The demo that was released yesterday on Steam shows off a game with a unique approach to telling a story, joining a point-and-click interface with a turn-based strategy game. The softness of it all is so inviting and peaceful and moody, it makes me want to get back to the game world to listen to yet another peasant story and weight yet another hard decision of where to contribute my coins and supplies. The spaghetti-legs art style was replaced with a more realistic stylization of characters, complementing nicely the smoothly shaded environments. With the legal battles with the old publisher finally resolved, the project could come out of hiding, explaining the grim tale the development went through and surprising everyone with a trailer that showed a greatly enhanced game, compared to the Kickstarter. Hat is off to him, because that’s exactly what he did in 2019. There was one last development twist: No More Robots suggested a switch from Adventure Game Studio to Unity (a sane choice to accommodate more release platforms), meaning Rafał would had to learn a completely new programing language and engine and write the whole game from scratch again. Rafał was able to get a one hour demo of Yes, Your Grace written from scratch in Adventure Game Studio earlier that year, so he showed it to No More Robots and happily got their support.
This would continue all the way into 2018 when the game he was contracted to do, the post-Brexit bouncer simulator Not Tonight was released by the publisher No More Robots. After hours he worked on improving his programing skills and trying to get out of the sour publishing deal. 2017 saw no progress on the game as Rafał took on pixel art freelancing to pay the bills.
A new coder was promised, but the word was never fulfilled.Īfter months spent in publisher limbo and without funds to find a programer on his own, Rafał pulled the most ambitious move and started learning to code himself. All would be fine if the programer didn’t quit the publisher a month later, leaving the future of the project again uncertain. The programmer left the project to solely focus on his studies, leaving the main creator Rafał Bryks to work on the game alone, with the code part left dormant.Ī publisher was finally found in 2016, bringing a new programer on board.
This proved to be more challenging than expected and without funding, the pair decided to go back to uni. As is typical for game development, the work was not complete, and with the Kickstarter money burned through, the team started looking for a publisher. The funding campaign succeeded, alas without much extra funds on top of the £6,000 goal. An ambitious goal was set to finish it by the end of 2015, if the lead designer/artist and programer were to go into full-time development with a help of a Kickstarter. Yes, Your Grace was started by a team of students at the University of Huddersfield in England, all the way back in 2014.
There’s not much more that I like than a good development story. To watch the full, 4-part interview with Nick Wozniak, check out Adam C Younis’ GameDevChat playlist. Still, there’s no worries we won’t see any more pixel art from him as he’s a regular Twitch streamer, drawing sprites for people that subscribe to his channel. In the interview Nick mentions they’re already working on something new and it might even go in the 3D direction. With King of Cards and Showdown released, the company wrapped everything up last week with Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove, a collection of all their 5 titles (excluding the upcoming Shovel Knight: Dig developed by Nitrome). In the interview he talks about what makes a great sprite and even shows the design document for the game.Īfter 6 years, the Shovel Knight era is now over for Yacht Club Games. After forming Yacht Club Games and a successful Kickstarter in 2013, his work became solely focused on Shovel Knight. Nick talks about life before Shovel Knight when he worked at WayForward (Mighty Switch Force!, Double Dragon Neon …), learning alongside pixel art legends such as Henk Nieborg. Nick was the pixel artist on the initial titles, responsible with the representation of the now legendary T-shaped-horned-helmet-digging-equipment-wielding medieval warrior. If Yacht Club Games doesn’t ring any bells, you almost certainly heard about their game (series) Shovel Knight. There was one more reason why I wanted to mention Adam C Younis with the last week’s post about Insignia. On Adam’s YouTube channel you will find a few of his archived Twitch streams, one of them being an interview with Yacht Club Games’ Nick Wozniak.