First screen shot from my new game called Death by Scrolling.
I started working on this game back in 2019. It started out great and everybody I showed it to loved it, but it was simple. Everyone asked for progression and “game” stuff and over the next six months I proceeded to ruined it.
Then a little game called Return to Monkeys island came along and I took the next two years to build that with Dave Grossman and a wonderful team.
Monkey Island ended and I started working on a new game I dubbed “RPGTBD”. It was a classic Zelda-like pixel art RPG and was a lot of fun. I brought on an artist (Craig) and a designer (Elissa) to help.
When I first started RPGTBD everyone told me that it’s unrealistic to do a open world RPG with a small team. Morons. What do they know?
Well, a lot actually.
It became obvious that my vision for the game was never going to get done and on top of that I was spending a lot of money so something had to give. I could pay off the contracts for Craig and Elissa and call it a day.
But I had all this wonderful art and a nice quest and exploration system from RPGTBD it felt odd to let them go to waste.
Then I remembered Death By Scrolling. I shared the prototype with Elissa and she really liked it. There is something about the game that I could never let go of.
I rebuilt the whole project, stripping out all the stupid stuff and returned it to the core of the game back when it was fun.
Over the next 3 months Elissa and I added back pieces bit-by-bit with a nice progression system, story, quests and challenges.
It’s not going to be everybody’s cup of tea, but Elissa and I get lost in playing it when we should be testing a new feature, so I guess that’s good.
ELissa and Craig leave the project on March 1 then it’s just me for a few months and then release it in 2025.
This time for sure.