A New Year, A Comprehensive Update on Alliance

First of all, I’m truly sorry I haven’t been more communicative across our various channels. Frankly, I’m quite glad to finally be writing this, as it will explain a lot of questions I’m sure many of you have had - I can finally answer most of them!

I’ll start with the lead: Although we have been in negotiations with several major publishers - you would instantly recognize any of them - and in one case for over four months(!) we have not been able to find a publisher that will commit to the resources needed to properly complete Alliance. There is a lot of interest in the game itself - the game, per se, has never been the issue; the issue is the ability of a first-time team to complete such a large project. That not only includes the coding of the actual game, but everything that goes with it on the periphery: play-testing, balancing, in-game documentation, optimization, bug-fixing, etc.

As a result, I have allowed our team to pursue other projects for now. I don’t know how long it will take to find a publisher, and it’s not fair to them to keep them ‘on the hook’ with such uncertainty. They understand the situation and we will remain in touch.

So how did we get here, and what’s the plan going forward? I’ll address how we got here shortly, but I want to get to the plan for those who don’t want to wade through an extended in-progress mortem.

Over the last 8 months or so, I have been working a lot on my professional programming and engine skills (Alliance uses Unity) and have been working on certifications both with Unity and Microsoft to become truly proficient on a professional level - I’m essentially self-taught and this approach has left me with a lot of gaps in my knowledge, gaps that I haven’t really needed to fill until this year. So I’ve plunged into it, and I can say that my knowledge and abilities have grown to the point where I can essentially continue to work on Alliance myself - most of the key systems/UI/art/program structure is complete, so it’s really a matter of continuing to extend, polish, and test what’s there.

But my focus right now is on a project that I’ve had on the backburner for a while, called Boss Slayer: Zero. It’s a game that I designed originally as a board game, then extended the system and story to fit a world I had in my mind around this game. It’s currently in advanced prototype status, programmed using Unity 2023 LTS, and most crucially, is a project that was organized and developed from the ground up the ‘proper’ way - with a paper prototype, a small testbed for the main concepts, a full (and living) game design document, and a planned, incremental approach to building and expanding the game.

What is Boss Slayer: Zero? It’s basically a tactical combat game where you fight in virtual arenas against… a boss. Yes, like in RPGs. Think XCOM mechanics, but with one ‘soldier’ with many more options and actions available, against individual aliens in a confined space. There is a strategic layer that allows you to develop and improve your Fighter (what you are called in the game) by cashing in Data (basically experience) and Prestige (what you gain from defeating Bosses).

The idea behind the career mode is that in the future, you have been uploaded into a VR system called JANUS that is run by an entity called The Judge. You participate in battles against bosses that are viewed by millions of people in VR systems that they have/can access, and as you win battles, you gain Followers that allow you to rank up, gain Prestige that leads to higher-level Boss battles, and gain access to improved weapons, equipment, and combat programs(!) If you lose too many battles, you lose Followers, and if you have too few Followers, you’re… deleted forever, as you’re basically ‘cold Prada’ at that point in the show. There’s also a story mode that I don’t want to spoil but I’m really proud of it and can’t wait to show it off!

So I’m currently soliciting feedback on the prototype build, and depending on that feedback, I will start to prepare BS:0 for a very early access release. It’s a risk, especially considering the development history of Alliance, but one huge difference is that I’ve focused on the game loop, stability, and basic functionality from the very start - it already has a save/load system, a full tutorial (using tools I developed for Unity!) that I’m really proud of - it’s funny, it tells the story of your situation, and it slowly walks you through the basics of the combat system in BS:0. As a result, anyone who plays the prototype will be up to speed without a cumbersome amount of external documentation, and will be able to play quick battles after doing the story tutorial. (there are currently 2 modes; story/tutorial and quick battle; there will also be a career mode as described above and a battle setup mode where you can explicitly select a pre-made boss (or have one procedurally generated), your setup, and the arena, as well as any special systems. I have considered adding multiplayer, but that’s a new frontier for me so it’s currently not an option; nevertheless, I have organized the game structure to (hopefully) more easily incorporate such a mode if it gets added.

I hope to use the revenue from BS:0 to continue to develop it - I also have a second job and it brings in enough income for me to essentially ‘work for free’ on BS:0, so any revenues will be allocated to improving the content (UI, models, art, etc). As a result, the EA pricing for BS:0 will be very low to start - haven’t finalized it yet but it will be no more than $10 USD to start.

So that’s the present, and the immediate future. What about Alliance? Well, I do plan to continue working on it slowly in my spare time - I estimate it will take about 100 man-hours of programming and bug-fixing to bring it to a state where I can upload it to the mainline for those who bought the original version, Imperia, all those years ago. It’s important to me that you see the progress we’ve made- we’ve made tremendous strides in the UI, the tooltip system, and the performance over the last several years. We were headed in the right direction, and the design is one that I'm very excited about; once we can bring the game into a proper EA state I hope those who have stuck with us will see what we’ve been working on. I’ve also decided to use that build to create a new demo once it’s ready; I don’t want to get into the habit of creating ETAs that I can’t make, so I’ll just say that I hope to release it fairly close to the BS:0 demo/public prototype.

I will say this: Alliance will be released at some point. There has been too much time, too many resources, and a lot of blood, sweat, money, and tears invested for it not to. What I don’t want is to do a ‘EA dump’ and compromise the project I and many others have worked so hard on. I will admit I considered it. Strongly, for a time. But ultimately, I decided to try to keep the vision I’ve had for many years. If/when we are picked up by another publisher, this will give them the freedom to market and pivot the game as they wish.

As for me? I won’t beat around the bush: Last year was brutal. Personally, professionally, and mentally. It was easily the toughest year of my life. That’s a big reason you didn’t hear much from me - I just wasn’t up to it mentally. For those who remember the Imperia days, you remember (hopefully) how responsive I was to the community, and I look forward to getting back to that level of activity. The reasons why Alliance hasn’t yet made it over the finish line start and end with me, and my inability to lead and manage a project of this size while also fighting severe ADHD and its side effects (depression, procrastination, low self-confidence, etc).

Put simply, we didn’t finish the game on time because I didn’t stick to a vision for the game, I didn’t treat it like a business, and I allowed feature creep to set in before we had to make tough decisions last year about what we could truly deliver for an EA vs. a full release. It eventually became overwhelming, and things sort of moved from there.

So, in June of last year, I finally made the decision to get my ADHD treated. It’s something I’ve had all my life, and looking back on my life, it has set me back in so many areas. I won’t turn this into a ADHD support/pity post, but I will just say two things: a) I will regret for the rest of my life that I wasn’t treated much, much earlier and b) now that I am, I am so excited for the future of what I can do - BS:0 is the first ‘fruit’ of that new focus and a ‘properly wired brain’, but obviously the benefits will eventually trickle down into Alliance as well.

At any rate, if you’ve made it this far, thank you for your support. I do truly believe Alliance will be released - it’s too far along not to, and I’m not a huge publisher who has to make the decision to kill a project. I know immeasurably more about the game industry and the game development cycle than I did when I started this journey years ago, and though it’s hard-won knowledge, it will stay with me forever.

One final note: to publicly thank and acknowledge Hooded Horse. Alliance was their first signing beyond Terra Invicta, and it’s been quite a ride. Tim, Snow, and the rest of HH has been nothing but supportive and frankly gave us much more runway than we perhaps deserved, and I strongly encourage any smaller developer who has a dream and a truly original idea to reach out to them. You never know, and I firmly believe the industry is stronger as a whole when there are publishers willing to take a risk on a smaller/unknown idea or game. Not all of them pan out, but when they do, they can change genres, and HH is an example of a publisher who follows that ethos.

Stay tuned for more information on BS:0 and Alliance - now that I’m freelance again, so to speak, I’ll be much more active on these forums/Discord, and when the BS:0 Steam page is launched (soon, no ETA) I’ll be active there as well. I will be renaming the Alliance Discord to KatHawk Studios, and adding some channels for BS:0 if you’re interested in that project. The link to join is here: https://discord.gg/R4fCFZWGgG

Also, If you're interested in the current progress/state of Alliance, you can watch our in-house tutorial video here: https://youtu.be/reikU8axzSU

For the Celestial Empire, forever, Steve