Hi, it has been a while since I have updated this. Unfortunately I don't have any more work to show on Phaneron, as I am sad to announce that development has ceased on the game. I'm posting this update as a little closure post on this project, as recently there has just been too much stuff going on and this project keeps getting put on the backburner.
There are a few contributing reasons to not continuing on the work on Phaneron: The first reason I touched upon in the previous post, essentially life is just getting in the way of making this game work at the moment. I have the new job at the college and I am in the process of trying to move out and get my own space. Currently I don't feel like I can produce my best work where I'm living at the moment, trying to get myself into any game development stuff is quite taxing currently and this is doubled whilst working on a larger project. For me, it was getting to a point on the project where it felt more like a chore, which means my heart and soul isn't in this game as much as I would like it to be. The other members of the team have their own things going on too, leaving not a lot of time to focus on something big. Another reason is that I am finding this an incredibly difficult game to design. What I mean is that this kind of game with it's interconnected puzzles and world design makes it very hard get everything to fit together properly. Making this game is like a massive puzzle in itself! Currently, I don't think I have the skills to develop a game of this complexity, aspects of it I can do , but not in it's entirety. Because of my issues trying to put this thing together it has meant other people in the team have been waiting on me which isn't fair. When we come up with Phaneron it was off the back of another idea we liked for a point and click game, it turned out that our game idea accidentally copied Night In The Woods! (None of us even played it at that point) so we decided to alter it and we had some other ideas we wanted to try out instead. Elements of the old game design were recycled into this one, and we then had the concept for Phaneron. However, we were under pressure to come up with something solid as we entered the Deutsche Bank Award for Creative Enterprises a month earlier, and it just so happened that we got shortlisted for the competition! That was cool! Although, this came with the challenge of preparing a pitch for the game in a week, whilst we had barely come up with a game concept at that point. We initially got shortlisted on the idea of our I_DO_TRI indie game business and our experiences, not a product. For the final, there put an enormous amount of pressure on us to solidify what we had idea wise and create a business plan for a game that has barely been put together. It sort of meant that since the competition, our game concept was forced into existence and we have been trying to make it work since. I hope this all makes sense. :S I believe myself, Amber and Dom are capable of producing a game together. But I don't think Phaneron is necessarily the right game for us right now.
WHAT NOW? Development on the game is officially over at this point, there may be a chance we revisit it in the future, but there is a change it might be in a different form, or ideas from this game might be folded into others we work on. Any future collaborations between myself, Amber or Dom will still use the I_DO_TRI name. For myself, past this project I have decided to focus more on myself before I work on another big project. I want to build some smaller games, make some art and improve my games engine skills. I'm in the mindset now that if me, Amber and Dom work on stuff together in the future that it happens a little bit more naturally as a result of sharing each other work and inspiring each other, then seeing if a game comes of it. If I focus on developing my own artwork then it means that I could contribute more as a member of the team, and each other's work could serve as a catalyst down the road for working on a really awesome collaboration. If we work on another game, it will be a much smaller in scope idea at first, and if we find it really interesting THEN we can expand it. Rather than designing a potentially complicated game from the start. My attention has swivelled to improving my art first and foremost, so I can have a stronger foundation to develop an IP. I can then use my technical skills to then produce games in a consistent style. I am focusing a lot on documenting my work more, and I also plan on developing game development tutorial content for Youtube. The Youtube tutorials will be going out over the next couple of months. If you wish to follow my continued development you can follow me in these places, I will also try to be around TIG more frequently though. Design Blog: http://www.jmbroderick.design/ Portfolio (New Website!): https://jamesbroderick.portfoliobox.net/ Youtube (Will see a lot more content here soon, including Unreal Engine tutorials and videos of my own artwork/game development: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCXh_4ywP0sn04NpETiP_UMw Twitter: https://twitter.com/JamesMBroderick - Amber continues to develop her own artwork, you can find her portfolio here: Portfolio: http://amberjamieson.wixsite.com/portfolio Twitter: https://twitter.com/AmberEJJamieson - Dom does game jams from time to time, his portfolio has some cool stuff if you wanted to have a gander. Portfolio: http://dmathuse.wixsite.com/portfolio Twitter: https://twitter.com/lonerider543 Thanks for everybody that has showed interest in our project, I know it hasn't had a lot of updates but it has been nice to see the responses we have had. If you are still interested in our work then have a bit of fun and take a look at our portfolios and follow us on our social links, then you can keep track of us in case we make anything else. 💛💙💜 Thanks again, James