2024 has been a huge year for us, we've now been working on the game for 2 years since receiving the Prototype Fund from UKGF back in January 2022. A lot has happened and changed in that time.
Funding
We've been lucky in the last 2 years to raise:
-£30k from the UK Games Fund
-£9k through Kickstarter
-£50k through Innovate UK
-$30k through ID@Xbox
For a small indie team this has really enabled us to do a lot, even though it's a small budget compared to a lot of big AAA games, for us it's more than we ever could have imagined.
Dialogue
As a narrative focused game, dialogue is really one of the most important aspects of the game to get right. We record almost everything in person at a London Recording Studio (excpet for a few small phone conversation bits). We also work with 6ft From the Spotlight to make sure there is always a wellbeing facilitator present whenever we can afford it (some of our grants don't accept this as development but it's hugely important to me given the game content to have this for more challenging sessions).
We've done around 65 hours of recording with 15 actors so far and we're still going! We're very lucky to work with such talented actors:
-Emily Burnett (Hollyoaks, Metaphor: ReFantazio) as the lead role of Alice
-Dave Jones (Baldur's Gate 3) as Alice's father
-Iestyn Arwel (Right Now) as Patrick
-Anthony Howell (Foyle's War, Elden Ring) as DC Wainwright
-Elsie Lovelock (Warhammer 40k, Planet Coaster 2) as Miss Smith
Music
Another huge milestone was recording our soundtrack at Abbey Road Studios in London over 2 days back in August 2024. While I can't tell you just yet what some of the music is, there will be some exciting announcements about this very very soon, keep an eye (or ear) out!
Awards
Despite the game not even being out yet, we've also amazingly been nominated for the Performance Spotlight Awards at Indiecade as well as winning:
-Best Narrative at GDLX
-Innovation in Games at Barclays Entrepreneur Awards
We're now working very hard as 2025 hits, to pull everyone's hard work together to be able to play through the game from start to finish. We still are attending a few events in person but the main focus is getting the game to a place where we can start play testing. As we start to add polish and pull levels together, I'm also really keen to start cutting together a new trailer, as there's so much new to show off. Can't wait! Thank you all for your unwavering support so far and all the feedback and lovely comments we get. It keeps us going!
Alyx