Officially created in 2014, Whiskey Jack Games actually began when two people decided to create a game called Crudelis in October 2012. With this core team, and another person helping with graphics from time to time, Whiskey Jack Games settled down in Poland and got to work. Marcin Paterek, one half of the company, shares the story of Crudelis and their path to this point.
It All Started With a Strange Question
“How about creating a game together?” my friend asked me when we traveled together by train. I looked at him with undisguised astonishment. I had a good job, an arranged life, and I could do what I loved most every evening – playing games. I’ve never thought about throwing it all away and starting the development of a game of my own. Therefore, after confirming that my companion had no idea for a game and just wanted to ‘do something’, I politely thanked him for the offer.
Then in October 2012, two months later after that question, I was sure – yes, I WANTED to make a game. The idea for it came up in the course of an evening stroll through the beautiful Wroclaw, Poland. The amazing play of lights brightening the building of the university brought me to another world - the world of nineteenth-century reality, torn by social inequalities between the poor group of workers and the rich manufacturer owners. A world in which there are no electronics, and everything is based on a primitive steam engines and electrical engineering. In that moment, I thought about Arcanum and books by Jules Verne. Before I got home, I knew that steampunk RPG was something I always dreamt of.
More, More, More!
Over the next few days, the basic storyline was established and the main character formed into Henry Shackelton, a young scientist trying to outsmart death. His background was one of the very first things we knew before game development event started. The inspiration for creating him was the book The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, by which I was truly amazed with in my childhood. While it is hard to pin down what exactly inspired us about this book, it has a big influence on the plot of our game. All those primitive machines fit perfectly in the steampunk atmosphere we were trying to create. We wanted to try to build upon original story of young scientist, who surprisingly finds himself in a very difficult situation because of the invention he made.
However, this is where Crudelis comes in, as the book obviously isn’t interactive and its outcome can’t be changed. In Crudelis, the player could be described as “co-author” of the plot. Even we aren’t sure what way will they go or what decisions will be made. On this basis, the whole world was created, including the basic plot and the most important heroes in the game. The rest of the game’s plot is still under development - we know the start point and the multiple endings, but the ‘middle’ part is still under development.
From the beginning, its mechanics assumed that reaching the credits will take just 60 minutes. The title Crudelis (the Latin word for “cruelty”) suggested itself – this way, I managed to combine the criminal nature of the scenario with the merciless passage of time. But the more time I spent on a design, the more I confirmed myself the belief that the game surpasses the capabilities of one person. Pages on which I wrote down any new ideas soon formed a thick stack which I couldn’t put into the game manually. Thus, I came to a stage where it proved necessary to create a harmonious team.
Beware of the Colleagues
At this point, I made my biggest mistake from which I want to protect all aspiring artists. The most obvious place to look for co-workers was a rich list of friends. Who makes the best team, if not good friends? At least I thought so. Soon our ‘studio’ had a population of three people, which, in theory, should be enough to deal with the weight of the project. However, little time passed before the life verified dreams. None of us knew how to develop a game. Everyone considered it as an additional job to which we sat down after finishing our paid work. As a result, we weren’t one step closer to putting the ideas from the pages to our computers. At this stage, there were delays due to a prolonged decision-making process. Every idea, instead of being implemented and tested as a proof-of-concept, was waiting for the approval of the other members of the team. Our skills gaps quickly came to light – at each task, we had to start from learning the basics, so progress almost froze in one place. This state of affairs lasted for nearly a year, time considered as “lost”. I do not wish anyone a state where you feel that you’ve wasted a year of your own life.
At the end of 2013, we came to the conclusion that working in this way did not make any sense. Although our skills noticeably improved, Crudelis still arose at a snail’s pace. In this situation, we decided on radical steps – we said goodbye to one of the team members, while I resigned from my permanent job and invested all my savings in production. From now on, we knew there was no turning back. Fortunately, it was a good decision. The time needed to approve the idea noticeably shortened, and we could change the shape of the game virtually on the fly. In this way, we got rid of at least half of the previous ideas that abundantly accumulated during unofficial discussions, and focused on what was most important to us. At this point, the fate of Crudelis had been sealed – a 2D role playing game, where the non-linear scenario needs to be revealed for the player in 60 minutes. The fact that we got rid of unnecessary ballast (both in terms of game mechanics, as well as ‘life typical’ issues) significantly accelerated the work. Every day, we created new location fragments which were then enriched with details and set aside for later. After a few weeks, we went back to them to evaluate them with fresh eyes. About a quarter of them were good enough, the second quarter had to be improved while maintaining the general layout of the buildings, and about half proved to be just weak and landed in the trash.
I Sentence You to Crunch
In this mode, the next nine months passed until September 2014, when we were finally ready to show our project to the public. The last four weeks before the announcement I consider as a nightmare, because, for the first time in my life, I found myself in the middle of a crunch time and felt obliged to work 14-18 hours without a single day off. In addition, there were a lot of legal and financial problems, which unexpectedly fell on us just before the debut on Steam Greenlight. Always double check for any unlicensed third party materials in your game! The brightest point of the period turned out to be a contact with Reddit. Thanks to them, we were able to reach over 800 people in the three days, spending only a few dollars. It’s a lot more than we have accumulated through the traditional websites.
This completes our brief story. Exhausted by a frenetic pace of work before the official announcement of the game and the attempt to hit on the traditional media, we can finally go on a short vacation. We still have a lot of work to do and difficult decisions to make before Crudelis will see the light of day in 2015, but we are not afraid to sacrifice. If even one person admits that he was waiting for a game like this – we are sure it was worth it!
Stay updated with what is going on with Crudelis and the Whiskey Jack Games team by following them on Facebook and Twitter.
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