SLX Games and Skygoblin merge to focus on TJD

[theo]

I am proud and happy to announce that SLX Games (The Gothenburg, Sweden based company where I work for a living) has now merged with SkyGoblin (the pseudo-fake company I started for the Journey Down development group) and now form one single entity: SkyGoblin. "What does this change?" I hear you ask. Nothing, really. It just makes life for everyone involved in the development of "The Journey Down" a lot less confusing, since it's now developed under one flag, instead of two.

The core team behind the game is still exactly the same. Namely me, the two programmers Mathias and Markus, as well as our animator Henrik and our musician Simon. The only real difference is that SLX Games (now SkyGoblin) as a corporate entity makes a large official focus shift toward working on the commercial release of "The Journey Down", rather than spending all its time working on our other title, the social mmo "Nord".

A look at the charter interior in the high-res commercial release of TJD.



The cockpit of Kaonandodo's ol' airplane, now a cacti farm!

So why am I posting this? Mostly because I wanted to share the good news of us now focusing a lot more on TJD development and because I wanted to share my relief of now having made my life a tiny bit less schizophrenic on the "where I work" front. Also, hopefully giving our development group one title instead of two will reduce the risk of confusion a bit.

Since the initial AGS engine source code release (and since we now finally finished our silly facebook-credits implementation into Nord) our two programmers have finally been able to start poking around in AGS to make it 720p friendly, which is the resolution we intend to release TJD in. I would like to take this chance to thank CJ for the bold move of releasing his precious source. A highly commendable and ballsy move to say the least. I am confident projects such as TJD and other similar commercial game efforts will benefit from it greatly.

Chapter one of the fully voiced, puzzle extended, high-res version of TJD is scheduled for a 2011 Q4 release and its development can be followed over at www.skygoblin.com

[arj0n]

Question: will there be a pre-order possibility for TJD-HD? 

[Snarky]

That is pretty exciting news, indeed! Essentially the announcement of a new adventure-oriented studio.

Hope TJDHD is a big success, so you won't have to deal with the blame for ruining the company and costing your friends their jobs! 

Seriously, good luck! Will buy the first episode when it's (re)released.

[Igor Hardy]

I'm glad to hear you're making The Journey Down your main focus - should definitely speed up the production!

Also, I'm excited that you're getting the higher resolutions feature into AGS - that could really popularize AGS in general, and help with some of the current compatibility issues.

[theo]

Arj0n: Not sure. If enough people seem to want to be able to pre-order it, I'm sure we'll make sure that option exists! I have no idea what goodies to bundle it with though, but I'm sure we can come up with something. Bundling a preorder with goodies feels mandatory if you ask me

Snarky: Thanks, man! As for risking ruining the company, heh, we've always been a small, independent, high risk "will-we-get-paid-or-sacked-next-month?" kind of company so I don't think that will be a bigger problem now than before. I do however sincerely share your concern regarding how difficult it seems to be to make real money off of point-and-click adventure games. Especially when you're self publishing it and have zero funds to put into marketing it. That's the core issue really, I think.

Ascovel: I hope we will be able to build higher-res support in a way so that we can share our new features with the rest of the AGS community and that it won't just dwindle away into a TJD specific branch, but who knows what will happen... Building things game specific will surely be very tempting for our programmers as it usually allows one to cut one heck of a lot of corners. As a team however, we certainly feel that we owe it to the community to share as much tech as possible, so we'll definitely be pushing to keep things as open as we can.

[arj0n]

Arj0n: I have no idea what goodies to bundle it with though, but I'm sure we can come up with something. Bundling a preorder with goodies feels mandatory if you ask me

Soundtrack, (Digital) Art Book, Concept Art Poster, TJD-HD Mouse Pad, Developer Diaries :  

[ThreeOhFour]

Arj0n: I have no idea what goodies to bundle it with though, but I'm sure we can come up with something. Bundling a preorder with goodies feels mandatory if you ask me

Soundtrack, (Digital) Art Book, Concept Art Poster, TJD-HD Mouse Pad, Developer Diaries :  

And stickers  8)

(Ben304 loves him some stickers!)

Pretty sure I already said this in an email, but you got my full support with this man, it's awesome news to see even more effort going into the project.

I hope you guys succeed 200%

[Stupot]

Ain't this cool news?
SkyGoblin is such a better name anyway.

[theo]

Stupot: I couldn't agree more. We never liked "SLX Games" as a name. It was born out of a cesspool of acute inspiration-failure-disease.

Ben304: Your support is highly valued and appreciated. Thanks!

Arj0n: Whatever we chose, it will have to be digital distribution. Thanks for the ideas anyhow! (that means no stickers ben:P)

This will likely be a 100% digitally distributed game. I wonder how that will affect sales by the way? Do people still largely buy games to get a physical "trophy" box? Would it for some people in fact be a dealbreaker? Thanks everyone for your thoughts and input. I appreciate it a lot.

[arj0n]

I wonder how that will affect sales by the way?
Do people still largely buy games to get a physical "trophy" box?
Would it for some people in fact be a dealbreaker? Thanks everyone for your thoughts and input. I appreciate it a lot.

I do like to buy a game being boxed yes.
But a dealbreaker if only digital: no.
As for digital bonus stuff: a 'making of' a.k.a. development video would also be cool.