It has been two years and seven months since the Kickstarter for A Memory of Eternity (formerly titled Desolation Road) was officially funded. Precisely, it has been 959 days.
In a couple weeks, I will be launching the first step into the series. A short, narrative-driven game called The Singularity Wish, which takes place before the events of A Memory of Eternity. During this time I’ve reflected a bit about the last five years that I’ve spent, on and off, in game development.
If nothing else, it’s been a learning experience.
I have a habit of biting off more than I can chew. Desolation Road was supposed to be a quick project. At the time, I saw myself completing the project within the span of a year. After all, its scope was limited. However, I found myself too immersed into the world of Jack, Miranda and all the other characters that ended up swimming around my head for the last two and a half years. Before I knew it, I had hundreds of pages of notes, dialogue, plot points and character backgrounds. And at the end of it, I had to produce a game around all of this!
The story got away from me. It grew unexpectedly and started connecting itself to some of my other ideas and concepts. Before I had quite realized it, the fictional world I was working on had breathed life into itself. I’ll admit it freely – I have some doubts about my ability to tell a story this big. Oftentimes I feel like I’m standing on shoulder of giants. I’m a storyteller by heart and naturally, we look to those who came before us to imitate. But when I look at the series that I love (A Song of Ice and Fire, Breaking Bad, Berserk, The Witcher), I can’t help but feel as if I’m still only tracing the barest shadow of their work.
But, at least finally I have the right tools. After going through several different game-making software and languages (I only kept a rudimentary knowledge of Python), I have finally settled on the venerable RPGMaker. It’s fantastically flexible, as games like To The Moon and LISA have proved. So I’m glad to announce that development on A Memory of Eternity has resumed.
Please bear with me. I’ll give it my best shot.
Very early screenshots, to give you a sense of the graphics I’ll be using, thanks to some fantastic art by pixel artist Vexed Enigma:
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