Laura Bow 3 (was Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex)

[Rath Darkblade]

Fair enough. *nods* LSL3 is more forgiving than LSL2, though ... at least, until the bamboo maze.

By the way, does the "rapids" mini-arcade-game in LSL3 remind you of the "race" sequence in SQ1? It's just occurred to me that they're similar.

[Tawmis]

Fair enough. *nods* LSL3 is more forgiving than LSL2, though ... at least, until the bamboo maze.
By the way, does the "rapids" mini-arcade-game in LSL3 remind you of the "race" sequence in SQ1? It's just occurred to me that they're similar.

Yes, where you're dodging rocks.

[Tawmis]

Hey there Laura Bow fans! We're back for another monthly newsletter and progress update on Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex!

Again it has been a rather slow month. We're still battling some health and time issues on the team, so things have been moving along at snail's pace lately - yet we are still making a bit of headway here and there toward the ultimate goal of getting the Prologue Chapter out to you fellow adventure gamers!

Given that, we took a bit of time off from adding content into the game... and instead took a step back to try to identify some of our key bottlenecks in the development process. A couple of areas really stuck out, so we've been brainstorming some ways to speed those up. Lately we've been investigating some new tools and taking some time to build a bit of technology which we hope will distribute the workload a bit better - so that other team members can help with some of the more time consuming parts of making the game. It's a lot of math and code to get things up and running, but hopefully this will pay off in the long run and help us move at a much nicer clip once we get fully back on track! Only time will tell, however. But if this all works out, this time spent will also help us dramatically when making the later parts of the game too! So it has potential to be a big win in the grand scheme of things.

Anyway, we'll be back again next month with hopefully a bit more progress to show off than this month... but for now, it's back to dreaming in numbers and symbols.

[Rath Darkblade]

Wishing the LB team much luck with the health and time issues. Poor health isn't something to kid around with. Get well soon.

[Tawmis]

Hola Laura Bow aficionados! Welcome back to another monthly update on Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex!

This poor year has been quite a challenge to make any progress on the project, unfortunately, for various reasons - and it has placed us several more months behind from where we wanted to be, again. But these things happen and all we can do is keep moving forward and try to make strides where we can. It might be slower than we'd like, but if we just keep moving bit by bit, we'll eventually get where we want to go.

That lack of progress even crept into our April Fools shenanigans this year. Sorry we didn't get around to doing something fun like last year. Instead, consider the fact the you didn't hear from us on April 1st as the joke in and of itself. Does that count??

All that being said, there is actually a bit of good news... we are -just- starting to ramp back up on the Laura Bow project again! So we do have a couple of (literally) small things to share with you this month.
Flock Together

Sometimes it's the little things that make all the difference in a game world. We're aiming to make the world feel as alive as we can, without breaking the bank and performance budgets too much by spending tons of time on background elements (even though it'd be amazing if we could do that). One of the things our character artist recently made is some good ol' New York City wildlife.

These little fellas will help give a bit more life to a few of our city scenes! And you maaay just have to deal with one of them as part of your intro investigation - hint hint. So go practice your bird calls in preparation, people!

Dolla Dolla Bills Y'all
Making games can be an expensive endeavor, and adventure games don't tend to be the most lucrative sort of projects to choose out there. It can be a real uphill battle to sustain a group of developers on them. In order to venture down this road, you either need to be doing it out of pure passion, naivety, or perhaps even stupidity. Maybe some mixture of all of those, ha! We definitely fall mostly into the passion category, with maybe a sprinkle of stupidity for good measure.

So far we have been fully self funding this project out of our own pockets... investing our entire savings into it (there's that stupidity part of things - or does that count as passion?). This means that we occasionally need to focus on other things in order to pay the bills - which can sometimes be one of the reasons for those slower development months.

Anyway, we have been doing a lot of brainstorming lately on ways for this to not be the case anymore (short of selling our souls and livelihoods). During some of the downtime on Laura Bow over the past few months, we've been briefly kicking around the idea of another, much smaller, project... to help get the ball rolling for the company and (hopefully) relieve a bit of the financial burden.

How would this work, you ask? How could adding more work possibly result in getting the current project (Laura Bow) done quicker?? Well, we have a tendency to work in phases on Laura Bow - not everyone works on the project at the same time. So the people who aren't actively involved might occasionally have some extra cycles to devote to something else for a bit. And if this other project was small enough, it might still be possible to make progress on both at the same time. And if this bitesized other project could generate even a little bit of income, we could in theory spend more time on Laura Bow itself.

Whew! Complicated... amiright?

So we have something in mind for this bitesized journey. It's not a sure thing. We aren't 100% positive that we're going to do it just yet. But we may spend a little bit more time exploring the idea further. And if it works out, it could possibly turn into something larger which helps fund the Laura Bow project, and others like it into the future. It's also something which you Sierra Online fans might find quite familiar! And it suits our crazy new covid ridden world quite well too, actually.

Anyway... Will we? Won't we? Would it actually help at all? Only time will tell. Stay tuned for more information on that!

[Semi-Happy Partygoer]

Tawm’s better at copying the newsletters than I am, so I’ll let him do that, but this month’s has some VERY big news!

[Tawmis]

Tawm’s better at copying the newsletters than I am, so I’ll let him do that, but this month’s has some VERY big news!

I've been lacking in my duties. Still struggling with the loss of Odin.

But indeed - some big news....

Heya all you wonderful Laura Bow fans out there… Welcome back to another monthly update for Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex! My my, it has been a bit of a crazy month! We are also a bit short on time, so let's just jump right into it, shall we!

Big Things Are Brewin’

Sooo… remember all that stuff we said last month about lacking money, starting another project, and everything? Let’s just forget we said any of that, shall we? At least for the time being.

Sometimes things change very quickly, and this has been one of those moments. Earlier this month we randomly showed our vision of Laura Bow to another expert in the industry - and, after a brief demo, we walked away from the meeting with an agreement to fully fund our project!

Yes, you heard us right! No crowd funding, no developing another app, no begging or pleading… but a nearly immediate agreement to cover all of the development costs for Laura Bow and the Mechanical Codex!

Now, while this is amazing news… we do still have one last big hurdle to go. There is still the matter of approaching Activision again for the licensing rights to Laura Bow. Luckily, our financing partner is also associated with the people we need to speak with there, and we should have a much more direct line of communication this time around.

What does all of this mean exactly? Well, it means the chances of this becoming a real project just went up quite dramatically! Before, we would have said that there was maybe a 10% chance of this becoming an official game… and now we’re thinking that it’s more like a 70-80% chance. It's pretty amazing, and it is all happening so quickly.

There's still a lot more to do, and the funding is of course contingent on us obtaining the rights - so we're not popping any champagne corks just yet. But we are feeling really good about where we are compared to earlier in the year. And it's a very hopeful sign that all of you amazing Laura Bow fans might finally get the true sequel you've wanted for the past 30 years. We will keep you updated as this whole situation develops.

Since we don't have a lot of visuals to show off this month, here is a new render that our character artists put together as a promotional shot for our upcoming presentation with Activision. Hope you enjoy it! And wish us luck!

Another Checkbox

Not only did we manage to find funding for our project, we also got to check off another box on our todo list which was really important to us.

One thing we always wanted to do when we started this is to have a chat about our project with some of the original creators of Laura Bow, and get their consent for taking their original ideas and carrying them forward for a new generation of adventure gamers.

Well, we're very happy to report that we reached out to Ken and Roberta Williams to ask for their thoughts about what we've been up to. The reception was actually better than we anticipated. Roberta wrote us a long and very sweet message about her thoughts on Laura Bow in general, and the way we were approaching the project. She was super supportive and very much validated some of our own thoughts on the game we are making.

It was a very lovely experience... and we're so happy that we have a chance to pay homage to some of our childhood heroes, by making a game which we believe they'd be proud of.

[Rath Darkblade]

I've been lacking in my duties. Still struggling with the loss of Odin.

I'm sorry to hear. I know it's tough. *offers Tawm many, many hugs and positive vibes*

But indeed - some big news....

Very big news! Congrats and good luck to the dev team!

[Tawmis]

Fully Operational Dev Station!

This past month, the team has been mostly on hold as we go through a lot of business related affairs - documents, slideshows, videos, oh my! It's not the most illustrious part of a project... but an extremely necessary step, none the less.

Overall, everything seems to be moving along great! Although, we do still have a lot of legal stuff to attend to before we can definitely say that we're moving into full production. We are aiming to have the entire team working on the project full time starting in August. This will mark the first time we've had everyone actively creating the game at the same time - so you should start seeing a lot more progress happening soon! Hopefully that will make up a bit for the lull in activity so far this year.

On top of that, we have some team changes happening! Our animator has unfortunately decided that he cannot dedicate full time to the project - so we needed to find someone else. Luckily, we had a wonderful candidate very closely related to the existing team! Her name is Sofía, and we believe she's going to be a wonderful addition to the team. In addition to that, we are also bringing on a 2nd full time environment artist, and a part time character artist. We have some candidates for these roles already, but we haven't made it official yet, so we'll wait until that time comes in order to announce them.

That's about it for now! There probably won't be a whole lot happening this month either, as our funding isn't likely to go through until July, and some of us need to wrap up work on other projects... Although there will be some part time art and design prepartion happening in the meantime - so if anything interesting comes from that, we will show it off next month.

Anyway, get ready! It looks like this project is going to happen, one way or another...

[Rath Darkblade]

Whoops, I missed this. Good show. *crosses fingers for dev team*

[Tawmis]

More news -

The Calm Before The Storm!

Hello everyone! It's time for another monthly update... so sit back, and enjoy!

If you're just tuning in, we have recently entered into an agreement with another studio to fund the project... and things are proceeding well (yet slowly) in regards to that. We are hoping that this will be the last newsletter talking about this kind of thing - but the legal process is a slow one - so there's a high chance there will be at least one more! Ha. Oh well. Once it's done, we can jump onto the project with a full team, and full time hours... so you'll be seeing much more steady progress in the near future.

In the meantime, we still have a couple of team members working on some preparations, so that we can jump into full production mode swinging! Some of this includes some new concepts of upcoming characters and locations in the game. So, without further ado... we'll just show you a couple of those and let you get back to your day.

Enjoy!

[Rath Darkblade]

Very nice! I like Douglas Bluff. As for Nicole Jansen ... is she black or white? Brunette or blonde?

I also like the little garden at the bottom. A fountain and a gazebo. (If you sit in the gazebo, will it try to eat you?)

[Tawmis]

Another month of preparations!

Again, we are having another month just preparing for the moment when we can move into full production mode on the project! This mostly involves documenting lots of things, and continuing on with concept art work for characters and locations in the world. Things are still progressing and going well - it's just going to be slow progress until we can get some money in the bank. Hopefully soon!

However, we are back this time to show off some more concept work from upcoming parts of the project. Hope you enjoy what you see and are excited for the possibilities! Who's going to survive this story, and who isn't!? Got any guesses so far? See Send us your comments and feedback. We'd love to hear from ya!

Have any questions, comments, or concerns?
Want to suggest a topic for the next Tribune newsletter?
Can you help us with our business or project goals?

Email us at: info@ninezyme.com

[Rath Darkblade]

Er, how on earth can anyone guess anything about who's going to survive this game and who isn't, based on just a few screenshots (i.e. no context, no dialogue, no nothing)?

[Tawmis]

Full production guesstimate!

Well, yet another month has passed us by. It goes so quickly! We are continuing our preparations for moving the team into full production mode. Our current goal is to get everyone on board during October - hopefully even by the 1st of October. That's coming up quite soon!

What does this all mean for making the game, you ask? Well, so far we have been mostly focused on just implementing the prologue chapter of the game. Our initial plan was to use a completed version of this for funding and licensing agreement negotiations. Luckily, we found a funding partner earlier than expected, and have shifted gears to preparing ourselves to make a lot of the content for the rest of the game too. This means a lot of writing, documenting, and concepting - and also all the legal aspects with the funding process.

Once the funding is finalized and we officially kick this project into full gear... our focus will be entirely on getting this game in the hands of the fans out there. Will it be done soon? No. Sorry. Game development takes a lot of time and hard work, and we want to make sure that we do it well, and give it the respect it deserves. This is a childhood dream for us, and we're not planning to rush out something mediocre.

That being said, we want to keep people engaged and updated on how we're progressing with it (but only if you want to be, of course). That's what this newsletter is for, to show you step by step a lot of the things we go through in order to bring a new game to life. It's a long process - but if you're curious about game development, it might be something interesting to keep an eye on. We will do our best to not spoil the story or key game moments for you.

So, let's show off some more of this aforementioned prep work, shall we!