Project Update: The Calm Before the Storm

Project Update: The Calm Before the Storm

Hello dear friends and followers – It’s been a hot minute!

I’ve been much less active on social media for a few months and believe me when I say it’s been necessary. I truly wish I had more time to interact with all you amazing people but there is only so much bandwidth in my head and social media can potentially eat up a substantial amount of it so I need to be very careful.

Such is the life of a solo-developer!

Give us some news!

I’m really biting my lip here as I try not to spoil any of the cool, new stuff I’ve been stuffing into the game! My brand manager made me promise that I was going to be patient.

However, I won’t be spoiling anything if I say the late summer and early fall of 2023 will be really busy for us in terms of marketing. This means we want to save as much of the cool stuff for about another month or two. HNNNGGGGGG!!!!

Instead of showing off the game, here is some corporate news (“Yay!” said no one).

Current State of Production

Internally we have a release date set and we are fully committed to hitting it! 

In other words, we’re currently pumping out content! That means levels, graphical assets, game-objects and writing. It’s hard work but we have an amazing team of freelancers and what we’re making looks fantastic.

We’re also doing an important job of adjusting scope to make sure that what we put out is as high quality as possible. Some side-content that was intended to be in the day-one release will get postponed and released in free updates post launch. 

 

This one is all on me: Making RPGs are insanely complex and it has been very hard to predict the amount of time that goes into making different types of content. Some are much faster than expected, whilst other types (especially branching quests) are much more time-consuming – expected for small teams. 

Nonetheless, we’ve cracked the code at this point and though it has taken trial and error, we will be delivering a retrogasmic RPG experience! 

The Norwegian Film Institute

The Norwegian Film Institute (NFI) is backing the Skald project. This means we get to put more art in the game (focusing especially on environmental art and creature design) as well as hire more help with writing, editing and audio design. 

This is honestly a pretty big deal. NFI is a fantastic partner to have on board that offers substantial long term support to projects and companies without any creative constraints whatsoever (sweet, sweet social-democratic tax policies). What’s more, NFI is VERY enthusiastic about Skald. Turns out they’re pretty big nerds with a lot of love for bespoke, artsy games.

In other words, this bodes well for the future of the franchise and company. 

Studio Name Change

The company has changed its name from “Scape-IT” to “High North Studios”! The old name was a legacy name and it feels really good to get a name that more accurately reflects the company. I wish I had a fancy logo to show as well but this is just another item in a very long “to-do” list.

A Storm is Coming

At this point I’d rather say less and save the sexy stuff for when we ramp up marketing this summer. I truly hope and believe it’s going to be worth the wait.

Thank you so much for your incredible patience so far. Believe me when I say that the future is looking really exciting and pixelated for us retro RPG fans!


To stay posted, be sure to follow the Skald Twitter and Discord and wishlist on Steam if you haven’t already!

Much love,

 

AL