FOREWORD A lot has happened since I started production on STARDROP and I felt the time was right to take a look back at the past and present as much as possible in this Production Report. Producing this game has been one of the most demanding endeavors I have experienced in my life. To call this a wild roller coaster ride is an understatement but in the end I made it. We made it. I guess it's a known fact that most of the actual work was done by myself but saying so undermines the efforts of the people that have lend their help, expertise, skills and most importantly their time. I could never gotten this far if it wasn't for the VA's Aryn and Robert, the Environmental Artists and our insanely amazing composer, Adam. Yet at the end of the day I had to write (sorry for the spelling errors), create gameplay mechanics, design and create the levels and tons of art work such as the VEKTRA logo and STARDROP's own logo. Designing user interfaces, menus and getting it all to work. This project has been such a great learning experience for me and has enabled me to be able to do so much more now. I currently have at least two other projects in the works which are massive improvements (under the hood) from what I've done before. Some artists do not like to look back, which I can understand but for me, if I didn't it would be as if I would ignore the past and everything I have experienced from it. But enough about all that. Let's take a look back at STARDROP's early phases and celebrate its long journey into what it has become. To start it off I have created a video with excerpts from an interview me and the team did back in 2016.
STARDROP PRODUCTION REPORT
An interview I did with most of the team hosted by Makenzie Massagli was used as the base for this video accompanied by mostly alpha footage. We go into the history of some of the Voice Actors. How we approached writing and voice acting the scenes and dialogues for the game as well as my own experiences in managing everything.
THE START I don't think I will ever have a wild ride development wise as I had with STARDROP ever again. Not only was the entire process a lot of hard work, it was the biggest learning experience I've ever had. I simply didn't have a ton of experience with the Unreal Engine prior. So much that I did in STARDROP was me learning and re-learning how to create a game. But as is with anything in life, you'll have to start somewhere. What's a better place to start with the earliest footage I have of the game. This is STARDROP in its earliest incarnation. I had an idea of a game, an idea of a story and a universe of imaginations.
CINEMATIC CONCEPT TRAILER
From the start I already decided that STARDROP's focus was on its narrative and to bring that narrative to life I felt that a cinematic approach would add to that greatly. Therefore I created a cinematic concept trailer very early on in production. The visuals in it were the seeds I planted and as you may be able to tell, a lot of this early concept has made its way into the final game.
VISUAL CONCEPT DESIGN
Creating a world, or in this case, a universe is a very daunting task. I didn't have all that much to work with either. The Unreal Marketplace was still in its infancy so there simply wasn't all that much on offer. I also did not have anyone else to help me. I am a level designer turned game designer so 3D modeling is not something I'm really good at. But since I was still prototyping I focused my efforts mainly towards creating gameplay mechanics. I did however tried to find a visual style to work within. While I ultimately wasn't able to transfer much of that into the final game, I did keep some ideas. Such as windows that showcase interesting vistas. Being able to peek into the vast outer space. I like the simplicity of the early concept and its something I may revisit at some point in time but with proper detailed assets. The color scheme is interesting. Black and white contrast each other very well indeed.
EARLY PROTOTYPE
As I made progress I started to further conceptualize gameplay elements. I had to start designing what the game itself should look like. I experimented with the idea of being able to view Aryn's helmet in first person. I also have been tinkering with the idea of using the color orange as a visual cue, or, color code to indicate the type of ship you were on. Very much like how red is used for fire engines and black and white for the police.
Another mechanic I really wanted to implement was being able to use computer terminals similar to how you could in Doom 3. The underlying tech was implemented in the UE4 engine but it was broken. It would take a few engine versions for it to be patched and properly working.
However I started adding in other gameplay mechanics to be able to move forward and further push the visual design of the world/universe and set a mood using ambient sounds as well. The area this video was recorded in actually made it all the way into the final game, albeit it being rebuilt a few times.
ARYN VANCE Mixamo is a program which let you create custom character models to be used in games. It's very much like a character creation system but it goes a bit deeper. I should count myself incredibly lucky because not too long after I created Aryn, John and Ido (plus a few other unnamed characters, support for Unreal Engine 4 was dropped and there wasn't even a legacy option available. In this video you can see me test Aryn from a third person perspective and me testing the first-person animations. I still miss the program and I've seen other ones that offer similar options but aren't as easy to use nor as open ended as Mixamo's. Also, thanks Adobe for buying out the devs and then dropping UE4.
SCANNER PROTOTYPE From the get go my main focus was on telling a compelling narrative. It's a personal decision I made because I wanted to play games that you could enjoy for its story. Something to get lost in after a long day without having to deal with hostile enemies. This premise came after I finished Alien Isolation. I loved the game and it is still one of my favorite games but it drained me. The constant tension is insane. During my play sessions I wondered often what it'd be like to visit Sevastopol at my own leisure. Exploring its areas without constant fear. That's what sparked the initial flame and not long after I already had a decent grasp of what kind of story I wanted to tell. However, I also did not wanted to end up with a game that has no gameplay whatsoever. And thus a new challenge rose up and I started contemplating how to deal with that. Adding in interactive objects was an obvious and logical conclusion but there had to be a little more to it and after looking around the Unreal Forums I came across a few tutorials regarding a wave based object occlusion method. This was perfect because it meant the player still had some sort of ability to detect objects that otherwise would go unnoticed. So in the video below you'll see an early version of that system. Along with a secondary function that was part of the game for quite some time but ultimately I decided to focus on the main one as to keep things more manageable.
MAIN MENU #1 The first menu I created was a huge experimental endeavor on my behalf. I was learning all sorts of new things and at the time Matinee was amazing. A very neat tool to create cinematic visuals. I've experimented with it before STARDROP and I wanted to make as much use of it as I could. However, my main inspiration for anything regarding world building and narrative designs are pulled from the Half-Life and Portal games. Valve is insanely good at guiding the player and just world building in general. I've listened to pretty much all their Developer Commentaries in their games and whatever else I could, such as the book "Raising the bar". This meant that I wanted to focus telling the story during actual gameplay. So I settled for a fifty/fifty approach. Intro's and Outro's would be handled through a third person approach while main story beats would be done in-game. I think that in the end it worked perfectly and I wouldn't change any of it. Anyway, I started thinking about how to approach designing the game's main menu. And as I went along designing the game, I ended up with a number of ideas and variations. But it all started with this one:
MCCV-2 FIRST AND SECOND LOOK Designing the MCCV-2's interior was daunting and incredibly challenging. At the time I did not have a large library of assets to work with. Coupled with switching from brush based geometry to meshes was something I had to get used to. Currently it's second nature and I would not want to go back but it does mean that as a level designer I was stuck with what I had to work with. Brush based level design means you can create rooms to your own explicit design, yet with Meshes you have to conform to a fixed visual design and form. Don't get me wrong, however, you can get mighty creative and that's what I got. The added details a mesh brings along with PBR materials is something a simple brush cannot compete with. And over time I been able to expand my assets library to the point I felt I could create whatever I needed for STARDROP. Well, Almost whatever I needed. So I want to share with you the very first iteration of Aryn's Room on board the MCCV-2. Coupled with its first update where I expanded the ship. It's a glimpse into a very old version of the ship's interior design, something that I iteration on for a very long time before ultimately deciding that I had to redo almost everything from scratch with the aforementioned expanded assets library I had access to. Something that was a ton of work and a ton of effort but it paid off so much it was more than justified. So here are two videos showcasing the first two iterations of the MCCV-2.
AIRLOCK OLD DESIGN While implementing and testing interactive interfaces (Well before I was able to create UI based ones) I had also designed the airlock. I wanted to show how it'd feel like to go through the MCCV-2's interior and contrast that with the SD-01. It was meant to be seamless and immersive, even though level transitions are a thing I decided to try and create this particular approach. This version of the airlock is now gone and replaced once I started to re-create these earlier levels. What remains is a window into the past which I find fascinating.
CUT CONTENT Deck 3 once was part of the tutorial section. It taught the player how to use the Vision Scanner. The vision scanner was to be an extension of the flash light. Able to see in the dark, or when vision is obscured.
In this section immense fog would obscure the player's vision and had to use the scanner to be able to move around. However on lower graphical settings the effect was rendered useless and I couldn't find a justifiable way to implement this in the main game on a narrative level. There really just was no point to it and so, I cut it. And with it, Deck 3 because it also felt like padding and did not offer anything significant to the story, the characters, nor anything. It destroyed the pace and it simply had to go.
MAIN MENU #2 I then created a second main menu version. I was learning more tricks and tried to apply them. It was an interesting experiment for sure but it just did not feel right. There was no rhyme or reason for all this stuff to be happening. I had fun with it for sure, yet, it didn't take very long for me to realize this wasn't it. I'm glad I preserved it though.
INTRO SEQUENCE VERSION 1 How STARDROP starts these days is very different from before, yet, this very first intro scene made its way into the final version. Obviously I have tweaked it immensely. Updated the visuals, timing, pretty much everything but you should be able to easily see where and when this scene takes place in the final game. It's one of the best 1:1 comparisons I can offer from the old alpha footage to the final release. As an added bonus you are also able to see how the very first few scenes played out and what Aryn's Room looked like. The dialogue for these scenes have been re-recorded once I was finished with the overhaul of these old levels to what's in the game right now.
ARYN'S OLD APARTMENT
Aryn's apartment has also gone through countless iterations, tweaks and changes. While I still really like the old design and layout, visually it was not up to par. As part of the old levels overhaul, I opted to re-create Aryn's apartment using meshes instead of brush work, which the old apartment was made with. Brushes have very sharp corners and it looks odd from a architectural point of view. It's nice to see, though, what it looked like once upon a time.
DATAPAD AND UI INTERFACES One of the things I really wanted to implement very early on was a way to use UI based interfaces. I was inspired by Doom 3 and I remembered how immersive they were. Alien Isolation did something a little bit similar as well. The problem was that while I knew Unreal Engine supported 3D widgets (UI) it was broken in the engine version I was using and I was not able to go back. So I tried using textures and materials instead and while it was somewhat functional and did the job, I was not a happy camper. Luckily one or two engine versions later, this issue was fixed and I could finally start learning and implementing it into the game proper. However, this video shows what it was like before. I also had numerous interactive wall panels placed around the ship which was pretty neat, it made no sense in terms of gameplay. Play testers would ignore them and the information contained in them was lost. It just did not help a player and it didn't make much sense narratively speaking. To me, Aryn should know her own ship so with the redesign I opted to try and create the ship in a way so that it didn't feel like Aryn was lost, while the player was new to it. Simple layouts help with that. Of course the tutorial section itself nullifies it a bit but I always enjoyed the tutorial section and I think its fine as it is.
OLD CHAPTER ONE Not much to say here other than I just felt like intersecting the full first chapter right here in the production report. At this point in production this is what I had. In fact, this is what I had when I created the Kickstarter campaign. In hindsight I am still amazed I got funded. I mean, it's not bad and I put in a whole ton of hard work but looking at the game now, this is a far cry from the level of quality I was able to lift the game up to. But hey, this is why I created the production report in the first place. To show where I came from. How much the game actually changed and my thoughts around my decision making. I hope you'll find it interesting as well.
KICKSTARTER Struggling is pretty much how I define my solo indie dev career. Up till today I am still struggling. It really sounds like one heck of a cliche and it feels like it too but it's a fact. I'm not complaining, though. I know others who are worse off much more than me. I'm lucky that I can do this and be able to at least live. But back then I figured I'd try my hand at crowd funding. I would do everything different if I would do it now, but captain hindsight is 101. I promised things I thought I could easily keep but wasn't able to and I also wished the game was at a higher level of overall quality. In fact, this production report is one of the perks but it's been so long I've decided to open it up to everyone and anyone who wants to learn more. I will say this: I don't think I'll ever be able to convey how much the backers of the campaign mean to me. How much that support has meant to me. Same goes for anyone post campaign who have supported the game in one way or another. I've been blessed with meeting folks who've helped me greatly. At the end of the day, however, I am able to say that I have delivered the game as promised. I believe I exceeded expectations for most people, if not my own by far. Me and the VA's and everyone else who have helped with production have put so much effort into the game and I am so proud of having the game sit on a 90 score on Steam as of this writing. I may not have hit the sales target, I have at least a very positively received game under my belt and an insane amount of experience gained from it, which in itself is priceless. Anyway, at this point in time only one thing mattered (besides the actual game) and that was the Kickstarter campaign and the trailer I created for it was... campy?
MAIN MENU #3
It was around the third iteration of the main menu where I started to feel I was heading into a direction I felt fitting to the game. You would see through John's eyes as he was sitting in the cockpit of the MCCV-2. Looking around and such. As you may have figured out, this one also did not last. As much as I liked it I decided that in the end I went for something a bit more traditional. However, around this point in time I introduced the idea of a dynamic menu vista that displayed certain elements depending on where you were in the game. I liked the idea of being able to roughly tell where you were in the game from a narrative perspective. It also made the main menu much less of a static experience. This version simply wasn't it.
SECURITY SYSTEM The security system was yet another way for me to add some more gameplay elements into the game. This one was a bit of an oddball for sure. In pretty much every other game security systems alert enemies to the player's location which makes a lot of sense. But because STARDROP does not feature any traditional enemies I had to think outside the box a little bit.
My thought progress went a little bit like this: What other functions could a security system inherit besides alarming the crew on board. What about if such an alarm system would trap any would be intruder and contain it within said area. Okay, that made sense. The security system would trap whoever was trespassing and wait for any security personnel to arrive and deal with the situation. However since there isn't anyone left to deal with anything, Aryn would be able to reset the system by herself. This to me felt plausible enough and added a little bit of tension, just a tad. It gave the player just a little bit more to deal with, without it becoming too intrusive. Coupled with the androids and I was quite happy with what I came up with.
I created and tested this system in one of the first dev areas. A proof of concept if you will before integrating it into the rest of the game. This level has later been recreated and can now be played during the S-VR mission. Albeit it with a slightly altered map layout and massively changed visual depiction.
STARDOCKS & FINIX OPS
Here's another pre-remake section of the game. It's the STARDOCKS station and the FINIX Operations office. As you can tell it's still early days but this is where I started starting area. I wanted to do a little bit of world building to make the game feel a bit more expansive and encompassing. A station in Earth's orbit made sense, where operations would be conducted from. If any first-response service would be in place and ships would be able to immediately take off from it would be something like this. I do very much like the design of this older version. It feels more industrial but the problem was that by the time I was working on chapter 4, the older assets were simply not of the same quality and it became too jarring. I did my very best to recreate the same feel and I am incredibly happy with what STARDOCKS and FINIX OPS has become. It was a major improvement, I just wish I could've kept more of the oval design. STARDOCKS is a hub area as well. Not just for the player but also for inter galactic transport and such. It made sense and it gave me an opportunity to view the Earth as well. I wish I could have expanded on making it more lively. But I couldn't afford too many people to work on the project (meaning: VA's) so I decided against it. I always felt like having an announcer announce stuff, very much like they do in airports but alas, maybe in the future when I revisit STARDOCKS. For now, enjoy this early look instead.
INTRO SEQUENCE VERSION 2
And here we are with the intro sequence you know from the current version. All of this was pre-remake and was in the game right up until chapter 3. This particular version was still a bit rough and not as polished as it was later on, I find it incredibly interesting to see what it looked like at this stage. Having said that, I was super happy with where the narrative was heading. It felt more like a proper opening except for the part of Ido's way too early introduction. It did not play into the whole mystery aspect and was a bit too much of a trope. I wanted the story to feel more organic where a chain of events lead Aryn and John into the direction of the STARDROP. I think it turned out perfect but for a while, this is what I went for. Also, at this point Ido was voiced by someone else, who did a really cool job but I lost contact with him and had to find someone else, which was to be Jordan and to this day I am so thankful for his amazing performance.
NEW KICKSTARER TRAILER During the Kickstarter campaign I felt the original trailer wasn't up to par with what the game actually was. I spent a bit of time trying to create something that showed a bit more actual in-game footage. I'm not a pro when it comes to this kind of stuff and I surely am not a video editor I tried my best with each trailer I made. It was a step in the right direction for sure but a long way from what would be the current and final trailer.
SD-01 ALPHA So there I was with one chapter down and the daunting prospect of having to create the rest of the game. Here's a look at one of the earliest iterations of the SD-01. At this point I was able to expand my assets library with new and high quality assets. This actually altered the quality I could aim for and the more I worked on this chapter the more I realized this.
This was followed up shortly with the addition of the Crew Quarters area. You can hear the old background music that was not created for the game. While I liked it, I'm happy I was able to get Adam Halpin on board to do the final score.
A FAMILIAR INTRO SEQUENCE
You should recognize this intro sequence if you have played the game. A lot has been tweaked between this and the final version but I learnt how to use proper images for the game's title sequence and it was a personal OMG moment. It's still accompanied by the old music I was using but it did set a proper tone of what I wanted the game to be. One of the defining moments for me personally which in turn gave me a lot of motivation going forward from this point on.
INTERACTIVE UI AND INSPECTION SYSTEM A lot happened during the development of chapter two.I started utilizing the scanner system as a game mechanic and using the androids and the security system but also I was able to upgrade the engine which fixed the aforementioned 3D UI tools. I was now able to create 3D interfaces and so I went to work on mimicking operating systems along with emails and other functionality. I was also able to add in an object inspection system but at the time I wasn't sure how to use it in a way that was fun or made sense. It's still not perfect but in my mind it added a little bit more variety. In the end I was able to use it as a means to just look at stuff and pick certain objects to be collected and showcased in Aryn's apartment. I think it's a fun little mechanic and adds more value to the places you'll visit and have something to remember your journey.
PRE-RELEASE TRAILER (STEAM) One thing I have struggled with up until the final cut was the game's trailer. Trailers more often than not end up revealing so much about the thing they're trying to sell that I don't see the point. I want people to be surprised by the game while playing it and not anticipate things they've seen in a trailer. Conveying STARDROP accurately in trailer for is really difficult because it hinges so much around its main mystery. I sometimes feel that I am showing too much in the final trailer but then again I have to remind myself that people wouldn't have much context and most likely will not remember most of the snippets shown in the trailer anyway. Having said all that, this video demonstrates where I started to figure out how to showcase the game in a way that I felt did not spoil too much. You want people to get excited after all but at the same time you don't want to set the wrong kinds of expectations either. It's a fine line and I think I did alright in the end but only after so many attempts, which this is one of.
TRAILERS Speaking of trailers, around the time I the Kickstarter campaign was live I also was busy setting up the store page. After I finished the previous trailer (above) I felt like trying something different. Midway during the campaign I wrote a script and sent it off to Aryn and Robert. While I ended up not using this one I still like it for what it is. It's goofy and playful and offered a different kind of character building but I felt it was a tad too 4th wall breaking. I still believe its worth a watch if you're interested in all this stuff.
Speaking of trailers, here's the first official Early Access trailer for the Steam launch:
ALPHA LABS ALPHA Alpha labs was an important section in chapter 3 because it once again shifted the visual quality to a higher level. I also started to think about what a science vessel like the STARDROP would be... "sciencing". I.E. I felt that plant life, or life in general, would be an important research topic and so I created Alpha labs and the green house for that purpose and tie it into the narrative. This very early version shows alpha labs prior to me color coding it and it looks solid, at least as a base to work off of.
SPACEWALK
Working on chapter 3 made me feel uncomfortable. I was so happy with how tight knit chapter two turned out and scared I wouldn't be able to match that nor the visual design of the SD-01 but I had to move forward regardless. I had to see it through to the end for my own sake and the team's as well. I already released Echoes around that time and I enjoyed the whole spacewalk aspect. I figured that it would be a real set piece to have to do that in the main game with the STARDROP in the background. It also offered a few ways to add in dialogues where I would let Aryn and John do some chit chat and let them bounce off of the fact they just discovered this long lost almost mythical spaceship. It was fun to work on and I think it turned out fine. However, I still didn't have any proper spaceship models around this time but I didn't want to cut this part of the game. It breaks up the pacing of the game in an interesting way and offers something a bit different so I kept it in until I was later able to find suitable, not perfect, replacements for the final version.
A little while later I added in a proper opening sequence and changed the space background to something way more unique. Slowly I was cementing the visual style of this new chapter.
THE SOUND OF MUSIC And then I contacted Adam Halpin. I worked with him on a mod I created during 2008 to 2010 for Half-Life 2 called 1187. His work on it was really cool and I enjoyed working with him. A chill out dude and incredibly friendly and a really talented composer. I have been searching for a composer for quite some time before I contacted him. I'm not sure why I didn't for so long but yeah, no one fit the project. I got countless offers from others to do music and I had one or two join in and then either back out or stopped responding. I didn't feel they had a passion for STARDROO. Enter Adam. I remember thinking recalling his work and then saying to myself, dude, why not ask him? This guy is talented and you already worked with him. (Mind you, it was a few years ago) and so I did. And he was so in and started work immediately. I told him what kind of emotion I was going for and offered some inspirations and then he came back with a few tracks that felt genuine and unique. I couldn't believe it, I found my composer who I believed in and would be able to carry the game on musical wise. The video below is yet another iteration of the introduction sequence, but this time with an early version of his works. I was ecstatic to say the least.
CHAPTER 3 AND BEYOND After releasing Chapter 3 during Early Access the pressure was on. At this point I felt incredibly comfortable working with all the assets in my library. Aryn, Robert and Jordan were knocking it out the ball park in my opinion and the community was incredibly positive and eagerly awaiting the final chapter. Chapter 4 was probably the most difficult of all mainly due to the fact I needed to outdo the cliffhanger I created with chapter 3. Not only that I needed to turn everything up a notch because things felt a tad too comfortable, too predictive. I wanted to wow players but not just by set pieces but by simple shifts in narrative structures. Gameplay experiences and I also needed to pull off an ending that felt deserved. Deserved by the player, by Aryn and John and as a story teller and game designer for myself. While I was confident in how I planned the ending so long ago, early on in development, I haven't actually done it yet. There's a huge difference in having something in your head and then making that a reality. It's never the exact thing you had in mind but at this point I have thought about the ending so many times, I was comfortable enough to actually get it all together at the end. But before that, I just released chapter 3 and along with it, my first draft for its trailer.
THE BEGINNING OF THE END There isn't all that much to show from this point on. I still created internal videos to show to the team and my friends and keeping some sort of internal dev blog but at this point I pretty much nailed the visual aspect of what I wanted STARDROP to look like. Everything was fine-tuned and geared towards the ending. But I had to start with the continuation of where chapter 3 ended. Throwing Aryn out of the airlock was quite daring from what the game has been up until that point. It was exciting to work on and I felt it did something out of left field without infringing on how I treated the characters, the narrative and most important of all, the player. Who better in this case to lighten up the tension than John himself. I know John is a bit of a hit or miss character. I personally love him simply because Robert put so much of himself into him. John is, in fact, a re-imagined character from my old mod 1187. I wanted John and by extension, Robert, to be part of my own game instead of a mod. By this time 1187 wasn't even playable anymore due to Valve changing some source engine code. But yeah, from the start I loved the chemistry between Aryn and Robert and it felt right to bring him back into the game's narrative and introduce himself to Ido and also showing off that he's more than a background character but a person in his own right who has Aryn's back no matter what.
Once I had this introduction out of the way I did something I haven't done before during production and that was working on something ahead of where I was in the actual story. I started work on the ending of the game. I felt that if I could pull of the ending in a visual manner I would feel more confident. Not only did I feel exactly that, I also felt much more motivated. I was so close to cap off 3 and a half years of work with something tangible. I know it sounds stupid but the ending moved me on a personal level. I can't really describe it any better than that but it did. And so, here's the earliest recorded version of the ending of STARDROP.
ALMOST THERE And so, I got closer to the ending. The mainframe core was gonna be an important area regarding the story. Most of the plots were developed in my mind long before I worked on them, except for the NX7 plot. You see, one of the backers sent in some voice work out of nowhere where he came up with the NX7 anomaly. His voice acting was amazing and I used it to the full extent possible. He offered a way for me to have Ido act so odd during the SD-01 chapter. And throw people off when contacted at the end of that chapter. But what then, how do I deal with two Ido's. How did they relate to everything that happened. How do I fix this and not destroy Ido's character. And so, I thought that it would be highly interesting to delve into "what if" a person's mind got copied, out of good intentions and things go wrong. How do I tell this kind of story without going full horror survival on it. Well, if you played the game you know, but I didn't exactly at the time. And I knew I had to pull it off during this section. I also was scared if Jordan would understand what I tried to go for and pull it off. But he did pull it off and I shouldn't have doubted his acting capabilities. You see, to me, it felt like I was working with all these professionals. Like for some reason beyond my comprehension I was gifted with talented people that to me should be famous. They're all so good and at my mercy to utilize their talents. That, to me, was the burden I had to bear while developing the game. That and the burden of the expectations that the community had of the game. But once I got closer and closer to the revelation that happens during the Mainframe Core section, the less stress I felt. I was doing it, the team was doing this. It's such an amazing feeling getting to this point and I was so proud. Regardless of how people would receive it.
IDO REMEMBERS This was one of the final scenes I worked on. Once I got to this point it all came together. All that was left was getting to the bridge and for one, final reveal. And while I did not aim for some sort of tearjerker ending, I did aim for somethign emotional. Something that again, felt earned.
THE COLUMBIAD Making the Dreamscape section was one of my personal highlights. I've tried to deviate from regular gameplay mechanics as much as possible. Spacewalking, looking through Ido's eyes for a moment all felt exciting but nothing more than the Dreamscae section. It was a chance for me to actually show what happened. To experience the sudden escalation on board the Columbiad.
I was able to use assets resembling the Alien franchise's without infringing on it. It felt a little bit like going back into the past, into the future and I had so much fun working on it and designing it. It was yet another set piece that offered something unique and added to the flow of all these revelations I was going through within the story itself. One of the last things I recorded during development was this early footage.
EPILOGUE After 4 years of hard work I released STARDROP, leaving Early Access proper. I hope you enjoyed this little look back into the game's development. And that you may have a better sense of how much effort has gone into it. I'm not overstating that it took a whole lot out of me. More than I expected but I'm grateful for what I got back from it. I am forever grateful towards the people who've been a part of this project. I honestly hope they'll become well known in the industry, they really deserve it. I'm also grateful for all the support the community has given back. Sharing their stories and showing me that a game like this has an audience, however small it may be. And with this I conclude the Production Report. One day I do want to return to STARDROP. I still want to tell more stories and get the crew back together. Until then, thank you for taking the time to watch/read all this and if you have, for playing the game. Hope you enjoyed it. Take care and game on! Joure Visser