This post is long overdue, but what better way than to write it with a new year beginning to talk about the year before?

So we finally launched the Leeds Murder. It was mixed both by many making it and by those who played it. I wanted to write a post about the process and what happened with how the game turned out the way it did.

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What was the original goal for The Leeds Murder?

The original goal was to make a small game similar to Do You Copy? We wanted to make it over a month instead of 48 hours to have more time to polish it, but overall keep the scope of it small. It was going to be another story in the Gracewind Universe with a focus on detective gameplay of clues and challenges and bringing back the dialogue mechanic with a mysterious character.

What happened with the development of The Leeds Murder?

While the scope of the game was small, it was much more complex than anticipated. We kept working and the finish line kept moving later and later. More people had to move on with their lives so we had fewer people working on it. We had some people play the state of the game and it was clear there was some conflict about what the game was. We decided to cut the dialogue mechanic to focus on the detective part. Since we were spending more time on the game, we looked at different ways to incorporate more lore of Do You Copy? and we had a character artist and animator so we decided to throw the Goatman in. While the inclusion was cool, the character artist got busy with life and we didn't have much to iterate on. In the end, the game was mostly finished by 1 person over the course of almost 3 months finishing every feature, implementing any remaining content, and fixing every bug he could. The save/loading system took the majority of this time at the end with the looping nature of that game.

There was also a huge break in development due to many life events across members of the team that took priority as this was a small side project.

While story-wise there was a direct connection to Do You Copy?, the gameplay wasn't. I know a lot of people were disappointed that it wasn't more of that and also the original vision of the detective work didn't quite come together either and the game felt more generic as a result.

I hope this gives a little bit more insight into why and how things turned out the way they did. There is a lot more that could be written about the learnings we had.

What is the future of Space Octopus Studios?

This is the hardest part to write as for now we are taking a hiatus. Many of us have new jobs, and with those new jobs, there are new legal guidelines of what is allowed to be worked on outside our primary jobs. For now, many of us have a lot more restrictions so we need to take a break. We love making these small games and we hope to be able to do so in the future. The other truth is after working hard to get The Leeds Murder out to you all, we also just need a break from side projects as well.

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So thank you all for all the support over the years. These projects reached more than we could have possibly imagined. Watching videos, seeing fan art, reading, reading theories, and so much more have been a pleasure for us to witness. We love the Gracewind Universe and have ideas of what we would like to do with it someday. Who knows what the future will bring?

Also, enjoy the concept art piece of The Goatman we made when we tried to make Do You Copy? into a bigger game.

Have a great new year and keep enjoying the spookiness.

-Space Octopus Studios