If you read the first articles, you already know a bit more about us.
To sum up, we’re an indie studio formed by 5 people born after 1990, and in late 2016 we launched a Kickstarter campaign to start the development of our first game: Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King.
This article wishes to be a subjective recap of those working years, from the first effusive brainstorming sessions to the last day of self-inflicted crunch. Shattered is a hybrid project that evolved a lot along its development.
I hope to explain here how our little indie title became a gaming chimera, with the wings, the lion head and the snake tail altogether…
We’re in 2015 when Maxime gathers former classmates from his videogame school, and suggests to set up a project together.
Initially, it was supposed to be a mobile game - a dreamy universe and simple mechanisms, to train ourselves before getting to more serious things.
However, the team quickly comes to the conclusion that none of us really likes mobile games nor do we play them. Really not willing to make a game we wouldn’t ourselves play, we lean towards a PC title.
Big success in the ranks - numerous at this time - of our young team.
Motivated by the enthusiasm of the dozen of students gathered around us (“us” referring to the small nuclear team that will last until today), a prototype slowly comes to life between the class hours. During summer 2016, we decide to try the crowdfunding adventure. At this time, indie games are still thriving on Kickstarter, and several examples of tiny studios having had tremendous success on the platform reaffirmed our endeavour.
On a very random stroke of luck, the Square Enix Collective, a branch of the Japanese giant in charge of finding indies, notices us. They help us create our campaign and invite us to Los Angeles for E3 2016.
Four envoys are therefore sent to the USA. Just out of school, an old laptop in hands, they find themselves in a huge international event, where people wear ties and call each other by their first names.
Amélie and Max are interviewed live by IGN.
At this point we’re kinda floating, shivering and hallucinating a bit.
Thanks to our PR and the Collective’s help, to the exposition E3 gave us and to streamers who showed our prototype during the campaign, we come to celebrate our first big victory a few months later: Shattered is founded at 138% on Kickstarter.
That allows us to go a step further; we can now rent premises and gear to welcome the team in the best conditions. We renovate the space and immediately go back to funds hunting to complete our dream budget.
Things get a bit more complicated from this point, and our lucky star seems to finally be willing to let us cope on our own. On the dozens of files we’re sending for fundraisings and partnerships, none of them comes back 100% positive. We’re a too young, too new team: our project raises interests, but our inexperience is scary. We get that we’ll have to prove ourselves before gaining a partner’s trust, and a successful crowdfunding wasn’t enough.
Students around us start to realize the complexity of the endeavour, its precariousness and uncertainty, and overall its inherent financial instability; the Kickstarter funds going firstly for the rent of the premises. Several of them decide to leave from the first months following the campaign, others keep going with us for a while before completely leaving the videogame industry. 2017 and 2018 are strange years, where we have, for the most part, other jobs to survive (I was a game master in a escape game from friday to sunday, and the rest of the week worked on Shattered). We also had to reorganize our tasks on the game and work processes while the team was diminishing.
A little wave of panic sparks when we finally face the fact that the project, initially meant to be developed by 15 people, is far too ambitious for a newbie team with half the members we had in the beginning and still downsizing. From a 3 continents game, we decide to go for an only one continent, but wider. We’re caught between the promises we made to our backers, the reality of the situation and our own desires. Hard decisions.
Luckily, our efforts pay and after bettering the game for two years (and having met our finance guardian angel Christian, without whom things would have been very different) we received the support of the BPI, the CNC and, a bit later, Unreal Engine’s Epic Mega Grant. The obstacle course seems to finally be over. Back to the marathon.
In 2019, we decide to release Shattered in Early Access. At this stage, we have built a community we’re close with, and of which we’re really proud. So, we decide to take the risk of an anticipated release in order to have their direct feedback on the game.
Of course, the release doesn’t exactly go as planned: we make pretty much all the beginners’ mistakes you could think of, and Internet lets us know. We spend a week answering every comment individually and fixing everything we hear of. Slowly but surely, our Steam page is blue again.
The year after the Early Access release is the most stable we’ve ever experienced. Our team is now steady, we have salaries, and the interactions with our community give us wings. We know where we’re going and how we’re going there.
… And here we are.
About to launch Shattered - Tale of the Forgotten King for real.
We can’t know how it will be received, if it’ll be noticed or just another title in the ocean of games releases, but we’re extremely proud of the progress made, and extremely proud of the result. Shattered is clearly a slightly weird chimera, mais it is everything we wanted it to be.
May you enjoy your travels in Hypnos, dear Wanderers ♥
