I Started The Righteous as a concept and art project in 2016, at the time I was in college and really looked at the project as simply a portfolio piece presenting my skills but as time passed I
decided it's better to take it more seriously and give a vision for moving forward.
The Social Media, which I did present for Homework one time in College, has largely been rebranded to facilitate and reflect the serious changes coming and that have come. We have a website for
the game (this one), a company website (SZ Labs), consolidated our Facebook, Instagram, Analytics and Mailchimp services with plans to create an IndieGoGo with the interest of fund raising for
our public alpha release and early access.
In the past, I admittedly haven't been as transparent as I'd like to have been and this post largely will address such:
WAIT DIDN'T YOU MAKE AN ALPHA?
What happened was that The Righteous went through multiple, internally tested, builds that are effectively forms of pre-alphas. The decision to then push for a
public alpha, compared to private, is to present a demo which will be up to the publics standards and open up the game for new, fresh, fans and peers to join our journey in creating an
interesting and compelling strategy game that wore it's influences on it's sleeve. These Internal builds will not be released, not due to any preceived embarressment but because I lost the
original CDN for distributing demos and am in the process of creating a Cloud Infrastructure for SZ Labs that can support the backend of all SZL-affiliated sites. When this is complete more can
be said in interest of distributing keys for alpha.
WHY HAS THE SITE REMAINED INACTIVE, WHO IS 'THE TEAM'?
The fact of the matter is that when The Righteous first transitioned from renders, PoC, and rough drafts to Unity3d it's team had a lot resources to access and
organization to fall back on. Without going into too many details, New York City College of Technology was where the team was based and going to school therefore providing the team large scale
access to Adobe CC, Autodesk Suite, 3d Coat , and Marmoset Toolbag. In addition the project started as that of a College club known as the Game Development Studies and Observation Group (GD-SOG)
though the brainchild of the club president, Sasori Zero, the club had many students who would show interest in apprenticing under and interning at the project; they contributed largely
conceptual or artistic and narrative related content that have been in TR presentations but constantly underwent change as per the dynamics of GD-SOG and therefore meaning more content more often
than not would fail to reach the site besides the project lacking a social media and branding manager at that time.
Sasori Zero, and most of the club leadership, would graduate in 2017 and with it the club would would begin to dissolve. Sasori Zero then underwent developing the idea juggled with the
costs of living in New York City, these challenges also meant that more news was reaching the Instagram without a clear connection being completed between the same project's Facebook, website, or
an updated company website by neither the core team of three people nor the interns in GD-SOG times.
COVID-19 in 2020 also further hampered attempts for the team to meet and function on a regular basis and appropriate steps needed to be taken to facilitate the continued development of The
Righteous; the game had demos but had begun a rebranding as it became clear that the original game needed a prequel before the experimental storytelling and gameplay approach could be truly
realized and other concepts began coming out of the design and development process. In acknowledgement of this fact Operation Blade was created as the true prequel and focus allowing The
Righteous to not only be realized but give fans insight into the complex alternative earth this tale will tell us all about.
2020 was when major shifts began and with 2021 we will be far more active in our campaigns to deliver this game to Early Access.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Stay tuned, stay informed, come back to this blog and site often to get insights on whats happening every week. As time marches on look forward to mailing list and
beta access links, subscribe to us on social media for up to the minute updates and engage directly with our development team
and remember to Fear the Setting Sun!
- Sasori Zero