In the conclusion of my previous post (a year and a half ago, jeez) I pronounced that "the indie dream is dead". Good thing I'm not a doctor, cause the indie dream is still alive and kicking. Ok, I have given up on mobile (and that's why Factorees is abandoned, sad monster noises), but Steam still has players who remember how to pay for games (upfront). And there are some very niche games succeeding. So, there is hope. And, as the saying goes, "give a man hope, and he might spend a year making a niche roguelike". Not exact quote, but that's more or less what has happened.
My new project is called NET.CRAWL, and it has a Steam Page which went public just a few minutes ago. Given that the game itself is rather abstract and puzzlish, I think that the steam page looks glorious. It's especially warming to see the game's current look after we've scrapped at least half a dozen of very decent designs, ranging from grainy pixel art to full 3D.
Alex is truly an angel who was sent to me for being virtuous (in previous lives). And the best part is, recently, Alex has left his job to work on NET.CRAWL full-time.
Then, there is Andrew, a phenomenal programmer who daydreams about abstractions, has a soft spot for the word "container", and despite all that is a very likable human being all around. Andrew has rewritten from scratch my shitcode prototype and the result is very solid (get it? get it?).
Together, three of us, are the core of what very soon will become a game studio. Although, I don't really like the word studio and prefer "collective". Such a cool word and almost nobody is using it outside a few musicians.
As a "collective" we are looking to release at least 3 games together. Otherwise it just wouldn't make sense. Unfortunately, it's very hard for us to receive any revenue from anywhere since we are located in Russia/Belarus. So in the next couple of months we'll be looking for a business partner. A publisher is ok, but I'm more interested in accelerator or investment fund. I'm not sure we have enough to offer to those business people, given that I'm not as crazy about the growth as they are. But we are pretty cool dudes and our burn rate so far isn't crazy high, so that's worth at least something. We'll see.
Right now, we need to tidy up a production build and gather some wishlists on Steam which should help us with negotiations.
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