The Debbie Downer Update
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Mar 10, 2022 at 07:03:21 PM
Hello Everyone,
I apologize for the long delay in the updates. We have had some major development issues and I wanted to ensure we had everything 100% figured out before sharing the news.
The team was hit with some major health issues in January and February (primarily COVID), which slowed us down. Thankfully, our team and their families are all healthy once again, but this has unfortunately caused a major development roadblock. After the sickness exacerbating some existing financial troubles, our artist Moudy is unable to continue his work with Winterborn so he can focus on other more immediate forms of revenue. The long delay in updates was a result of us exploring many options for him to stay on and keep working with the company, but unfortunately as of March 1st Moudy is no longer working with Winterborn.
The Path for Externus
Realistically, after Trevor's passing last year and Moudy's leaving, we do not currently have the required resources to complete the game. The primary issue is being unable to create any new art assets (characters, 3D Levels, spells visuals, and much more) beyond what we currently have.
However, after a lot of discussion, the remaining members of Winterborn have decided that we will continue development of Externus, rather than abandoning it. We will be finishing the game using temporary art assets, while also exploring options for being able to get funds to hire a new artist to get the game to a finished state.
The major changes to development and schedule are:
- Updates are likely going to come every 3 months or so instead of every month. This is primarily because we will have nothing that can really be shown since everything will be developed using temporary / grey box assets. We will post as we hit any major milestones, and most importantly, once we have secured funding for an artist.
- During development, I will also be looking for new avenues of funding to secure the artist. The funding from his backer campaign went to animation for existing assets (and reserved for the backer rewards still incoming), but we need to more content - primarily 3D levels and 2D characters. As of right now, our first plan is to find a publisher who will work with us to provide the funding and some additional perks (localization, marketing, etc) but we will be looking into any and all options to secure funding so the game can be completed.
- We will be delayed. Prior to this setback, we had planned to release near the end of summer this year, but having lost all ability to create art, this is not a realistic date any longer. Unfortunately, I do not have an exact date to provide as that will depend heavily on how long it takes for us to find funding for the artist. Rest assured I will send out an update as soon as I have further information on this. The Prologue Demo we were working to release is also going to be delayed, so we can focus our attention entirely on finishing the game and securing new funding.
I am extremely sorry to provide bad news such as this to our backers as I hate to disappoint you. Please bear with us during these difficulties, and know that the remaining team are doing our best to ensure Externus not only sees completion, but also hits the quality bar we are demanding of it. We knew this was going to be difficult going in, but we definitely did not plan for the loss of team members or just how difficult these last few years have been for the entire world.
If you have questions, please feel free to message me on Discord and I will do my best to respond in a timely manner. I often have my head down in development but will do my best to schedule a bit of time for questions several times a week.