‘The Sweet Bones’, Brancrug, June 28th, 1929
From an anonymous F. to Christopher Illopoly, this letter is remarkable for a number of reasons.
Jan #2: BRITOMART
That’s it for this sprint, Beloveds. Happy Year of the Rat!
POST-LAUNCH STEAM DATA: CULTIST SIMULATOR IN NUMBERS
These numbers support a bunch of received knowledge: post-launch sales are vital for keeping your game selling; front-page featuring on Steam is priceless; localising your game into Chinese is a very sensible thing to do.
Game-Making’s Sense of Loss
At this chilly time of the year, when one calendar makes way for another, take solace in this.
Jan #1: ACRASIA
If you don’t know what Enigma is…………………. YOU WILL. 🌓
Dec #2: YELLOW
Happy advent, Believers. It’s been a helluva year.
“Got your book. Pretty good condition, too. Bit blurred round the edges, but the little fellow’s taken good care of it…” (January 15th-ish, 1906)
Address is in Vienna. Now you know how I feel about Vienna, never quite comfy there since all that with the Club, but I think, Serena’s a good sort, owe her a favour or two, not so far on the train. Off I pop.
Oct #2: VAN HELSING
In the meantime, if you haven’t already, check out the whole Secret Histories suite discounted in Steam’s and GOG’s Halloween sales. Have a good weekend, erryone.
Oct #1: UDOLPHO
First things first: an announcement! We released simplified Chinese last month, which was an extremely weird but also wonderful experience. Once we’ve a few months of data I’ll write a deep-dive into the numbers, but for now, we have another long-awaited localisation to announce: RUSSIAN.
Sept #3: THEODORE
In the meantime, our “State of the Factory: Year 2” should make for interesting reading, if you’re into the business ramifications of pretty much the worst PR a small indie studio could have. AK may turn his hand to some non-game-specific writing, but again, we’ll see what happens.
What Actually Happened
My name’s Alexis Kennedy. With my fiancée, Lottie Bevan, I run a very small game development studio out of our London flat. I used to own and run another studio, Failbetter Games, which was a little bigger (about half a dozen employees for most of my time there, ballooning to seventeen by the time I left in 2016) but was also generally indie and cash-strapped. We’ve...
Blood Sport: Cancel Culture from the Other Side
We are wasting our energy with cancel culture. It doesn’t solve our problem. It doesn’t make things better. It eats up our time and our empathy and hurts people, lots of people, and pretends it’s doing something good. We need structure and accountability and justice to make this industry a better place for women. Structure, accountability and justice are all things cancel culture’s left behind.
BOOK OF HOURS Update
Hey everyone. AK’s in a bad place right now and taking some time away from work. As such, BOOK OF HOURS is on pause and the Kickstarter won’t go live today.
BOOK OF HOURS Giveaway: Win Culty Merch!
As luck would have it, I do! This promotion is in no way sponsored, endorsed, administered by and/or associated with Twitter, Facebook or Instagram. We’re just using those platforms to host this giveaway.
Aug #2: QUINCEY
Accessibility, config and loc prep. Skeleton Songs ep 8 comes out.
In which Weather Factory invents the 3rd Dimension
“2D thing in a 3D world” has shown itself to be a repeated theme in all kinds of decisions I’ve had to go through for BOOK OF HOURS. It’s even managed to squeeze its way into discussions around shaders and art direction, but that’s straying into territories I’d rather cover in another post.