Hey folks! We hope you guys are doing well. The time has come for an update on the game and our activities. We know it’s been a while and we’re sorry about that… We had several things going on behind the scenes, things that we couldn’t talk about just yet.
Catapulte 2016
If you’ve checked our social media feeds recently, you may have seen several posts about us winning some sort of contest. Light Fall has indeed won the Catapulte program. It is a program to help the growth and development of a video game studio and its project. Basically, it is to catapult us right into the industry… The pun isn’t mine! In total, 16 studios from the province of Quebec applied, with quite a few big names in there too. Projects were evaluated on the following criteria: original and innovative content for the game, the team itself and a well defined distribution plan.
Light Fall won, and as such we were awarded 50 000$, a mentorship program and one year of free hosting at the brand new Le Camp’s workspace. Le Camp, an incubator issued from Quebec International, was one of the organizers.
Obviously, we are very happy about this surprising turn of events. The most important thing for us is having the confirmation from people in the industry that Light Fall is an amazing game. We had a good idea about its potential with Kickstarter, when YOU GUYS believed in us. Having a second positive opinion is just the cherry on top! We worked a lot on our application, and we also had to prepare a pitch for the game when we were announced as one of the five finalists. We never enjoy putting the game on the backseat, but for this one occasion the gamble paid out.
Applying to the CMF
In the past month, we have also worked on another business-related project. As of yesterday, we have officially applied to the Canadian Media Fund (CMF) for a production demand for Light Fall. The CMF is a well known organization in Canada that supports the video game and movie industry. We will have our answer probably during the summer, but being accepted by the CMF would be absolutely huge for us and for Light Fall.
The CMF can finance up to 75% of a video game project. That would allow us to make Light Fall exactly the way we want it to be and also get paid for it. We have already started to incorporate stretch goals from the Kickstarter into the development, some that we didn’t even reach with the campaign. The Speed run mode is one example. The consoles port is another. Light Fall has so much potential, we’d rather take our time and make sure it’s incredible than rush a poor man’s version of the game.
And the game…?
I can already hear your worries about the progression of the game with all that business stuff in the past months. Fear not! We have also spent considerable time working on our little baby. We always pride ourselves on making the universe of Light Fall immersive. We want you guys to be excited to dive into the strange world of Numbra. As such, we went back to the earlier levels of the game (Act1 : The Lunar Plain) and added some cool features to make the world much more alive.
Here’s a YouTube video of a few changes we’ve made, mainly when the player discovers the Shadow Core and the divinities in the second level.
We’ve also started to work on the third region of the game: the Vipera’s Forest. Here’s a little art test Math did and we think we will go in this direction. Hope you enjoy!!
So that’s it for now. Once again, thank you all so much for the support and sorry if we haven’t been very active in the past few months. We are still working hard on the game, we promise ;)
Cheers!
-BEN