May 2022: Before The Orchestra Plays Me Off

After more years than I care to recount, The Day We Fought Space is finally available on the App Store!

It still feels a bit surreal to say it.

I had always pictured myself giving this particular speech in front of a crowd, surrounded by the people that helped make this game a reality, but the state of the world has made that challenging.

This game represents a major shift in the studio — the transition from “solo developer” to “development team.” Yes, there were level designs submitted to Drops of Light by other people; yes, Primrows went through half a dozen playtesters before launch; and yes, I even brought in a couple people near the end of Unseen’s development, but those were always still “my” games.

With The Day We Fought Space, from day one, this was our game. It was a tough leap for me to take, I’ll be honest, given how well some previous attempts at collaborations had gone, but looking back? We’ve been able to go so much farther as a team than I ever in a hundred years could have managed on my own. And so, a round of thanks is in order.

But first — no team is an island, and I need to thank the community we’ve been a part of. Everyone from friends and family who retweeted our clips to random programmers who made forum posts explaining the solutions to problems I’ve already had to fans that gave us feedback at a convention. To the games journalists who took the time to write articles about us, to all of the convention staff that made our experiences pleasant ones. While it would be impractical to try to name literally everyone, there are a few people who went above and beyond that I’d like to single out for thanks: Aaron and Bjorn, for their work in getting the Madison Indies meetups going, and to Steve and Albert as well as the Midwest Gaming Classic for getting us spots in the Future Classics exhibit for so many years.

I would be remiss not to acknowledge the work of the Cocos 2d and Box 2d communities, as so much of our code has made heavy use of their libraries, to the Soundsnap library where we got the bulk of our sound effects, and to Blambot Fonts for helping us achieve that authentic comic book feel.

So many people have had their hands on the game, it’s almost hard to believe. I’d like to thank Amy, Corey, Dan, Emily, Emily, and Eon for helping me out with random odd jobs throughout the course of the project.

We’d never have been able to share the game with so many excited new fans if not for our enthusiastic hype train, helping us promote as we brought our game to the hands and eyes of gamers around the country. Cheers to Alicia, Anna, Graham, Megan, Miles, Nathan, Nathaniel, Mia, and Shaun for being the best booth buddies a developer could ask for.

It was a bumpy ride at times, and many of those bumps were discovered by our intrepid playtesting crew, many of whom had to deal with wonky bugs with our campaign mode. I’d like to give a special thanks to all the brave test pilots who crashed so that others could soar. Cheers to Aaron, Brianne, Dominic, Fancis, Jennalee, John, Katrin, Mia, Patrick, Richard, Stephanie, Steven, and Strange.

There is an extremely patient group of developers who endured my many programming hiccups as they worked to make the server a reality. Let’s hear it for Beth, Alex, and Beau with Treeline Design for all they’ve done to make our game’s community a more tight-knit place.

There were three people who, early on, trusted us with their own creative work, who let us incorporate their unique sound into our game, and who are responsible for what has perhaps been the most universally-well-received part of the final game. Let’s put our hands together for Marlo, Victoria, and Natalie of Venus in Furs, for the amazing soundtrack.

In the very final months of development, we hit some staffing hiccups, and one person was able to join the team, learn the ropes in record time, and proceed to provide us with their stellar QA expertise. If we were here in person, here’s where I’d suggest that we make some noise for Jos for saving our hindquarters in the eleventh hour.

Indie gaming is so often a setting where we find people wearing multiple hats. There’s someone on our team who not only had an uncanny knack of uncovering the very strangest of bugs hidden away in the darker corners of the game, but also brought us her expertise with stats during our early rounds of playtesting. Let’s clap our hands for Alida, for all the weird bugs we won’t be hearing about all next week because she found them first.

Speaking of multiple hats, let’s talk about someone who wound up taking on perhaps the most unlikely assortment of roles in our team. Someone whose skill at the game would grow to eclipse my own, despite her frequent assertions that she “wasn’t really a gamer.” She started out working as QA, but her role grew to include helping promote the game at events, making video clips for our social media accounts, and even to lending her film school expertise to our sound design. So let’s make a ruckus for Lauren, for the many ways she found to help me shoulder the workload when I needed it most.

There’s someone that I have come to think of as the woman who took off our studio’s training wheels. I came to her with some big ambitions, and she came back to us with the work we could expect to do if we wanted to get there. She challenged us to step up our game, and challenged me in particular to broaden my idea of what sorts of things counted as “development.” She brought so much experience to this project, and this wouldn’t have been the game it is without her influence. So let’s have a big round of applause for for Dana, without whom nobody would have even heard about this game.

If this were a baseball game, there is one person on this team who would be credited with the save, beyond a doubt. She’s someone who, over the course of development, would wear more hats than anyone aside from perhaps myself, acting as QA and staffing our booths before eventually returning to the company and settling into her headline role. When I first had the idea for The Day We Fought Space, I thought it would take about 18 months to complete. Every year that went by, the finish line continued to stay about 18 months away, by my estimation. This was a pattern that kept up until, roughly 18 months ago, when I started working with a producer. So, a hearty round of applause for Toni, without whom we would surely now and forever be 18 months away from release.

I’ve got one more person to thank, and it’s hard to know where to start, because it is truly impossible to overstate what she has contributed to the game. I don’t think either of us really knew what was in store for us so many years ago when I approached her and asked if she’d have any interest in doing some artwork for a game I had in mind. We worked together, we learned together, we grew as developers together. Without the help of all the people I’ve mentioned thus far, the game wouldn’t have been what it is today. But without her, it’s hard to say if the game would have been at all. Not only did she breathe life into the world of The Day We Fought Space with her artwork, but she lit the way through some dark times in development. So let’s give one last round of applause for Susan. I may have been the mastermind behind this project, but truly, she has been its heart and soul.

— Cathy
5-26-2022