We were on the PC Gaming Show with The Forgotten City!
We were on the PC Gaming Show!
If you missed out on the live broadcast, you can watch our newest trailer here: //www.youtube.com/embed/9mAcBgiUGAk
We have an exciting new preview on the horizon. There have been so many improvements to the game since many of you have last seen an update from us and we're hyped to begin sharing the progress.
Make sure you tune into IGN's Summer of Gaming on June 15th where we will be sharing even more new content.
Don't miss LudoNarraCon panel about time loop games next week! Feat epic guests!
LudoNarraCon is coming up next week, a global digital festival celebrating narrative video games. Available to everyone for free via Steam, it will run from April 24th - 27th. Our very own Nick Pearce will be giving a talk on Time Loop games on the first day.
Panel date: April 24, 2PM PST, 11PM CET & April 25, 7AM AEST
You can set yourself a reminder via Steam here: https://store.steampowered.com/newshub/group/33025617/view/1827838782002270091
Discover some of the design philosophy behind our upcoming game, The Forgotten City: Ever since Groundhog Day, time loop stories have captured the imagination of film makers and game developers alike. Time loop games offer players the unique ability to experiment, see the consequences of their actions, correct mistakes, and exploit knowledge they shouldn't have - but all at the risk of becoming repetitive. In this panel, Nick Pearce, Kate Chironis, Raúl Rubio Munárriz & Luis Antonio will discuss how to keep narrative interesting in a game based on repetition.
Don't forget to follow Modern Storyteller on Twitter & our publisher on Twitter & Facebook not to miss future news about The Forgotten City!
The Forgotten City levels up thanks to Dear Villagers
We’re very excited to announce that we’ve partnered with publisher Dear Villagers for the release of The Forgotten City! This collaboration is fantastic news as we now have the support we need to fully deliver on our best vision for the game. Here’s a video update that goes into more detail and introduces a new member of the team.
[previewyoutube="zZX5qLVIeWw;full"]https://youtu.be/zZX5qLVIeWw[/previewyoutube] Unfortunately, it does mean the game will be delayed to Winter 2020 to give us the time we need to expand the team and continue improving The Forgotten City like we’ve already began to do.
We’re incredibly grateful for your support ever since we announced the game over a year ago. We’ll have much more to say (and show!) in the coming months, but in the meantime, take a look at our new teaser trailer showcasing some of the improvements we mentioned earlier.
[previewyoutube="OtVj6LdSvAI;full"]https://youtu.be/OtVj6LdSvAI[/previewyoutube] And finally, The Forgotten City is in the running to win upcoming Indie of the Year at IndieDB and we’d really, really appreciate your support! To vote:
On behalf of the whole team, thanks again for sticking around with us on this crazy adventure. Talk to you soon!
The Forgotten City is coming in late 2019
Today we're unveiling a radical new look for the game, thanks to our new environment artist, who joined us from FromSoftware in Japan:
Please check out our new trailer, on The Forgotten City's Store page, or on Youtube.
We'll have more news over the coming months!
The Forgotten City voted 3rd best upcoming indie of 2018!
Exciting news! The Forgotten City was voted the 3rd best upcoming indie game of 2018, by a pool of over 23,000 voters in IndieDB's Indie of the Year competition.
Sincere thanks to everyone who voted for us! It's reassuring to know that you're excited about the game we're pouring our blood, sweat, and tears into, and we'll do our best not to let you down.
Oh, and we'll have more exciting news for you in early 2019...
For the full list of upcoming indies, visit IndieDB here.
The Forgotten City makes Top 100 upcoming games of 2018!
The Forgotten City made the cut of IndieDB's Top 100 (upcoming) indie games of 2018!
But now the real competition begins: from that list of 100, you can vote for your Game of the Year 2018!
To help us spread the word about The Forgotten City, please vote for us by visiting IndieDB's Voting Page, then click "Upcoming Games", then "Adventure", then "The Forgotten City"!
Thanks in advance for your support!
Why I walked away from my legal career to make video games
Blog Post by Nick Pearce, 6 October 2018
Before I founded Modern Storyteller and began making The Forgotten City, I was working as a legal and strategy advisor to a multi-billion dollar tech company. Yes, that is a bizarre career change, and yes, I completely understand why it leaves a lot of people scratching their heads. It’s extremely unusual to walk away from an established professional career path to enter into an inherently risky industry, where studios rise and fall constantly, and most indie games fail to turn a profit. So why did I do it?
Back in 2012 I was working in a field called Regulatory Strategy. Don’t worry, nobody knows what that means. All you need to know is that when I explained it to people at BBQs, they had no follow-up questions. It was a good traditional career path, but it left me with a lot of unused creative energy. So I decided to pour that energy into a passion project in my spare time.
That passion project was my mod, The Forgotten City, which has now been downloaded over 1.7 million times (at the time of writing), won a national Writers’ Guild award,and has received critical acclaim from the likes of PC Gamer, Kotaku, IGN, among others. I never expected it to become so popular. All I did was make the kind of game I wanted to play; one that respected the intelligence of players by presenting them with a complex interpersonal problem and giving them the freedom to solve it however they felt was best. It didn’t hold anyone’s hand. It punished players for making stupid decisions or trying to rely on brute force, and rewarded them for thinking laterally. I was amazed that it resonated with so many people. On reflection, I think there are a lot of intelligent gamers out there who are being ignored by big game studios, which are simplifying their games in an attempt to appeal to the broadest possible audience.
Back when I was making the mod, I could have happily worked on it all day, every day. It lit up parts of my brain that had been asleep all my life. Through trial and error, I learned level design, programming, story writing, casting, directing and mastering audio, among other things. It was a revelation to me that I could learn all these skills as and when I needed them. I felt like Neo plugging into the Matrix. I’d never been able to do that before. Why? Because I’d discovered something about which I was truly passionate. But I had a demanding job to go to, so I could only work on it in my precious spare time. So I worked on it for an average of 11 hours every week, for 3 years, totalling 1,700 hours in the end. As much as I loved it, working that hard is crazy, particularly as in the end, fewer than 0.01% of mod users donated. It became clear that modding wasn’t going to be sustainable in the long term.
Still, a lot of people wanted to know what I was going to make next, and I had to make a decision: game development or legal career? I knew that going to work for an established studio wasn’t an option, since I’m committed to living in Australia, where I just couldn’t see a viable career path for myself. Then I met some developers who encouraged me to start my own studio. At first I laughed it off, but I thought about it, from every possible angle, for about a year. I did my research, chatted with various developers, and spoke to my wife at length. I knew it would be hugely risky, since indie games tend to cost a small fortune to make, most of them don’t turn a profit, and the market becomes more crowded every year.
It was a classic head vs heart dilemma. Rationally, I knew I had a good traditional career which had taken me 10 years to build, and if I took a break from it, I might never be able to go back. But I had a burning desire to keep making games, and I’d connected with a market of intelligent gamers who kept asking about my next project.
I was on that precipice, agonizing over whether to take the leap, when I discovered I won a national Writers’ Guild award. A good friend told me at the time: “If there is a God, right now he’s going: Nick, how many signs do I need to give you?!”
I don’t believe in God, but I believe that playing it safe all your life and refusing to take any risks is, itself, an act of risk-taking. What if you spend the rest of your life wondering what would have happened if you had pursued your passion?
So, with the backing of my awesome wife, I took the leap.
So far, I have no regrets. We’ve had some wins already; I managed to recruit some seriously talented people to my team like Alex Goss, Ben Roach, Laura Michet and Michael Allen. We’ve received funding from the wonderful Film Victoria, and we were invited to reveal our game on stage at E3 and even won an Unreal E3 award. But there’s still a long journey ahead of us before we release The Forgotten City in 2019.
This blog will document that journey. I hope you’ll join us along the way.
Please note: If you haven’t yet added The Forgotten City to your Steam wishlist, you can do that now. You’ll be notified automatically when we release it!
The Forgotten City wins an Unreal E3 Award!
The Forgotten City won a 2018 Unreal E3 Award for making a big splash in a crowded pool of awesome games!
You can watch the award video here.
