Releasing a DEMO is as easy as sending a llama into space
May 9, 2016, by Alayna
After several months, and thousands of words and lines of code, Horned Llama Studio has just released the demo of our work-in-progress title, Constellations.
Broadly speaking, Constellations is a work of interactive fiction that follows the player-character’s journey through space, while trying to recover their memories and rebuild relationships. It’s about identity and trust, and the web—or constellation, if you will—that connects these aspects of our humanity.
Constellations began as a vacation project because Pontus and I—the people behind Horned Llama—wanted something fun to do with the few weeks he had away from work. 28,000 words later, plus a plan nearly twice that size, and we’ve realised it has become something else entirely. And we’re excited.
While Pontus, our programmer, was working on the final touches of the demo, I interrupted him (as I often do) to ask him what he likes about the project, and why he’s happy to see it grow as it has:
It’s a great project to work on because the story has gripped me from the first day. I'm really excited every time I get a new piece of script to read. On a more technical level, it’s also a perfect opportunity to really put some handy new web technologies to use that I've mostly known about in theory before. I also think we make an excellent team. I've rarely had so much fun on a project before!
As the writer, it’s easy to take Pontus’s love of the story as a huge compliment, but that wouldn’t be fair; the magic of this story has come from the long conversations that he and I share about the narrative and characters after each new section of the script is written.
What Pontus said is true: we make a great team. Such a great team, in fact, that Constellations led to the birth of Horned Llama, which didn’t exist before this incredible journey. Horned Llama is simultaneously working on two other projects (both interactive, but neither game-based), and we have ideas for future projects of both the game and non-game varieties.
But founding a studio and developing Horned Llama projects alongside our other full-time (or equivalent) work commitments has not been easy. Trying to work together when Pontus and I live in vastly different timezones has not made this any easier. But thanks to instant messenger—and later, as the project grew, collaborative organisation tools like Trello and Slack—we have somehow managed to stay on top of it all. If you are interested in knowing the secret formula, though, I think it’s constant support, appreciation, and terrible jokes. Something like that.
One of our recent ways of motivating each other involved the creation of #ConstellationsWeek, an event we declared on a whim after some other projects cooled off (briefly). We used the hashtag on Twitter to share sprints that we completed around and after working hours. In this week, I wrote over 3,000 words, while Pontus added all of those new script sections to the main build and made interface additions that we had been planning for weeks, including a save feature and related menus. It was #ConstellationsWeek that led to us realising a demo was a distinct possibility, and soon.
We have shared the process of developing Constellations so far on our devblog, including how we brainstormed the original idea, how I approach writing the narrative, and the ways scope has had to be altered as we have progressed through the project. Coming soon, you will see more information about the joys and challenges of programming Constellations, as well as posts about an upcoming exhibit in Madrid where our demo and promotional material will be featured. We are eternally grateful for the opportunities and love that we have received so far.
We can’t wait to continue sharing this development process with you all, including (our favourite part) all of the silliness and Easter eggs that we add to Constellations as a way to keep the process full of fun and energy. For ongoing updates, you can check out our studio’s Twitter, which is also the perfect place to tell us about your experience of our demo, if you have any thoughts you’d like to share.