none have been anything but supportive and excited. So I think its time to put it out there. We are wholly devoted to something different now, and there is no number 2 planned. This is not a reveal. We’re not ready to show anything just yet, and we certainly don’t have a release time frame in mind. I just wanted to let people know what’s up, and perhaps quell any anticipation there is for a potential Eastshade 2.
I want folks to understand that the change in direction is not a calculated one. Its not a business decision. We’re just doing same thing I did when I started Eastshade Studios—We’re following our artistic whims where they lead us! Fortunately, I have found fans of Eastshade to be an open-minded bunch, and I hope people will love what we’re cooking up, even if its in many ways different from our past work.
