Team is Back Home! + Project Goals (Patreon)

We arrived back in the UK on the 1st June! A long and tiring journey, we are now quarantined as a team inside our office. It's been a strange and interesting experience to say the least, and whilst we're excited to be home we can't wait to return to Spelkolletivet some day in the future. 

Ash is remaining in the UK with us indefinitely, so it will be wonderful to have more and more of the team working locally together going forward with the game, as we've loved every moment working and spending time with them.

In terms of game progress, we're reaching the end of our pitch document for Fantoccio's Boss Fight. Jovi is completing the last 2 pieces of concept art for the stage set changes and the last piece will be the full instrumentation of the song by Daniel Ingram, the first instalment for this is paid, however, we have had to delay the songs completion due to:

1) Covid-19 slowing down our progress, we cannot finalise the song without knowing if the boss fight works perfectly (very very close to completion, it's our first boss fight and it's been one heck of a learning experience for us) 

2) Our money is depleted due to getting stuck abroad. Despite our best efforts staying in Sweden did indeed drain our companies pockets, especially trying to return home. We will be working to raise the last payment for the songs completion, thankfully it isn't too much!

In terms of other news, we have something private to share, and ask that you kindly not share it outside of Patreon. I've decided to bring this up now to just give you all an idea of what we've been working towards for the past few months. 

Originally our plan was to keep this on the down low until all contracts were signed, as I don't wish to mislead anyone or get them excited before this is confirmed. Around December we were approached by a fairly large reputable publisher, we met at their offices and pitched to them, and they offered us a very very decent amount of money that would make Billie Bust Up into the absolute best game we could offer, with full creative control over our product, along with keeping our IP. They wanted us to produce a pitch for a vertical slice that they would fund us to complete. We chose Fantoccio's boss fight, and some gameplay from the cat pirate level. 

They had a hard time visualising our end goal for the vertical slice (especially without an environment concept artist on staff, until Jovi joined) and wanted pitch decks for our levels, with full concept art and map layouts. After returning home from our meeting with them we received the Epic Grant and agreed that we would use the money to produce block outs of these levels and Fantoccio's song to help seal the deal with them. We were close to submitting our pitches before Covid-19 trapped us. 

Our back up plan for a Kickstarter was also null due to this. We're still aiming to present them with our pitch decks, so right now our focus is on the boss fight, and the cat pirates first level block out. We can't say for sure if we will even accept their offer, if they do make it, but we want to check all our options for funding, and these publishers are an extremely good fit for us. I wanted to tell you, as a community, you have helped us get this far, and I feel it only right to keep you up to date

 thank you so much!

- Katie