Devlog #001 - We are Strangers

You might know us, you might not. Some of you frequently ask about updates on Trailblazers : Into the March. Where does this game come from? What kind of crazy people launched a new video game? My name is Vincent, co-leader of this madness! And I'm here to tell you about us. Game On.

Turning a Reddit Post into a Company

Trailblazers is born from a new team and company. It all started from a Reddit Post I wrote in 2023 asking to find crazy peers to do a game. The post didn't mention any specific game idea or genre; it was more focused on the idea of creating a company and choosing a project together.

In retrospect, it was probably a good idea. It allowed us to find a better idea than I would have found on my own, and it immediately ignited passions within the team. What are we going to do? We decided to pitch ideas internally. About thirty projects were proposed, and the debate was heated to decide what we were going to do.

While most in the team had already worked in the video game industry, we had never worked together. Personally, I trained as a film-maker and art historian, and my first passion is music. So I wasn't necessarily prepared to do something in the video game industry. But when you're passionate about art, technology and storytelling, video games are an infinite playground that you can invest in. And it's possible to create all of this with just a computer. It's magical! I fell in love.

Being an entirely remote company, we decided to call ourselves Strangers. The year 2023 and a large part of 2024 were therefore devoted to setting up a game project, a team, a business project, networking, meeting publishers, attending fairs - and all this with very limited financial means. A lot of stress, a lot of work and a lot of passion. As you've probably noticed, we have now signed with Joystick Ventures and this partnership allows us to work under good conditions and focus on the Trailblazers Universe.

Are the pirates gone?

Trailblazers was born from a simple idea by Vlad, our lead developer and co-founder of Strangers (yeah, yeah, I know, he's the one who won the internal pitch...).

“Let's take FTL, but instead of a spaceship, let's put pirates on a ship.”

Okay.

But where's the ship in Trailblazers? And the pirates?... They no longer exist… Yes… I know, dear pirate lover… they no longer exists… It's a fact we'll have to live with.

We were keen to create a rich and complex world and we thought that pirates were already laden with stereotypes, with strong imagery carried by cinema and video games. We wanted a more neutral playground. So we invented the Trailblazers and their landships. We borrowed certain mechanics from our pirate prototype and the desire to create a community simulation, transformed the ship into a landship and the pirates into Trailblazers.

Quick tip: To transform a ship into a landship, you simply take the word ship and add the prefix land in front of it - easy.

Image of Crow’s Nest prototype. A project we sank.

In Love with Landships

Can you be obsessed with Landships? Why not, I don't see how that's any different from being obsessed with a pair of shoes. This love for landships materialized through the work of two artists who helped us make these vessels tangible, several prototypes, attempts to make them move with elegance in