Greetings again! It’s been a while. First, let me recap what has happened.
In January 2015 I enrolled in the Oulu Game Lab program. For those who don’t know what it is, basically you get a group of people in pairs working on a game concept. At three points you cull half of the projects and move the culled personnel to the remaining ones, until you have a solid game demo and a team that you can transform into a game and a company, respectively. The program had two halves: The Demo Path and Game Path. During demo path we made a demo, and during the game path we expanded it into a game. Both halves took about 5 months (actually six, because I didn’t take any vacations.)
I have now walked both paths and the end result was a company of like-minded game developers, now under the banner of Happy Hobgoblin and a game called Nyheim. If you are interested in the game itself, go check out its Indiegogo page over yonder.
Actually, the page is the reason I’m writing this post. As stated previously, I have been quiet in this blog because I have had other forums where I could discuss my craft, like the guys at the office and CRYO. I’ll see if I have the time and energy to remedy that (the quiet, not the existence of forums), but for now I’ll probably be focusing on the campaign. Of which I want to talk to you.
The game business is staggeringly difficult. First of all, you need time to develop and nurture the project into a good one. Time is expensive. Every hour put into a game project is an hour away from a job that brings in money to put a roof over your head and bread into your gullet. I have been extremely fortunate with my own life: I live alone in a small flat, don’t own a car, don’t drink or smoke. My meager, dancing-on-the-poverty-line “income” (unemployment support) is enough for me, and I typically can toss a couple of dozen € to my savings account each month. But the others in the company, our company, have different lives. They have significant others, families, children. For them, the long days at the office with only a promise of payment down the line is undoubtedly straining and difficult. It is not my situation that I worry about; It is theirs.
So I would like to ask you to help us. Help us prove that you don’t need a wealthy benefactor or a devil’s contract with a publisher to create games. Your contribution isn’t just support towards Nyheim: It is an investment in us: A group of talented and happy people who like to give other people experiences. Fun. Intrigue. Thoughts. With the crowdfunding support we can build Nyheim into an even greater game and hopefully it will aid in our future projects. So if you are at least remotely interested in our game project, with a price of a pint (or a lotto ticket) you can give support to a group of fantastic people.
And if you don’t like Nyheim, I understand. A single-player die rolling strategy game with board game aesthetic? It’s not for everyone. But the smallest, yet maybe the most important contribution you can make is spread the word. Share a link to the campaign or maybe to this post. Not only will you help us reach more people, you might give your friend a chance to play a game they might fall in love with.
So yeah, this is what I’ve been doing. I’ll try to post some more thoughts here every now and then.