Diary Page #1: The Origins

Dear Scholars,

Welcome to the very first development update! In this periodic series of posts we'll be highlighting some of the features and content we've been recently working on. Sit down, relax and read the first part of the story behind a quest to bring back the long lost essence of fantasy RPGs and introduce the most intriguing take on the roguelike genre you've seen in a long time - a game that's ambitious, deep, challenging and unlike anything you've seen in past years. A game that's already almost 6 years in the making. "Why so long?" - you may ask. Let us continue and find out.

Prehistory

In order to start from the very beginning, we need to go back a whopping 9 years. Let me put plurals aside for now since there was no "us" back in the day. It was just me - Wiktor - and I had already decided that when I start my own studio, a roguelike would be my debut game. Not just any roguelike - one that would combine modern action with strategic and tactical gameplay known from cRPGs and traditional roguelikes. Moreover, I wanted to make a game that would had that serious, ominous tone to it - something I miss deeply from the oldschool cRPG classics.

So I made some spreadsheets, wrote down some basic gameplay ideas, made a couple of rough 3D models and quickly realized I wasn't experienced enough to take up the ambitious project I had dreamt of just yet. In fact, I was just entering my 20s and was about to find my first gamedev gig.

That little 3D mockup of a dungeon I had made bacame one of my portfolio pieces that landed me my first 3D art job. Thus, my project has been put into a long slumber that lasted over 3 years.

The child's birth

At some point I felt it's finally time to go indie and start a project for real. I told my friend Squallu about my plans and we started brainstorming on things we could create. We wrote down some initial ideas regarding a sci-fi game we had in mind but shortly after I started feeling like I'm not actually very excited about it and that I still want to make that dark fantasy isometric action roguelike. I pitched my vision to Squallu and he immediately got filled with enthusiasm about gameplay I described. Soon after we laid down first ideas for the game's story.

On August 11th 2016 I officially started the development of Project Anxiety - a game that would later become Selenwald. I saved enough money to survive the time needed to make a quality demo that would enable me to fund the rest of the development. Or so I thought..

Turned out a couple of months wasn't even close to being enough for me to make something good enough to dare show it to publishers or to you - the players (eg. via Kickstarter). The project was still in its infancy and I needed to get a job back to sustain myself. I was naive but at least I knew hiring all the people I needed to finish the game in reasonable time without sacrificing quality and retaining cohesion of my vision would cost a lot of money and nobody would give it to me based on what I had at the time. It's not entirely that I still lacked the skills (though of course I wish I was as experienced back then as I am now) but the