Hello everyone,
The year 2022 is coming to a close and we hope you all are taking some for yourselves this holiday break. MythAtelier will be out of the office (so to speak, we are all remote) until January 9th, 2023 so if you have any questions or comments on our products during this period we may get to them a little later than usual. We promise to focus on them on the first week we return! In the meantime, we have a Winter Sale going on which has all our games, plugins and OSTs off for 50% so do be sure to sure to check that out :)
As the year comes to a close, we wanted to take some time to reflect on all the things we managed to publish this year. If you have some moments spare, join us as we take a trip down to memory lane to the start of this year …
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We started off in January with Mnemesis, a psychological horror narrative card game where you are the Sorcerer Med who faces off against the titular creature Mnemesis and has to spend their Memories to cast spells to defend themself. Each Memory Card contains a short segment from Med's life and depending on which Memories the player spends a different ending plays out at the end of the conflict. The result is a short game playable in browser with great atmosphere that has tremendous emotional resonance and is well worth playing a few different times to see how the story resolves.
For this jam, we worked alongside two very talented folks: Sraëka and Theo whose work really drove this jam game to its unique feel. We are really happy with the work they did and set up opportunities for them to collaborate on our other games we are developing internally. Those games may take some more time before they come out but needless to say they wouldn’t be what they are without Sraëka and Theo’s help. So please go support them on their respective platforms :)
Also Mnemesis was the first time we got covered in the press! You can check out that article here. Oh and Mnemesis was the first time we did a localization! Lots of firsts when you look back on it …
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We followed up with another jam game of a completely different variety for Global Game Jam 2022. Senate Floor is a political simulation game where you are the Emperor in a quasi-Roman Empire who is trying to get the Senate to Vote on Issues in a manner that keeps the Empire going. The Senate is composed of Big Senators who are the power players with specific Agendas and Small Senators who will gravitate towards the Big Senators depending on Issues. Big Senators gain Influence over time and so they may try to use the Senate against you requiring you to either Bribe them to get their Vote or to Accuse them of treason to slash their Influence. If things don’t go your way, you can always use your authority as the Emperor to Impose a decision however that will be unpopular and in the long-run could make the Senators get stabby with you. We worked with Brook from ScenarioWorld on this game jam who is an excellent systems and narrative designer. Brook is an experienced dev and taught us a lot over the course of this jam.
This jam game was on the one hand a joy to work on as it was working within Roman history which we happen to be nerds about and also about the struggle between democratic and authoritarian political power which has been a major concern of ours in recent years. Ultimately, it was likely a little too ambitious for a 3-day jam and I know by the end we were all fairly burned out at the pace we were working on it. Still we are pretty happy with the final version as it is quite a unique game and features mechanics that we may circle back to in the future. Also, if analytics are to be believed, the Senate Floor has an audience that’s pretty different from our usual customers. Seems to be a market for games with more political themes, maybe worth tackling down the line …
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In February, we launched MythAtelier Soundworks which was sort of a label that we wanted to publish our Game Soundtracks and Music Asset Packs on. Outside of the Game OSTs we are featuring on it this year, we have largely left this feature a bit quiet. We have been developing some Music Asset Packs in the background so stay tuned for more entries to the MythAtelier SoundWorks label in 2023!
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By far and away, our biggest release of this year was the Card Game Combat plugin that came out in March. Little did we know that this plugin which we spent a few extra months polishing would become our breakout hit both in terms of sales and our community. We can’t thank you all enough for the amazing response which has allowed us to support this plugin with constant updates throughout this year. We had no idea it would go as far as it did and we are happy to continue to support it going into the next year.
Going into 2023, we know that we want to make the last major update to the Core plugin (Version 1.5.0) and then move our work onto extension plugins such as a Deck Editor, Card Shop etc. We are also hoping to improve the plugin’s compatibility with other plugins on the market and also improve the documentation and tutorials for this plugin so it is easier for newer users to grasp.
We also now have a number of games that have been developed using Card Game Combat which you can play here.
In March, MythAtelier also helped with the release of the demo for Eternal Remnant: The First Chapter, a cinematic game inspired by JRPG classics developed by Arcfinder Studios. Most of the work on the project had already been done by the folks at Arcfinder Studios, so we were only responsible for fixing up the UI, some aspects of the Battle System and doing playtests to figure out what tweaks needed to be made. We are really proud of this release as it was our first time releasing a game to Steam. The reception to the demo has been overwhelming and allowed the game to reach a much bigger audience so as to become a full release (at least of the First Chapter) sometime in 2023. You can follow their updates here.
While Arcfinder Studios is taking care of the next stage of development on their own, we want to thank them for the opportunity to work on their wonderful game. We love the characters and the world of the game and hope it gets all the success it deserves! Be sure to Wishlist their game as it will help improve their launch :)
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Strife of Cosmos was our game release from 2021 and it got a major content and bug fix patch in August as Version 1.1.0. Now we have multiple types of Story Events so your runs can be filled with more details about Blackstar Citadel. We fixed a number of stability bugs that were caused due to an Autosave issue that prevented players from being able to complete Zone 3.
We hope that these changes result in a better experience and we are committed to making incremental improvements to Strife of Cosmos so it can be closer to the best version of itself. We know that the next patch will focus on balancing Skills and add Passives as a new type of Skill so that new builds can be made. Strife of Cosmos remains our most downloaded game and we are extremely grateful to everyone that supported our first retail game release. We are hoping to bring this game to other platforms in 2023 so stay tuned for news on that front!
Super long title aside, this was a 20-min talk that MythAtelier was invited to give at the Game Devs of Color Expo this year! We were represented by our lead designer Swarnava Banerjee (who goes by Neel). Due to the pandemic, we had to record these online and we went through a couple rehearsals as Neel's not the most confident public speaker. The end result, however, is something that we are really proud of. We got a great reception from the live stream audience and it definitely gave us a huge confidence boost to appear at other conventions in the future. We are extremely thankful to GDoC Expo for the opportunity and look forward to going again!
For those that want access to the Slides in that talk, you can grab them here!
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The State Info Popup plugin was one that we developed over the course of Strife of Cosmos as that game uses a similar UI to show descriptions for different Positive and Negative effects. It was one that Isiah realized could be its own thing and so we spent a week or two on it to turn it into its own product. We are really glad that folks have found it useful and hopefully the price point is correct for this small but handy augment to the UI.
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When we published the Card Game Combat plugin, we knew that we wanted to create a game with it to show off what the plugin could do. We had several ideas for how to achieve this, but the one idea that won out was Card Attack KAIJU: a fast-paced arcade take on the usually thinky slower-paced deckbuilder genre. It took roughly 4 - 5 months to go from prototype to being published and we are very proud of the work we have done for this game. The monster designs are awesome, the card gameplay is fun and there are moments that elicit that feeling of "WOW" and "AWESOME" from our players. Moreover, every obstacle we ran into during the development we were able to overcome through the creation of new plugins. Many of these plugins would then later be turned into official releases such as Card Library Plus.
We are also very happy with the reception the game has gotten. There are many Free games on itch.io and we are really happy to see that so many people have taken the time to play ours and leave feedback. For Kaiju fans out there, there is more yet to come so stay tuned ....
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Card Particle FX was the first Patreon exclusive plugin we made this year developed to extend Card Game Combat. It allows you to add Particle FX to the Fade/Burn animation you see on Cards. The plugin is really flexible in the kinds of particles you can make and it can give a really strong visual flair to your game if you add custom Particle FX on top of what Card Game Combat is already doing. We are looking forward to using it ourselves in Card Attack KAIJU and other internal game projects which use the Card Game Combat plugin.
You can download this exclusive plugin (and many others!) from our Patreon if you pledge at least 5 USD per month.
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The Odometer Gauge plugin was a huge departure for MythAtelier. It was not Isiah, who is our lead programmer, who initiated the plugin project but instead Neel, our lead designer! Neel has been slowly learning to code in JavaScript over the course of working on Strife of Cosmos and Card Attack KAIJU and so when the opportunity came to make our next plugin it was assigned to him instead. It still took a couple weeks of coaching from Isiah to make it over the finish line, but the Odometer plugin is out and moreover it was updated so it works for both MV and MZ!
We are really happy with the response to Odometer Gauge as it shows that there is a market for this sort of plugin and now that we have our workflow down we can more consistently deliver on plugins of this type. Odometer Gauge itself will receive some major updates in 2023 to include additional features that let you make the Earthbound/Mother-style of combat possible. And mostly like Neel will be working on another plugin based on another popular Nintendo RPG property … hmmm …. wonder what it could be?
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This highly requested plugin came from some advance work we did on Card Attack KAIJU. For Card Attack KAIJU, we opted to try a Horizontal Scrolling Deck Viewer as that was more appropriate for a fast-paced game with a smaller minimum Deck Size. We managed to achieve this fairly well in the game but if we wanted to make it available for a wider audience for other game projects then a number of changes had to be made to the plugin.
So Isiah took a week or two to figure out what necessary parameters were required and in his experiments discovered that not only could you set up the Deck Viewer to be Vertically or Horizontally scrolling but also it could be shown as Grid View as well. In an effort to provide all of these possible options, Card Library Plus was created! Now the user has an incredible amount of control of how their Deck looks when viewed in the Menu and it can suit a much wider range of games.
You can download this exclusive plugin (and many others!) from our Patreon if you pledge at least 5 USD per month.
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Our final plugin release for this year was Turn Start Plus. This was a plugin that allowed you change the Battle Start and Start of Turn conditions of an Actor based on the Notetags given to that Actor, their Class, their Equipment or what States they had. This is a really exciting plugin as it is a prelude to Version 1.5.0’s Equipment and States Notetag implementation where we can assign not just Card Actions but also tie Cards to specific Equipment or States which will really open up the type of gameplay you want to achieve in your games. No longer do you need to conform to the Deckbuilder Roguelike as you will have the tools you need to make a Card RPG!
You can download this exclusive plugin (and many others!) from our Patreon if you pledge at least 5 USD per month.
… and that’s it! We hope you enjoyed this journey back through 2022 with us. This year was a lot: full of ups and downs. Somehow MythAtelier has managed to stay afloat all this time. It could not have happened without the support of the many wonderful people that bought our games and plugins throughout this year. For every time we have been down in the dumps, there has been someone who uploads a video or sends a message that lets us know that we are bringing joy to others or have helped them on their path towards making their dream game. We are incredibly honoured to have so many people to be part of our community this year with the launch of both our Discord and Patreon. You folks are the reason we keep doing this and we look forward to coming back next year renewed and ready to deliver on some really cool projects. Until then, stay safe, stay curious and stay kind. We’ll see you in the next one :)
Happy Holidays,
MythAtelier Team
As always, Special Thanks to our Patrons donating $5 or more:
Kakeru
Marcus Hjerpe Östlind
Gian Cornale
David Beaudet
If you would like to support our work, you too can pledge to our Patron here.
Wanna talk to us about your favorite games? Join our Community Discord here.
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