RIP Stan LePard
Unfortunately, Stan LePard, who composed the music for Six Ages: Ride Like the Wind and King of Dragon Pass, passed on unexpectedly in February. Stan was great to work with and created some wonderful music for the games.
I just learned that there’s a GDC scholarship in honor of Stan.
Lights Going Out
The team has been pushing to complete the second Six Ages game. Obviously, we didn’t get there in 2021.
But Robin Laws did finish writing the interactive events, including a second batch suggested by QA. There’s still a chance we’ll need a few more, but this means that the design focus is now tuning, not creating.
Since the writing is done, we know pretty much all the art the game needs, and are now working in a variety of styles (depending on what’s being illustrated).
We’ve been testing the game all along (an advantage of creating a sequel that can use the same core code), and that’s been accelerating this year. As before, it’s a mix of making sure each response of each scene works, making sure the game works from start to finish, and making sure that the game is challenging and fun. QA also verifies bug fixes to make sure they actually fix things, and don’t introduce other problems. (The past couple weeks have had some good examples of why that’s important…)
Ride Like the Wind
While our focus has been the second game, we have been fixing some bugs in the original. There were also some issues that only affected iPad or iPhone, so we ended up taking some time and making an App Store update.
The Future
We’re not going to ship a game before it’s really done, but I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to release “Lights Going Out” next year.
And maybe start a new game.