Arbiter - Monthly Recap - August 2021 (Patreon)

Oh, I didn't see you there gamer! How's it hanging? Still gaming? Are ya winnin'? Of course you are, little rascal. *ruffles hair aggressively*

Development for this month was... all over the place really. That said, I've mostly been focused on two things: enemy revisions and publishers/grants. 

For the former, it actually ties back into the rest of my level design goals for the near future. Basically, I wanted to make sure I genuinely enjoy playing against every enemy and that they're all diverse enough to support a healthy variety of encounter designs.  Most of the 25~ enemies fit this bill, but some just didn't do it for me.

So far I've fixed about 5/9 of the enemies I wanted to touch up, with some minor touchups on the others as well. Most of these are just minor gameplay tweaks, usually with some polished or new animations. One of them, however, was a complete revamp of an older enemy design I wasn't happy with (they used to be these guys).

These guys fight more or less the same as they used to, but now they look cooler! I primarily wanted to incorporate the energy crystals into their design as I didn't have any enemies that utilized them. I also did this for another enemy (look below), though this change only took a couple of days by comparison. I'm still planning to do a behind the scenes post on the energy crystals, so I think I'll cover these guys and their changes in more detail when that time comes.

In the meantime, I'm going to finish the enemy revisions and then move onto more level mechanics! Those will just be some more fun little gimmicks to make running through the levels a bit more interesting. Once those are done, I can finally begin the process of blocking out every single level in the entire game. Kill me :)

Sadly the other end of the spectrum is much more boring: publishing. The tl;dr there is that I've been talking to several parties interested in publishing Arbiter, as well as various grants that would also provide additional funding. 

For those that are curious, publishers can offer anything from straight funding to localization and porting support, amongst many other optional services. The general idea is that you get help with the game's development, and pay them back (on top of a royalty) once it launches. Arbiter's planned to be a decently chunky game (about 15-20 hours), on top of likely having full voice acting, original audio engineering, and (mostly) being made by one person. Because of that, signing with a publisher feels like the logical choice to help make development as smooth a process as possible while still letting me, you know, have a life. 

Grants by comparison are more so an entity or government that funds projects based on their artistic/social/economic merit. They typically don't cover all of development like a publisher does, but depending on the grant, they can make a sizeable dent (and don't have to be paid back). With that, my goal with grants, if I get any, would be to reduce the burden on the publisher should I still want to sign. 

I spent a lot of time researching and talking to mentors about this stuff, in terms of both what to look for in a publisher and how much I can reasonably expect Arbiter's remaining development to cost. I'm at a point now where I feel pretty confident in the numbers I'm asking for, so at this stage I'm mostly just preparing applications for various grants and comparing different offers from publishers. I likely won't be signing with a publisher until early next year, but as of right now I'm feeling pretty good about my options! 

Anyways, that's where we're at. I know the publishing stuff isn't super exciting, but it'd mean a lot in terms of making the remaining years of development as enjoyable as possible. Something I've learned this year is that it's easy to get fixated on the finish line, which is important, but it's just as if not more important to actually live your life while doing this stuff as well.

The support I get from you guys here basically neutralizes my cost of living, but I can't really improve my situation without getting outside help. That didn't really bother me before, but with the world starting to open up again I'd like to make an honest effort to better enjoy my life outside of Arbiter's development. 

Basically, the publishers/grants would allow me to have a healthier work/life balance that I think will be overall beneficial to the game, so that's what I'm going to do! I hope all of that makes sense, and I'll of course be as transparent about this stuff as I legally can.

Until then, take care and stay safe everyone! Thanks as always for your continued support.

Cheers,
Jordy