RADIOPHONE BROADCAST #5

BUSY BUSY BUSINESS

I'll start this blog post almost exactly the same way as I did one and a half (!) years ago:

A lot has happened since my last post on this blog. The game has been completely re-designed (again) and the artstyle is somewhat different (double the pixels and half the colors). See it here.

BUT the Radiophone Broadcast is not about that. It is a development story.

Let's see if I can rewind back to May 2018... almost two years ago.

After spending the cultural grand from DFI and completing the prototype of "House of Lunacy" (as the game was re-named) it was time to put on the business suit and go looking for a bag of money.

As Jesper had left the project to make ends meet - I was the single mind on the project.

I decided to make this trailer:

I sent the trailer, a pitch deck and the prototype to a list of publishers. The ones who answered all gad the same response: "Very interesting concept! We feel the project is a little too early to fund at the moment. Please return when it has developed further." Hmm.. that's good I guess. But also.. hard, as it would be hard to develop the game any further without the money.

But the a MeetToMatch event occured in Copenhagen (where I live). At the event, I pitched the game to publishers and investors. They were all very interested in the core idea, but again I was met with the same response: come back later :)

And then came the big surprise.. Capnova (the only Danish game-investors) wrote me back and said they were very interested in funding the entire project!!! Awesome!!! This meant at least a whole year of production money. I couldn't believe it!

As it turned out - not believing was the right thing to do..
Two weeks after I got the mail, The Danish government shut down Capnova's innovation fund which meant Capnova had to cut me..

DAMN IT ALL TO HELL!!
So close...

But there was a true interest in the project - so I could not let it go.
I even got headhunted by the head of a prominent publisher (they had stumbled upon my trailer!). We had a promising Skype meeting, but the game was not really fitting with their catalogue of games. (I hadn't even contacted them for the same reason). But all this interest for the game kept my hopes up.

What now? Well.. the game had to change. It had to be re-designed to be fun.. but it also needed a makeover. I grew tired of the dark and gritty artstyle and the in-your-face gore.
I needed more colors and wanted to tryout pixel art style.

But I also needed a break from the game - and most of all: I wanted to release something!
So I decided to learn AGS and made a point-and-click adventure game "Cyborg Seppuku" in three weeks.

It was an aesthetic test for Mind Scanners. I tried out a colorful low-res pixel art style and set the game in a retro-futuristic version of the Structure.

The game was well received by critics as well as some of my heroes on Twitter! Oooweee!

Yes.. I forgot to say that I started my twitter account.
Twitter is by far the best way for me so far for spreading the word and getting feedback - can'r recommend it enough!

I also started this blog around that time as a matter of fact.

Now that I had my new artstyle and setting in place, all I needed was money to make the game.

Luckily I received a small grant from The Danish Arts Foundation and decided to spend it on re-designing Mind Scanners from scrap.

I will write about that time in the next broadcast.

Until then!
-Malte