Gossamer is a Visual Novel featuring branching narratives and climatic turn-based boss fights with the story’s protagonists.
Development began on 7/12/2016 and will be kickstarted on 01/16/2018 - the final deadline for the project’s playable demo. Our minimum budget will be $40,000 and we anticipate $300,000 will be reached after a portion of the stretch goals are secured.
The studio consists of three members, and the purpose of this listing is to obtain a fourth team member who will take my place as the studio’s lead programmer. Your primary responsibility will be coding, debugging, porting, optimization, and implementation of online functionality, such as platform-specific multi-player. (Gossamer will focus on same-device and Ad Hoc PvP before online)
This is a high-risk / high-reward position that combines percentage-based royalties with monthly payroll disbursements obtained from crowdfunding. If you require upfront pay, this position will NOT meet your needs. We are looking for a like-minded candidate interested in becoming a long-term member of our team, both professionally and as friends.
To clarify on how compensation works:
If your royalty is 30% and $100,000 is raised after deductions (mainly bank and crowdfunding host fees, but will include planned expenses agreed upon by the team) you would be entitled to $30,000. If the agreed upon project duration was 24 months, you would receive $1250 each month on the 12th for the duration of the project’s development. If you worked on previous games with us and are entitled to additional compensation, you will receive your share of the previous month’s revenue with any current-project disbursements.
After the project concludes, your royalty will extend to physical and digital copies of the game, merchandise delegated to the specific game, entrance fees from tournaments (where applicable) and In-App-Purchases if the project converts to a Free-To-Play status. (This will not happen for Gossamer) The sole exception for revenue are sales of the game’s soundtrack, which will always be handled by the composer of that game.
“RJ” Robert J Lake
https://twitter.com/spellbangThe Co-founder of Myre Lake, located in Chicago. He is a major contributor on Gossamer and like myself, has been dedicating work to this project for the last 13 months without upfront pay.
RJ was first introduced to the team as our sole composer and sound engineer, but has since opted-into taking on additional responsibilities to ensure this project’s success. RJ is the lead character writer & editor for Gossamer, and is the first person I confide in for feedback and quality assurance.
He is also the lead Graphic designer and produces everything from custom fonts to meticulous frame-by-frame animations. Gossamer will be a 2D experience and is presented as a high-fidelity 16-bit game rendered at a native 640x360 resolution.
Rachel Lundin
https://twitter.com/rachelundinThe significant other of Robert Lake. Rachel and RJ are sharing their royalties and function as a single unit. Rachel’s talent is graphic design and she creates the line-art for the plethora of character portraits needed for a Visual Novel of this caliber.
Sometimes I assist Rachel by converting her roughs into colored vector art, which RJ uses as a basis for his animations. The three of us have collaborated whenever necessary and you can expect teamwork to be the bread and butter of our workflow.
Jack Alexander Myre
https://twitter.com/TeslohanDue to RJ’s popularity on Twitter from his previous work-contacts and accomplishments, I mainly hangout on our game’s dedicated closed-beta server hosted through Discord.
Myre Lake
http://discord.me/teslohanPrior to this listing, I was our team’s sole programmer. Because RJ Rachel and myself all have day-jobs that pay our bills right now, and because my experience as a programmer could be described as “novice, with five years of dedicated trial and error” I’m not necessarily the best fit for this role on our team. Previously, RJ and I had an even 50/50 split of royalties on this project. I’ve already come to terms with accepting a substantial reduction in my own investment to make sure our fourth member is adequately compensated.
The universe Gossamer takes place was originally conceived by myself: an amalgamate of characters, worlds and back-stories representing a decade’s worth of unpublished stories. I’m our lead environmental writer and I handle the nuances for everything regarding lore. Since RJ excels at writing believable dialogue, he’s responsible for crafting the interactions between the characters after I’ve established their role and motives within the narrative.
Although I’m giving up programming, I am heavily invested in the design, quality assurance, and balance of the RPG systems present in this game. My work includes the design and description of every ability, passive effect, and power-up utilized. I craft documents that give detailed explanations behind the mathematical formulas used to calculate and implement the relevant values. (values such as damage when it’s affected by resistances and other in-game multipliers and affixes) If there’s a game mechanic that abides by strict rules and interactions, you will find my hand in its documentation and design!
In short, I’m the head of our Quality Assurance as it pertains to game balance of numeric systems. It’s the driving force that fuels my love for strategy-rpgs and collectible card games. I take great strains in juggling incomparables to offer a satisfying experience to our players. As I’ve described earlier, I am a supporting artist though I consider myself the least talented artist of our team, comparatively speaking.
With five years of call-center experience and a focus on billing and debt-collection, I’m fascinated by money and enjoy serving the studio as its sole accountant. Once you get to know me, you’ll find that I have a strong code of ethics and I will go to any length to honor a contract and its terms.
I have a core belief that money does not corrupt and that prosperity through honest-work should be pursued to its fullest. I am our studio’s accountant and will be handling our expense tracking, filing company taxes, and ensuring fair compensation through payroll and royalty disbursements.
Agreed upon business expenses will always be decided by majority vote of the studio, such as the costs of attending an Expo or licensing needed to develop for a given platform.
The Offer
If you’ve continued to read up to this point, thank you! I’ll be including a link to some of RJ’s music (private upload) so you can preview some of the project’s completed soundtrack.
We are looking for a programmer fluent in C#. Below are the two acceptable options we are looking for at this time:
C# paired with MonoGame and/or MonoDevelop
or...
C# and a self-written engine or dedicated sourcecode made from scratch or legally repurposed from a base you hold the rights to and are extending to Myre Lake, the studio. I’m insisting you only take this route if Mono is less functional or efficient than you can develop on your own.
We will not be using an engine that isn’t using C#, such as GameMaker. We are not interested in using other engines at this time, even if they support C#. Engines such as Unity and Unreal have licensing fees that range from minor to substantial, and we decided to opt-out of using those so our team would generate more revenue once profitable.
If stretch goals are reached, we are interested in releasing the full game on the following platforms:
Windows, Mac OSX, Linux
Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch
PSVita, 2DS/3DS, Android/iOS Tablet
The base platform will be Windows and Mac PC and we expect to (at least) implement local same-device multiplayer with major Gamepad/Fightstick support. Because Gossamer will support one-on-one combat between players, we are also interested in taking this game to Expos for the intent of hosting tournaments that advertise the game and reward its most talented players with merchandise, medals, trophies, and/or cash prizes.
The demo we are currently developing will focus on a small portion of the game’s single-player content and each branching story of the demo will end in respective cliffhangers that collectively encourage the player to fund our project to obtain the closure we all desire. : )
Because the deadline for the demo is January 16th 2018, we are looking to bring on a programmer immediately, and their official start date will likely be on September 1st which is when I expect to have a majority of the Game Design Document (for the demo) complete.
While you are free to reply to this thread of interested, serious offers should be made on the Discord with me over direct-messages. From there I can schedule a group interview between myself and the entire team so that we can all become acquainted and find out if we are a good fit for one another. Please keep in mind we are looking for like-minded individual for this project. It will be a shared risk and we hope you are willing to make that investment in us moving forward.
Myre Lake
http://discord.me/teslohanAs promised, below you’ll find some of the WIP boss and character themes composed by Robert Lake. This project is our labor of love, and we hope you’re excited to join in its development!
TIG Source - Gossamer Playlist @ Robert J Lake
https://soundcloud.com/david-casteel-988967835/sets/tig-source-gossamer-playlist-robert-j-lake/s-13cFb
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