Kyle here! The Autumn Sale is upon us! And it's time we've had an update on what's been happening and what's going on. First off, I have to come clean about a few things. I know I mentioned this a bit last month, but I went completely broke a while back and had to take on a full-time job to make ends meet. That has, as planned, been tuned down to a part-time job, that I am going to keep with for at least a few more months to keep my finances afloat but I am now returning as much of my attention as I can to Big Kitty Games. (Quentish Underhill mansions have been sprouting out of the ground lately)
Most of you know I live in Japan, though my friends from school and family all live in the US and I wasn't able to visit in 2024 at the end of Summer like I usually do because my wife was very pregnant, so although I pretty much went broke again I was able to visit a couple weeks ago as that once a year trip is really important to my mental health.
Amidst all of that I have a very intelligent almost 11 month old boy that keeps me from working the 60-80 hours a week work schedule that I used to regular.
So all-in-all, it's been a wild year, not just for me but for the majority of us I believe, though a sort of cadence is returning to my work life. We had literally like 5 months of 95+ (35C) weather, with record highs of over 107! (41.8C) So the recent dip below 90, finally, has been a very welcome feeling as well.
(Just the same, the Elendor architecture, which you'll also encounter in SC, has piled up)
We have a lot of plans aimed in part at least to make our products more lucrative so that we don't have to remain starving artists for the rest of our lives, but with such a small, unfunded team things take time, and life gets in the way. By lucrative of course I mean worth their price tag, with some optional cosmetics under construction. We're sticking to our guns with the no gambling (loot box), no pay to win, honest developers tactic, despite what one or two nasty commentors in the forums have been claiming since 2018. Which normally, we all agree are just best to ignore, but I did want to say out loud, I didn't sell the company to anyone, there isn't anything weird or underhanded going on behind the scenes, we just were hoping to get out the next phase of Solace Crafting much quicker than we were realistically able to. We ran short on cash, on time, and I had to put everything down to get my home back in order. One of our primary goals as a company being now to make sure that that doesn't have to happen again.
(We prototype these interiors piece by piece to make sure they end up workable in the Builder)
We both share this indie adventurer DNA, which means we bet everything we have on what we do and never thought about the money as much as we did about building something. Where we make a good team is that one is focused on the long term vision and strategy and the other on the tasks at hand and mechanics. We’ve had to learn to work together live without prep, so when things started getting in the way, it had a domino effect. But the struggles and upheavals haven’t dented our resolve one bit.
Speaking of which, Fab recently lost his cat, a spry old lady of 17 years who’s been with him through the thick and thin of his adventurous existence. Just the same as he held the fort while I was away, he’s dipped a bit to tend to his things now that I’m back. We give as much as we can, but at the end of the day we do have to take care of ourselves too.
(You'll be missed!)
On the topic of Solace Crafting, Solace Keeper, and Solace Builder, and how they all tie in to one another, Fab put it all together better than I can back in July, but I have finally made steps moving forward with our goals of tying these three different systems together. The next patch will be to Solace Crafting and I will be pushing it to the Solace Crafting "Beta" branch. The main reason for this is that a lot of internal systems, Unity version, and things have changed with Solace Crafting since its last "live" patch, but also because that's what the "Beta" branch was always intended for. The build that is currently on "Beta" will be moved to a new beta branch "SolaceKeeper" dedicated to Solace Keeper until we can get it in a state worthy of its own Steam page. This will remain free to access for all Solace Crafting owners that are willing to help us test out new things in there as we move forward with integrating the building system of Solace Builder into both games.
(Let's not forget the woodland-based Myrking halls & houses of which here's a sample!)
Our plan is to then focus primarily on improving the building systems that will thus be progress for all three games. This will help implement new game systems that are designed around building that we have planned, but more importantly let our lovely community help us implement new buildings both friendly and wild alike. We are envisioning a series of games that tie in to one another, sharing their content freely between one another, letting the creativity of our players shine both privately and publicly.
(NPCs and their cosmetic will be turning up as well to populate your Builder scenes)
We have a big backlog of things that have been built that just need to be implemented now. And as ever, fixes and improvements to take things step by step where they need to be!
I'm sorry I don't have that patch ready for today, as the Steam Autumn Sale is already upon us, but it will be up shortly, and more just around the corner.
In the meantime, we always love to hear what you all think about all of this. I know it's been a very slow year, or a very quick year depending on how you look at it, but we're still here and we know we're not alone!
- Kyle
Rest in peace, little old lady! What You Can Do To Help
If you wanna push us up, either one of these will support us more than you know
- Keep up the kind words on our Steam posts and the Likes
- You can get and support the builder here: https://bigkittygames.itch.io/solace-builder
- Drop by our IndieDB page to help make it visible: https://www.indiedb.com/games/solace-crafting-rebuild
- And of course, support on our Ko-fi page for our developer Newbery here: https://ko-fi.com/bigkittygames
Join us in Discord!