Hello guys! How’s everything going?
It’s already December and I can’t believe 2019 is just a couple of days away! Time went by incredibly fast this year but thankfully our team (which is pretty much me and Ivan hahaha) did our best to make good use of our time. Anthropomachy has grown a lot as a game even though we had a lot of setbacks along the way. And now that I actually stopped to think of how far we’ve come, I’m proud of us for having an almost fully functional demo! For real guys, we faced all sort of unexpected events! ='(
But what happened to the early access?
Damn, this is the worst part of it. We thought everything would be set in December 7th but unfortunately our artist had to leave because of personal matters and we couldn’t find a replacement that fit our budget. Now you may be wondering: “but just icons being delayed can make such an impact?” and oh, yes it does. We have 258 abilities which means 258 kinda complex icons. And if you remember how Anthropomachy works, you know that conquering earth depends a lot of these abilities.
After some time questioning about hiring our 6th artist, we decided for what seemed as the most secure thing to do: I would create all icons using assets and my (somewhat limited) editing skills and everything would be done in a month or so. It would already cause some delays since this creates a domino effect: I started making the icons, Ivan needed to assume some of my tasks and we have no third person to carry the programming. And of course, in the meanwhile we still had to deal with all bureaucracy needed to put the game on Steam and other stores and work on our business plan.
But things would get a little bit more complicated: November was the month that really taught us a lesson about how nothing is so bad that it cannot get worse. Actually, even what is right can go totally wrong: My notebook died, both Ivan and I got awfully sick and Unity corrupted our game code (may the Gods bless Git). 😮
Jesus, has anything good happened to you guys?
Well, we are now healthy, I just got a new computer this past week and Ivan did an excellent job recovering our code. He even did an amazing thread telling a bit about all his working trying to put our news and events to work, which revealed itself as one the most challenging parts of coding Anthropomachy until now due to serializing being kind of a pain in Unity. BTW, I would like to thank Ivan for his efforts last month: if it wasn’t for him, November would have been a very slow month for TBL since I wasn’t able to do much. <3
And while the news mechanic was the last major part that needed to be coded, the game is not done yet. However, we are inching closer than ever to our demo and after weeks of bad news with the art stalling and computers dying and all-around questions, the game development is moving forward, we have a stable build and things are looking up again.
For the weeks following Christmas and New Years Eve, I’m going back to marketing and design plus adapting some Gods abilities to better fit the icons and Ivan is going to split his time between programming, creation of news and events and some administrative tasks. Fortunately, our character designer Camila never left us and is also working on the 8 main Gods left to the official launch.
Some icons I was already able to work on: Athena – Hades – Hermes – Persephone – Aeolus – Themis – Hebe – Hecate – Mnemosyne
When Anthropomachy is going to be ready for us?
To avoid expectations that might be broken because of new unexpected situations, we decided to postpone our early access to March 2019. The final launch won’t take longer after it but we still don’t have a date to that. I want to apologize for everyone who was anxious about Anthropomachy to be playable still in 2018 but I can assure you we are as disappointed as you (probably even more).
What else to expect from Toy Box Lab in 2019?
Aaaaahhhhh we have such a great news! Toy Box Lab will have it’s own stand on the amazing-marvelous-awesome BRASIL GAME SHOW fair!!!!!! =DDDDDD That’s the biggest game event in Latin America and we will be there being all happy and cheerful talking to gamers and our game dev colleagues! So if you’re planning to visit São Paulo between 10-13th of October, buy tickets to BGS 2019 and stop by to say hello! You may ending up bringing some goodies and gifts from us, who knows? 🙂 We have also been looking for other events we can take part on, but these will be announced later.
Yep, we will be there!
That’s it, my dear gamers. 2018 was a huge adventure in so many senses. And as any other adventure, there were some tough times and some good times and while it hasn’t been easy, we have learned a lot about the business side of the gaming industry and it will be worth it. We hope 2019 to be a happier year to everybody in the world, with more laughs and less regrets.
Merry Christmas and an excellent New Year! See you all in 2019!
