Moving Forward - An Important Announcement

Hey everyone, Posty here, so this is a bit of a different post compared to ones we normally tend to do, but we always like to be transparent with you all about the state of development and how things have been progressing. Now with that said, today’s announcement is not the news we would be hoping to share with you, but here we are.

After having a discussion with Caz recently, he has decided to step down and will not be returning to Desolation Development. This is something that we had felt would happen for a while now, but we are glad that he was able to be transparent and let us know. The reasons behind his departure are in large part due to personal and heavy hitting events that happened in his life that coincided with the years of Desolation's development prior to and post release of EP6, and he informed me that these dark times have been too close with Desolation for him to find a way to separate for himself. Even if he were to come back now, he feels that the progress he has made will be undone, and the last thing we would want is to see our friend fall back deeper into the abyss he is slowly climbing out of. We wish him nothing but the best in his future endeavours and want to thank him for essentially bringing us all together. Desolation was built off his foundation and the team we have built since myself and Ruby joining during EP5 development is one I wouldn’t change for the world. He is always welcome to come back if he ever wishes to do so and feels like he is able to, and that door will never be shut on him.

Now after that bit of a bombshell, what’s next moving forward for Desolation? Well firstly, we will not be going anywhere, we have been manning the ship throughout his absence and will continue to do so. As I said previously, as long as the passion is there, Desolation will continue, but there will be a few changes.

Effective immediately, I will now be removing the “temp” in my title and step up as the official lead dev for Desolation. Caz originally passed the reins to me when he was stepping back, and I’ve been leading the charge since then, so it only makes sense. On top of this, Ruby will now be stepping up as my co-lead. We both joined EP5 development around the same time, and she has really stepped up her game throughout this development cycle, expanding her skillset to doing more mapping to give me a hand, we’re basically like Jessie and James and Shelly is Meowth (Shelly is her cat). 

Moving on, I have been planning on how the team operates currently and what we would need to improve upon in order to ramp up development. I have begun to delegate some of my current tasks to others, one thing in particular is the gameplay, this is something I initially focused on when I came on the team back in EP5 and since then I got myself involved in every other aspect, yes, this includes art, recolouring some tilesets counts! Anyways, Dred and Omens have a lot of knowledge when it comes down to team building, encounters, and even balancing forms (in this case I mean Megas), I have been working alongside them to start mapping out how the gameplay will go for EP7, however this will be something I will look to fully pass down to them. Shoutout to Omens and all the lovely documents they have prepared for me to sit down and read…

Yes that last paragraph was a ramble, but that is just a little bit of an insider scoop of some of the things I’ve been planning about how we can progress. So to end this post, let’s do a quick Q&A! My favourite.

Despite the few things you mentioned, what does this change for Desolation?

Development wise, nothing really, it will continue the same way it has done when Caz originally stepped back. However the biggest change to note will be the story, as Caz never provided us with key points for the “inbetweens”, we will now be continuing the story in our own vision. EP7’s story was already mapped out as this was explained to us at the start of this cycle, but EP8 onwards… We have little tidbits of information, but nothing concrete of “this is how the player will progress”. I know a lot of you played Desolation for the story, and we can never replace Caz’ way of telling a story, however as a team I feel like what we have been putting together through regular meetings and writing the script, is something I’m extremely proud of. Though I would completely understand if people decided to drop the game following this news, it’s one thing to start your own story and decide how it goes, but taking over someone else's story to then continue it in your vision is a different beast, these path will all lead to the same point, but the way we arrive at that destination will differ.

Will you be expanding the team again?

After breaking the news to the team, I came to the realisation that we will potentially need a few more team members to keep the ball rolling. These may be internal hires from connections (like how Rust joined us) or I will make another public development blog announcing that we are hiring. I’m going to see how the team fairs with the new changes I am putting in place, and then make that decision in the near future. So keep an eye out, you might be the missing piece to the puzzle.

How is development going as a whole?

Considering our circumstances, I would say it has been going a lot more smoothly than it once was a year ago. The new additions to the team have really stepped up and elevated the product, and we are now getting into a rhythm for development. That being said, I completely understand that this cycle has been… slow, a lot slower than myself and the rest of the team would have liked. Dev updates following this will start to expand upon more EP7 teasers and showcasing some more of the mapping work, gameplay updates, and other little events we have been working on. I do not want to set expectations, and the game is always on my mind daily about how things are going and what needs to be done. I hope now that with this shackle that has been lifted, that we can really go head first without sitting on the worry of “is this what Caz would have wanted”. 

I know that I have said this a LOT throughout this cycle but from the bottom of my heart, thank you all so much for the love and support you’ve given us throughout development. We will continue to develop and produce a game we can be proud of, and hopefully deliver you a final product that was worth the wait. This is essentially a new chapter for us, and we would love for you to join us for the ride.

If you have any questions or inquiries then please don’t hesitate to reach out to me! You can find me on multiple platforms, I’ll just leave a few links below::

https://x.com/posty_hd

https://www.instagram.com/postycollects/

I’m most active on Discord and we’re still based on the RebornEvo server, so feel free to drop me a DM there as well if you would like, just please refrain from asking anything… weird lol. 

One final thing, there will not be a development blog for May. However look forward to our post in June where I will start to showcase some of the gameplay updates we have been working on :)

Posty