As COVID-19 ground the world to a halt, the games industry was one of many forced to adapt to the ‘new normal' ofa global pandemic. Developers, forced away from their studios by lockdown and quarantine, had to bump deadlines and cancel convention appearances. With already limited resources and sometimes a skeleton-crew staff, indie developers like Troglobytes Games, the studio behind the upcomingBlind Fate: Edo no Yami,faced a particularly daunting challenge during the pandemic.
In the face of such uncertainty, however, the Barcelona-based Troglobytes managed to stay afloat as it worked onBlind Fate, an innovativesamurai-themed sidescroller. Game Rant sat down with studio lead Saverio Caporusso, who explained how his team was well-equipped to meet the challenge of COVID-19.
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Blind Fate’s Devs Were Already Working Beyond Borders
A pandemic that forced people out of the office and into their homes wasn’t a harsh transition for Troglobytes, Caporusso said, because the studio had been designed for remote work since its inception. Italian by birth, Caporusso moved to Spain over a decade ago for workoutside the games industry. When he and some friends from Italy founded Troglobytes in 2015, they decided to headquarter the new studio in Barcelona rather than in their home country.
“We decided that the games industry in Spain is slightly better than in Italy,” Caporusso said. “We have been able to grow a lot more in Spain over the last six or seven years, compared to Italy.” Because some of his team lives full-time in Italy, Troglobytes worked remotely from the beginning, so when the pandemic hit, “some things changed, but others didn’t,” Caporusso said.
“I was in Spain, and the rest of my team was in Italy. So for us, having to stay home was okay.”
The beginning of the COVID-19 lockdowns came as Troglobytes was working on its first title, a top-downtwo-stick shooterknown asHyper Parasite. The pandemic forced the Italy-based team to split up and work from home for “two or three months."
ForBlind Fate, pandemic times meant that the development process had to be slow-rolled a little. Troglobytes delayed the game’s release date, which is currently planned for the third quarter of 2022. Public health concerns also meant that several conventions, where the studio would have been able to showcase its upcoming game to a potential player base, were called off.
Troglobytes missed two chances to participate inthe Game Developers Conferencein San Francisco, California, as part of the Indie Megabooth exhibit. As Caporusso said, “the first time, GDC was suspended, and the second time we had been selected by Xbox to participate, but they pulled out.” As things improved, though, Troglobytes was able to getBlind Fatein front of a convention audience. The studio ran a table in April during Boston’s PAX East conference.
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Blind Fate’s Development was Helped by Pandemic Experience
Although Troglobytes started work on the upcomingBlind Fateinthe midst of a pandemic, lessons learned from the studio’s first foray into development helped smooth things over, Caporusso said. The team’s inaugural title,Hyper Parasite, “gave [the studio] some good development experience” forBlind Fate.
The studio’s work onHyper Parasitealso helped out financially on the next project, he said. “We fundedHyper Parasitecompletely out-of-pocket. We tried a Kickstarter, but that failed miserably.” Despite those troubles, Troglobytes’ first title gave it the feedback and financial backing it needed to hit the ground running forBlind Fate.
“I don’t want to brag, but for us the transition was easy.”
Meanwhile, Troglobytes has been strugglingto get player feedbackonBlind Fateas it nears the end of its development cycle. The studio released a game demo on PC and Xbox in 2021, and while players were downloading the game, it was harder to get people to play it or leave a review, Caporusso said.
“Many people played the demo on Xbox, but not too many people left reviews. I think that was because of the console itself, because to leave feedback you have to move somewhere else like a computer to type it up.”
On PC, data showed that just around one-third ofSteamusers who downloaded theBlind Fatedemo actually fired it up, according to Caporusso. “That makes sense, because people sometimes download 20 things and just play one or two of them.” Compared to the Xbox audience, PC users that played the demo left longer, more constructive reviews.
Blind Fateis in development for PC, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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