How our game evolved over the past 6 years

When you develop a video game, it’s as if it takes on a life of its own. I have been working on a game with two friends for the better part of a decade now and I wanted to share with you how it’s grown.

Everything is born from an idea. My friend has had the pleasure of traveling the world, and has sparked inspiration from so many places. For this game, it happened while he was on a trip to Scotland taking part in a “Ghost Tour”. These tours are guided walks through the city that tell you all about the myths and legends that surround it. Learning about the witches and ghosts that haunt a region can be eye opening.

We then did a lot of research about Scottish folklore and learned about the witch hunts that occurred in North Berwick during the 16th century. Playing as a badass witch being hunted down by the Kingsmen sounded like a great backdrop to a video game, so we ran with it.

Now we had an idea for the theme, but what about the gameplay? This isn’t our first rodeo, and when we set out to design something we always try to mix different genres with unique mechanics. We are huge fans of the Hero Defense subgenre, but this one would revolve around a Time Travel mechanic. It also HAD to have some form of co-op in there, even if it doubled the workload.

These core mechanics would stay the same throughout the development process, but things changed so much as time went on. Graphics improved over time, but characters come and go. Plot points shift and evolve. Spells are there one month and gone the next. At some point. you even start questioning your ability to make a game with how much stuff changes.

Speaking of the core mechanics, the time travel spell… What a mess! We created our own deterministic system from the ground up to run the entire thing. Our system will recreate exactly what the player did in a previous timeline, and allows us to evaluate their effect on different timelines. It was a challenge figuring out how to relay this important information back to the player so they could plan effective strategies.

At first the time spell was incredibly open ended too. People could cast it whenever they wanted, but that created a lot of problems. What if the player didn’t cast it when we expected? Players would get frustrated easily. Solving problems like this helped create our most iconic character, Amannan, the bear-centaur. They cast the time spell for the player and act as the “home base” for the hero defense.

We spent countless hours trying to make each level as unique from one another as possible. We had this huge white board with every single one of our levels on it. We had to keep track of a time travel storyline, create a nice progression curve, redo tutorials, swap levels, and all of that on top of doing story rewrites. It felt never ending, but eventually you get there.

This game was a labor of love and I can't help but marvel at how far we've come. What started as a simple idea sparked by a ghost tour in Scotland has blossomed into a fully realized video game. But perhaps the most remarkable aspect of this journey is how the game itself has evolved alongside us. It's a reflection of our growth as developers, as storytellers, and as individuals.

So to anyone out there embarking on their own creative journey, I offer this piece of advice: Embrace the evolution. Embrace the changes, the setbacks, and the moments of doubt. For it's through these experiences that true innovation flourishes, and dreams transform into reality.