​The Upside Down

Out Burned

Actually, the "Warpzone Boost effect" never happens.

Firstly, the 2 weeks crunch exhausted us to the point none of us get back to a videogame in the next week. For real. We needed to press Pause and take a break for some time.  

Secondly, well, it turns out that Luke could not work on this project anymore. So he left the project as of may 2025. We discussed this eventuality way before the Warpzone event so it was no surprise when it happens… it just became a "reality" whereas I was still believing it may happen a bit later.

After the Warpzone momentum, loosing our graphist hit us bad - We took an heavy blow.  Neither Cyberdeous or me have any pixel-art skills to match our concept ideas. So this leads me to a period of doubts : will I ever make my dream come true ? Should I continue to invest time and effort in dev if I can't even finish the game ? 

It really hurts my motivation badly and finally I had a two full monthes away from on the project to take the hit. 

A New Beggining

What don't kill you make you stronger, right ? 

In the first days of July, I was watching Jojo Bizarre Adventure, the season with Giorno Giovanna… and the show literaly talks to me. Giorno, in the first episodes, regularly says "I have a dream !!" and then does everything - almost diying if needed - to achieve his goal.

Well, this seems stupid but at this time, this really helps me to gather my mind and tell to myself  "man, get up your ass and go back to Dev, you'll end what you started and you'll have the game of your dreams on your shelf, may it be in one, two or five years from now…  Do you really have a dream MF ?!".

That's how, after 2 monthes of errance, I take a big breath and finally came back to the game development.  Starting with bug fixing as a warmup, I finally reworked all the HUD and so on … I'm back to business ! 

Also, I felt the need to gather every single visuals we already had thanks to Luke and make a teaser with this. My idea was to bring some light on the project and maybe this could help me to find a new pixel artist who would embrace our project and help us making the dream come true.

That's why and how I managed to edit a video clip, using mostly static image I had and trying to create a movement feeling with these, adding some game footage - just enought to get some attention from the community : "hey, this feels unusual ! I wanna see more !" . 

Finally, this was a way for me  to shout out "I am alive and I still have a dream !"

A New Team 

This is also when I felt the need for adding some folks to the team.  Dev and artists are obviously mandatory to produce a game, I know I told this many times already...

But as I also stated in a previous blog entry, what you also need is fresh ideas of gameplays from passionate gamer,  as well as people to help with the Quality Assurance  (QA) of the game. This is one of the most underrated job in gamedev, however it's a must-do to bring a game without too much glitch, if any. 

Fortunately, I have the chance to know real cool guys around me, that were supporting the project since it was still an idea without any pixel ! I was so happy when they accepted to come aboard the Gonesbrew team !

Next steps include more and more changes to the gameplay itselft, reshape most assets and implements the single-player mode to enable the first QA testing.

Vector F is in active development so stay tuned for the next episodes !