Dev Diary 23 - Resurfacing

Well it has been a long time since our last update. A loooong time. Here is a catchup on the last few years.

What happened?

Designing and building a game of this scope is an all-consuming endeavor. We lived and breathed Lord of Decay in every waking moment and we were making great progress.

Then our life circumstances changed.

Damian and I both started families and we both accepted senior roles at our respective full-time jobs. Development understandably slowed down.

We realised that, in spite of our passion, for this project we just didn’t have the skills, the resources, or the time to make Lord of Decay everything it needed to be.

So at the end of 2019 we made the heartbreaking decision to put the game on hold. But that wasn’t, and isn’t the end.

We still love making games and we really believe in Lord of Decay. We refused to water down any of the game’s features, so what we needed was a plan.

To close the skill gap we’ve been working on small contracts for other game studios as part-time contractors.

We have successfully shipped titles on Steam, Game Jolt, and itch.io

Damian even quite his job in 2021 to become a full-time game developer and he recently became a certified Unity Professional Programmer.

What’s next?

We’ve always know that LOD had 6 design pillars

1. Realtime Tactical Combat
2. Flesh Crafting
3. Character Customisation
4. Passive Skill Levelling
5. Minion Commands AI
6. Maps and Wayfinding

Nailing any one of these is a feat in itself, but completing them altogether in one project would take many years working in our spare time.

So instead we plan to create two smaller games that divide these features into stepping stones.

This way we can demonstrate that we can design/build projects and leverage skills and systems from one project to the next progressively.

1. Project Spiral's Edge

• Character Customisation
• Large Levels
• Fluid Player Controls

2. Project Greenblood

• Real time Tactical Combat
• Dynamic Combat AI
• Passive Skill Leveling
• Maps

We’ll then compile all of those skills, systems, and technologies into the new build for Lord Of Decay using modern tools.

We’d like to thank the community for sticking with us all this time.

That's it for another update.

You can follow us on Twitter or Facebook for all the latest news, pictures and updates. You can get involved in the discussion on the Forum or track our progress on Trello.

Watch the latest dev videos and technology demos on YouTube

Thanks for the support
Scott
Sandbox D7 Team