fzn's Art Shenanigans

Greetings everyone. I’ll get right to the point here: we have decided to put the Homestrife project on indefinite hold.

When we started this project, we were aware it would largely be a hobby with no material gain. At least, at first. We always had the dream that, once we had a really solid prototype, we might be able to approach What Pumpkin and strike up some kind of deal, such as approval to begin our own crowd funding campaign. This might seem rather pie-in-the-sky, but there it is.

Well, we recently did approach WP. As you might imagine, they kindly declined the arrangement. So, we had to move on as normal. At first, we figured we’d just keep working on the project, since it had basically been a hobby up to that point anyway. However, it gradually became apparent that continued development would be considerably unviable for our current team and time restraints. Without the money required to at LEAST be able to work on the game full time with our current team, finishing Homestrife would simply take an unacceptably long time.

After realizing this, we had to ask ourselves a serious question: what is more worth our time? Continuing slow work on Homestrife with no immediate chance of going full-time on it? Or moving on to a new game with a new IP of our own that we would have full control over? Certainly the latter would be a tougher sell since we wouldn’t be working with an established popular IP, but we’d at least have the option to move to crowd funding whenever we wished. Furthermore, while working on Homestrife we have gained a lot of confidence in our own abilities, and as such we feel like we stand at least a decent chance of making a new game with a new IP that people would find fun and interesting on its own merits.

So, we’re moving on to a new game development project. What this means for Homestrife is that we will essentially be sitting on it indefinitely. Should some kind of funding for it become available in the future, we would consider getting back to work on it. For now though, we are going to release one last update with all of our applicable current work included. However, we’d also like to throw in the added bonus of releasing our in-house editing tools. This would allow others to create characters and stages, if they so desire. However, they are as limited as the engine itself, and won’t allow anyone to make new features. Finally, we’d also like to release a Linux build, if possible.

This might seem like a big final message, but we’re not dropping off the face of the Earth or anything. We’ll still watch the dev threads and respond, and our social media sites aren’t going anywhere. So feel free to ask any questions.

A couple last-second thoughts: first, do not ask if you can pick up the development of this project. If you’re passionate about making a game, I suggest you start your own project from scratch. We’re willing to give advice though. Such as “just use an already complete game engine.” There’s a freebie. Second, this might be a bit presumptuous of us to say, but please do not harass What Pumpkin about this. That would likely generate ill will and actually decrease the chance of a future arrangement.

Thanks should go out to everyone. Thanks to those in the development threads who gave their input. Thanks to those of you who followed this project and hoped for the best of it. Thanks to What Pumpkin for being so supportive of fan works. (your decision was understandable and there are no hard feelings) Thanks to the voice actors who still stuck with us after we blunderingly had auditions so early in development, and thanks even to those who didn’t. And, of course, thanks to the team. It’s been a fun and educational ride.