First of all, would like to start by saying a big thank you to the dozen or so people who joined this project on the many platforms it was shown; you weren’t forgotten, so much so that this entry is mostly dedicated to those involved. Although, might be useful for other devs as well.

It was mostly kept a “secret” that what you saw of the game was only scraping the surface in terms of execution (speaking of aesthetics and quality): Crún should not look like this, nor be in this chopped up state that it found itself in (trying to impress with a simple mechanic, but it was a calculated decision to be rushed). My knowledge, and past experiences on projects (most can be still read on my main gamedev.net blog or be watched bits of on Youtube, others have been archived on Itch.io; most of these are listed on my website) make it so that it far exceeds this level of execution, but production was forced to take several turns to get this far in hopes to fuel the future of this project; it was prepared as much as possible.

Have had alluded in previous posts about the potential aesthetics for the game (with that video of a giant), but wasn’t mentioned anywhere here or on the landing page, as reality is that a regular person (not having development experience that is) will have a tough time extrapolating of the final outcome from one character alone (and besides why would they care what a game could look like?); you need years of “trained” experience to be able to “see/envision” these kind of things. This is the classic “try to imagine how it would look, without it being referenced at all”, hence it was left out completely (and only told to publishers). It would’ve asked way too much of you or anyone to see what the final product would look like. Same goes for the quality represented in the build (e.g. slow FPS, small screen size, quality of sound/music, etc.). Time was of the essence, and with the current extremely outdated tools (Win7 era) it wasn’t feasible, to say make art like the one seen in the video, as it would’ve taken years to make all the assets used so far (with a mouse that is); to put this in perspective, that hero character took 2 months just to paint (6 more to animate). Thus sacrifices had to be made to be able to present more than just a few models when reaching out to publishers; most of them require a working build, before you can have a chat with them (or the matter of fact being able to submit your pitch for many). Crún at this stage still lacks the proper definition of a vertical slice, as it’s more of a working build (“fully” functioning), rather than a showcase sample.

That’s why, hope was that despite the difficulties in production (e.g. outside pressure, the pro-bono aspect, hardships, etc.), an experienced publisher would approach this game from a different angle and be more “forgiving” for what is there to see; especially after going through all the provided material (pressing the market viability from statistics per se). So far that has yet to happen, and that trend is unlikely to change; see the image below.

As you can see, currently there’s 35 “active” submissions from 60 still in the works; assuming they are all still work-in-progress, which is probably not the case. This is just an estimate, and not fully representative of reality, because some of the time there’s no way of telling if someone read and evaluated a submission or not; publishers get swarmed with submissions all the time, and they might not have the capacity to handle it all (more so to reply), that’s why have taken my time to address those who do (to reinforce their positive business practices). You can guess from interactions (say accessing the build), or page visits but that can only take you so far; hence some of these are labeled MIA (missing in action). Also, the first pitch was sent out almost a month and a half ago, and judging from my experience and from what other devs shared online, the chance of failure is increasing by the week for Crún; as generally a few months should pass between contact from smaller publishers, but no more than a few (2-3 maybe on average).

What my goal for gaming was forever is to create experiences rarely seen in the industry; approaching it from traditional writing and other sources. Not solely restricted to narrative games, but it just so happened to be with this particular title (it was a mess when the idea for this game came up); ARPG is another soft spot for me, and so forth. However, the less flashy action a game has, the higher chance of it being rejected from a publisher’s point of view; especially if the target audience isn’t teens or young adults. Even reaching out to 60 was a bit of a stretch, as 80% of them mostly produce high action based games (or ones that are mostly focused on action and fancy visuals); these were the closest publishers dealing with narrative driven games one could find in the indie space. Not sure of the exacts, as they weren’t shared with me (apart from the “unfortunately this isn’t going to fit our portfolio”), but the hunch is that publishers are still avoiding narrative driven games in favor or more “traditional” genres (aesthetics aside, which play an extremely important role as you’ve seconds to convince someone to take interest in a game), especially from a nobody like myself; it’s well reasoned on one hand, as the history of narrative games are most often than not a hit or miss (especially these days, after the decline in the 90s).

The connotation of Interactive Fiction (e.g. having choices, narrative depth, etc.) rings too close to Visual Novels (VN), regardless of the context, which is usually associated with Japanese romance and explicit (as in adult) materials; something that Crún has no connections with. But from the last example video, it could be argued that it’s an obvious revelation to make (as in how similarly the dialogue is handled); despite it’s just only a fraction of the total gameplay experience (just happened to be the more flashy parts completed, for the sake of attracting interest). Which is fair, but there’s only so many ways to showcase dialogue between characters on screen; which happens to be what VNs use, as it’s quite convenient for solo devs. Then you can cross reference this how usually submissions are judged by a video or the landing page; some of those rejected pitches saw no traffic other than a quick glance at a video. This just speaks volumes of how months of work can go down the drain at an instant, in an outstandingly competitive industry, where publishers in power just need to open their hands and dig into a massive pile of wannabe devs and ideas, and freely sift through them as there’s so many to choose from. Thus, most of the time they don’t even bother digging through a submission, as there are better ones to explore, plus if they did then no work would’ve been done (like how large companies auto filter CVs these days). Obviously, a lot more goes behind the scenes, like the contents of their portfolio (what genres they lock onto), how they handle their investments, etc.

And on top of it all, getting a rejection from a company that made a similar game (that was quite popular, and is referenced in the pitch; ps.: turns out they might be also working on a sequel), means that for whatever reason the trust in my abilities and the success of the product, again despite having contradicting evidence, is lacking and most certainly is casting a huge shadow on the success of the remainder of submissions; probably not just the genre, but the “solo” aspect of it. If this were my first attempt, would’ve just brushed this off in hopes for better. However, have been doing this for years and being less naive, going through a lot of hurdles, this experience just further cemented my grim outlook for the future for this project. Again, there’s a good reason why most of the games you see these days are rehashes of old ones: The main flow of the industry isn’t interested in what this project could do, or what resources it attempts to with (e.g. too low budget, no incorporation, no team, no previous long line of history publishing successful games).

It might all feel dark and gloomy, but time and time again, you see that in order to succeed in a creative industry, you need good connections and be part of the flow. Which is something that this production is going against; sort of by not having any of those. Funding a relatively dormant genre, in an industry space where most avoid extreme risks such as this, makes it an insurmountable issue to pull this project through. Regardless of what could be at stake, on missing out, and what potentials my creative mind sees.

So at this point, hope is no more (almost?), thus the production has come to a halt; even though my faith in Crún (and its success) still stands proud (if it’s done according to the design that is); solely for the belief and fact that there is a huge untapped potential ready for the taking, and that my long term goals are viable to carry through. But at this point, all this talk is just coming from a “dude on the internet” (as once someone called me).

After having spent the last two weeks or so (after finally stopping sending pitches) quietly thinking of the future, knowing how there are others in agreement with my values (say for quality) and a form of change that the industry desperately needs, the answer is still nowhere to be found to continue. Having tried everything under the Sun over the years exhausted me, and reaching out to publishers (again) was my last line of defense. Because in order to have the reach necessary, generally speaking, you need to harness the trends and algorithms, as well as be able to provide entertainment or some form of value to others, which is usually not the case with game development (it’s pretty boring, and can deter customers when seeing a game in its incomplete stage) or sharing hobbies closer to storytelling. It can work, some Youtubers do it, but that’s a full time job making videos, not making the game; plus the target audience is different.

The production needs a lot of money to support its entirety, still miniscule compared to tiny (established) studios, but large enough that only those in it for “real” can afford it (e.g. investors). And that could only be countered with a massive community (speaking of hundreds of thousands), or the equivalent of an influencer; have none of those at my disposal. The lack of other options really hammered down the path of redemption to obscurity. Which is yet again a sobering realization; as this has happened many times before with my previous projects. Would note that this isn’t a basement project, rather aims to be a proper business, which has its own additional recurring expenses and structures to legally operate.

At this point not sure what to do next as circumstances are urging me to stop and abandon this project for good. Previously, there was always a plan, even if moving on, but have stuck with this one and have no idea what to do about it (all options were exhausted prior); it’s not like this project could suddenly go viral and gain attention. Have this weird feeling that’s telling me to wait (for whatever reason), but there’s no evidence backing this up. And the prospect of putting more time in development, somehow fighting for more time to actually work on this (not sure how, it already took a toll on my health, and my relationships), when 70% of the game is yet to be made (in terms of elapsed time), or need be remade if given the proper tools (which would need be done asap), questions my sanity or will to say the least. Knowing that it’ll never be on the same level where it supposed to be (what could be done from having access to proper tools as a solo dev), as people mostly judge from what they can see and not from what they potentially could; to put this into perspective, have gotten some negative comments about the execution of the game already (along the lines of “it looks awful”), or how others have despised it, or wanted to see more gameplay; or how it was downvoted to oblivion on Reddit at one point (with a 44% rate).

For the first time in a long time the ability to solve problems just seemed to end, despite managing to overcome extreme handicaps and conditions before; not exaggerating here, as some of my projects in the past required a level of dedication, most would not dare to attempt, as those were severely detrimental to my health, or how this whole gamedev “experience” caused a lot of friction, tense confrontations, and painful sacrifices. So while probably this is the end of this story, more so for the foreseeable future, it was thought that at least for those who were interested in Crún deserved to know a little bit more behind the scenes (there’s a lot more that didn’t make the cut), and not just be left hanging, and told the state of production as is as of now.

While there isn’t much to add or say, regarding the game that is, apart from a tiny amount of work that was done a few weeks ago on the font (started fixing the entire alphabet), would like to thank you and everyone else who stuck with Crún, taking time to snoop around and all. Wish that the story could continue, but at the moment have no idea how that would be possible. Maybe with a miracle perhaps.

Thank you for reading, and if you've any questions or just wish to discuss, feel free to do it below, happy to take part in. Take care.