Behind the Scenes Update #1: January 2021 – State of the Studio and the Game

Hello everyone!

It has been a really busy month here at JBS, as I have been getting a lot of the background framework in place for both the game and the studio. Really exciting stuff (at least, exciting to me).

That’s right, somehow it’s already been a month since the initial opening of the website and the announcement of Gods and Legends Unite(GLU).

Thank you all for the kind words and for all the support shown since our initial announcement of the studio and the game. I have been so grateful and thankful for all of it, it’s been so very uplifting over the past month as I’ve been getting the studio established along with getting more heads down into the work of making the game.

That being said, one of the reasons I created Jump Back Studios was to give people a behind the scenes peek at game development as it happens in real time. This behind the scenes update is for all those folks, as well as anyone else who might be interested.

As some of you out there noticed, we didn’t release much info about Gods and Legends Unite with the initial announcement of the game. To be honest, that’s because there wasn’t much solid info to talk about, other than the fact that the game is a thing that exists.

Over the last month, a lot of the nebulous ideas regarding Gods and Legends Unite that existed only in my head have started to be clearly defined in documentation. Every day those ideas are taking shape in more meaningful ways and the game begins to feel more like its own thing. Almost its own living being, if you will.

A large portion of the core systems for the game has been established and documented for later development, and I’m guessing there’s probably about another month or so of documentation work to do before things are fully designed enough to start implementing the core ideas that will comprise the majority of GLU’s gameplay hooks.

Combat, character advancement, itemization, setting and storyline, social elements and the core gameplay/progression loops have all been a focus at some point over the past month, and I’m pretty happy with how things are taking shape and fitting into place so far. Of course, that’s real easy to say that when you’re just working with documents and spreadsheets. As the ideas begin getting implemented and reality starts coming up against those ideas, that’s when the real work happens. That’s also when a lot of things can change really quickly, which is why there still aren’t a lot of specifics about the game that I’m comfortable releasing just yet.

I have also been defining the direction we want to pursue for GLU’s art style and now that we know where and when a good portion of the game will be taking place, some real art assets can start getting made. While we don’t have any official art to show off yet, that should hopefully change very soon.

When I’m not working/playing with the core systems that GLU will be based on, I’m figuring out details about the studio itself and day to day operations. While this is still a one person operation for now, it wont be for much longer. That means there are a lot of operational and organizational details that need to be established before we bring anyone else on to the project.

In other words, I’ve been figuring out some of the more boring sounding behind the scenes dev stuff, like which file management system we will use, or how progress will be checked and monitored as we move forward. Oh, and that means scheduling. And budgeting. And, and, and…even more stuff that isn’t nearly as exciting as talking about game stuff, but is absolutely critical to the success of the project and the studio.

So yeah, it’s been a busy month. While maybe not quite as productive in some areas as I had initially hoped to be, a lot of groundwork was laid in other areas that will help build a better studio, all of which leads to a better product in the end.

Now I get to move on to defining more about the characters and they skills they use. Next month will be all about fleshing out the combat experience and creating the initial campaign flow, and if I’m lucky, I may even be able to begin doing some actual work in Unity that might see the light of day……eventually!

Thanks for being along for the ride,

-HJ