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 Unity, and many other wild projections. It's not so different from boats after all (apart from the wind, the water, the flotation point, the rotation inertia, the XXX, the YYY, and so on).
Concept art by Clément, with whom we worked at the start of the project.
The gameplay
Arn, our game designer, will talk to you more extensively about the gameplay soon, but I can already give you two or three indications. The game unfolds across two distinct parts: Terminas, which is the main HUB, and the March. In the HUB, players can purchase and customize their landships, recruit crew members with unique origins, traits, skills, trade supplies and materials, and undertake contracts for the March. In the March, players manage their crew's daily lives, witness their evolving relationships and stories, engage in tactical Landship battles, explore uncharted territories, and respond to a variety of dynamic events and challenges.
The hub, the March and a landship
What are we doing now?
While I'm writing this post, people on the team are actually working - on the Landship Life and Combat Systems. As you likely know, these two elements will be essential parts of Trailblazers.
Life on the ship is certainly what will make Trailblazers so special - but from a game design perspective, it's also the most complicated part. We are working with certain influences - Rimworld, Oxygen Not Included, The Sims - but we simply cannot replicate community life by flatly copying these games. It is necessary to arrive at a unique solution that is in total harmony with what it means to be a Trailblazer on a Landship.
The guy with the tree leaf
We're trying to model human lives, with all their complexity, biases, etc. And often, the most human-like behaviour comes from bugs or elements that haven't been fine-tuned yet. Look at this character, for example, who never wanted to leave his tree leaf. He grabbed it and kept it for hours. Absolutely unplanned - but I find it very beautiful.
These kinds of little moments also guide us in the development of this Landship Life. This appears to us as a surprise, but it's a good surprise, it's human behaviour. So I don't know if this character will still have his leaf when you play Trailblazers, but I hope so for his sake, he seems quite attached to it.
If you think we should keep it, you’re not alone.
We will share new elements soon, so stay tuned dear Trailblazers! In the meantime, if you wish to learn more about the game and be a member of its community, join us on Discord, follow us and wishlist the game.
Thank you for your attention,
Vincent, from the Strangers team