Hello friends, it's been a while.
As you may know, our development situation has been quite tough this past year.
As the support has been, understandably, declining, I haven't been able to pay the bills and have found myself neck deep in debt.
I blame no one but myself for this though, as I've made some big mistakes with the development throughout these years, and I've come to the realization that to fix all of this I need a lot of time and money. Two things I simply do not have.
DBA is something special. A game of its magnitude comes once in a dev's lifetime and I will not waste that potential. I won't give up on the project and I WILL NOT rush it out as is to please some impatient people. I've given so much power over the years to everyone except myself that my original plans for the game have turned into a complete mess. I need to make detailed plans on the rest of the development.
One thing I know though, is that by the time I'm done with all that and DBA is out, I've already gone bankrupt. I've been selling my huge video game collection these past years to make up for the money that I'm missing. We left our office about a year ago to save up some cash, but that only affected negatively to the development as I got small kids running around the house and the communication over chat is not as easy as just being there in the same workspace.
So, that leaves us with two options.
1. I get my old job back and put DBA development on ice until I have saved up the cash to continue (This would take years.)
2. We'll make another game that's smaller and easier to finish quickly, and use the money we make to finish DBA.
We've chosen the second option and have taken a small loan to make it through these 7+ months of development we'll need in order to get it out. We have also partnered with a publisher, Shady Corner, to help us get it done.
I feel that this is the best option for both the fans and me as you'll get new Skullgear content and I won't have to stop developing. Heck, I'll still develop DBA every chance I get since they're running on the same proprietary game engine.
Luckily, I had already written detailed plans for this game in 2020 so that there wouldn't be such a big gap between games after DBA was done.
I know we are capable of this, as I noticed how fast we can be when the project was planned right with the Halloween DLC. We completed that project from start to finish in just 1,5 months, from idea to complete game. This isn't the case with DBA as we have to constantly take three steps back in order to take one forward. That's the price to pay for the fact that we started developing the engine 1 year later than the actual game. Things change, and we change and grow as developers.
We've learned so much during these past years, and I'm eager to show you all once more what we are made of. Take this as you will, I just wanted to be transparent about things.
Thank you all for the love and support you've been giving us. Without you, we would've been able to get this far. Now we need to push just a bit further to claim our prize!
The new game will be announced this weekend by Shady Corner (Stay tuned for that), and will receive a steam page for wishlisting by the end of this summer (So close!).
Summary:
Money problems
New game coming soon to fund DBA
DBA is NOT cancelled/Abandoned
Peace and love,
-Oni