The time they pretended they were vikings, also we're back!

So... I must apologize for the gap in our writing, I've been waiting on the other two yokels, I mean co-founders, to write their own pieces for 3+ weeks. I guess that's not going to happen.

MY BAD.

Now I'm sure many of you have been wondering what the heck we've been up to for all this time. Well let me sum up.

WORK. Sleep. Mentors + Network. Maybe Sleep. WORK + Network. Not enough sleep. WORK + Pitch. Way too much sleep. WORK. Sleep. WORK. SLEEEEP.

And that's Monday to Sunday folks. We've been getting quite a bit of time spent on the game which is good.

I even have great news. There is new art in the game.

I KNOW right? It only took nine weeks, and finally we have new art. Super impressive! And here it is, look at that.

This is where you say to yourself... hmmm this looks like programmer art. Well good job art sleuth. You are correct. Nine weeks in & the updated art came from none-other than myself. (To be fair I will credit Zak with the backgrounds)

So this obviously isn't the final direction, we are just trying something new for Slush.

Side note:
There was a day when both Zak & Tyler were gone. This happened to fall on one of our pitch days. Essentially a pitch day is when each team gets up & practices pitching their team/game to investors or publishers. So while they were gone I had to solo pitch. Turns out I did a good job because I won a ticket to Slush for our team. Yay me :D

What the hell is Slush you ask? Great question avid reader! Slush is a start-up conference in Helsinki Finland. It's all about getting your ideas out there & starting a company. Everyone from GameFounders is going and we've been preparing for weeks. Preparation looks very different depending on which one of us you are.

Tyler: Contacts publishers & investors, setting up meetings. Also practices pitching.
Zak: Keeps tabs on mentors, handles marketing images/direction, probably send 50 emails a day, manages tasks & deadlines. Occasionally pretends to do art.
Brendan: Makes the game. Consults on all of the above.

Everything we do is very iterative. We are actually on the sixth iteration of art, we've made & remade 5 pitches, it's all constantly changing. This process is very fun but can sometimes feel a little slow. We have for sure improved the product a lot, but it's hard to not want more.

I'm going to take a short minute to talk about the game. Right now we're testing & testing, trying to find our place. We want to stand out, we want to be cool BUT we also want everyone to be able to play the game. And yes, to all those who feared the worst, we would like to make money with this. There is a lot to be said about art vs money and you know what? I'm not going to get into it because I'm neither smart nor experienced enough to comment. Kateas is a casual game, we'd like to make it so successful it funds production of several more games. That's the plan folks!

So we're working on the game, we're prepping for Slush, there's some of this elusive networking happening. Anything else exciting?

THOR. We saw a movie in Estonia. It was Thor. It was awesome. Do yourself a favor & go see it.

Oh I guess these other things happened too... Tyler went to Kyiv for Casual Connect, with the Ukrainian team! And Zak had a visitor from America.

Not as cool as Thor though, just saying.

Now what's next. Well. I wrote this blog on a boat, the only way to really blog. We're taking the ferry to Finland where we will be getting Slushed until Friday.

Estonian Culture Update:
Whenever Estonian's travel to Finland, it is customary to bring a body back to Estonia. This is due to their viking heritage (True story, the reason Stockholm is as far inland as it is, is because Estonian vikings raids were so successful). So Kati (GameFounder's super helpful liason, and likely the person who is most fed up with Zak & I), informed us that it was perfectly natural to bring a bag full of hachets & knives on a trip to Helsinki, for you know, pillaging & stuff.

Oh btw. It gets dark around 4pm now. And I haven't seen the sun in weeks, nothing but grey & black... Why do people still live in this part of the world?

After Slush, well. We're almost done. Our time is drawing near. Game Connection, a game conference in Paris, is in 3 weeks. There will be some travel around Europe, some more time spent improving the game, and hopefully a fair bit of networking.

I will post a post Slush update on our return, hopefully with proof of our viking offering.

Aitah!

Meet Bearry the Barbearian who lives at the Bar.