5 Month Catch-Up
A lot has happened over the last 5 months and it’s feels like it’s finally time for Atom Switch to start moving forward again. As a part of that, I wanted to do a catch up on how things have been since the last dev blog officially suspended development on InfestStation those 5 months ago.
Leading up to that point, I had already spent the previous year trying to secure a publishing deal that would have allowed us to properly support the game through and beyond Early Access, and then from September to January supporting the game without funds in an attempt to enable our own survival through sales. Unfortunately it was not meant to be.
With all roads directly associated with InfestStation development closed to me, I had to ask myself “If I can’t continue working on InfestStation, what can I do that would honor the team, the IP and the fantastic folks who bought and enjoyed the game? Is there another option?”
OCIX: Rude Awakening - A Single Player Dream
The most obvious thought was to use the existing content to create a single player, narrative driven spinoff game – OCIX: Rude Awakening.
The idea was to strip out all of the complex multiplayer requirements and put players into the shoes of the last known survivor of their space station, just as they wake up from cryo sleep.
Their space-home, ravaged by the same Crimson Events that players faced in InfestStation, had been left adrift in space for years when it was suddenly remotely reactivated, waking the last confused crew member to a horrifying new reality.
With a plan of giving free keys to existing InfestStation owners, it felt like the perfect way to get back to sustainable funded development without abandoning the game or its players.
Instead of an infinite number of procedurally generated stations, the game would feature a single hand made layout, making use of each of the unique rooms from the game and creating a “metroid-lite” style exploration/upgrade/unlocked-new-paths loop that carried players through the story.
With the action slowly ramping up over time, the player would grow stronger with each new equipment item found, while exposing themselves to ever increasing danger in the new rooms they could then enter.
It would have been a great chance to keep all of the hard work from InfestStation alive, while delivering a much more straight forward, easier to execute horror experience.
Unfortunately, along with the heavy baggage from InfestStation’s commercial failure, the timing for pitching anything in the game industry could not have been worse.
There was interest, but not enough to secure a publishing or investment deal, especially without a fully playable demo to secure it – something I had no way to fund and couldn’t do alone as a solo dev.
I started to put together another pitch for a kind of Metroid-ish, sci-fi open world survival game that had even more interest…but was stifled by the same problem. “We love it, but we need to see a fully playable, polished build to publish/invest.”
Can't Be OCIX Direct Tie-In, Has To Have a Demo...So, What?
With my options dwindling, I had come to a few conclusions.
- Any pitch I make has to be with a fresh IP. Any tie-ins to previous work would have to be superficial at most.
- The concept would have to be simple enough that some kind of prototype or demo could be made VERY quickly and with as few people as possible, with all of us working unpaid with no outsourcing help.
- It would need to leverage as many of my personal developer skills as possible so I could cover as many roles as possible.
- It needed to have an easy to understand, extremely clear X-Statement, and it would need to be as deep into my personal art and design comfort zones as possible.
Are you thinking what I’m thinking? (If you’re thinking: action platformer…then yes!)
- A game type that can be built systems-first and speaks well at an extremely early time in development?
- A game type that works well with intense, stylized visuals?
- A game type that allows and benefits from a strong, song-based musical presence?
- A game type that I know and have loved from my earliest days of gaming?
Why yes, that game type is an action platformer. And even more specifically — not a rogue-like/light, or a metroidvania — but a “Mega Man X-Like.”
Concept Development Time
Mega Man X has been one of my favorite games since first playing it on the SNES and it’s always surprised me how few games have repeated the Mega Man style of level and boss selection, where the order you beat the levels in has such a significant impact on the difficulty, exploration, and events of the game.
So, I reached into my stockpile of various-level-of-completion game designs and pulled out the scraps of CodeName: JSM (“Jump and Shoot Man”).
- I started by updating and expanding on the design and created key concepts and art direction exploration – alongside 2 other game concepts – for the first ~2-3 months.
- Around late Jan – mid Feb, this concept emerged as the leader above the other 2.
- I have been enormously grateful to have Grant and Michael (from the InfestStation team) stick around and offer input, help, and advice since hibernating the company, and between late January and mid February, they took the leap and joined in to actively start working on prototype development for the game with me.
Since mid-late March, our little team of 3 has been working unfunded and part-time on this for about 2.5 months now as an actual prototype in Unreal Engine 5 and are now just reaching the point where we’d like to bring the concept forward to public light.
To be clear, this is not a full-on announcement for the new game, but more of a passing of the torch, and a chance to properly honor and respect the still-fresh wounds of InfestStation’s development time ending as we prepare to move onward from it.
Next Steps
The next steps are to put a bit more information (and a video!) on this game concept out and get some player/market reactions to it, acutely aware of how important that validation is to securing the funds needed to actually develop the game fully, and not just bleed dry our personal savings trying to force it into reality.
The wonderful folks who have stuck around in the Atom Switch Community Discord will see it first, and then shortly after we’ll be expanding the net wider from there.
Until then, my thanks as always for reading and following along!
