Welcome to the very first true devlog of Valanthion. Today we'll be talking (or rather writing) about how we got here.

You might have heard of the first game we've ever released as Faberwerks, Protectors. (If you haven't, go check it out at faberwerks.itch.io/protectors!) It might have been the first game we've ever released, but Valanthion actually started first. Valanthion first began in January 2018, known internally as Project Swift. At the time, we weren't even Faberwerks, we still called ourselves the Cicax Project. And even more, it was our second game development project. It's a bit confusing.

Long story short, our first project was a bust. We didn't feel any passion for it, so we decided that our next project was going to be something we wanted to make. It was really something we wanted to make, not necessarily something we could make. What we decided was a top-down 2D RPG with side-scrolling and platformer sections. The problem was we had had no prior experience in actually making and finishing a game, let alone a game of that size.

Many months went by and we learnt a lot. The project wasn't advancing due to a variety of factors, but mostly it was college work and the fact that we lacked a schedule, a deadline, or even a solid target. Nobody really knew what needed to be done, when, how, and who did it. A lot of the times we didn't do anything at all. This continued until August of that year. We had participated in a game jam, Melon Game Jam 2018, and realised a lot of our mistakes.

We realised that we needed deadlines, specifically we needed a target that we really wanted to strive for. We also realised that we needed a real timeline of what we were going to do, and who was going to do what. We came together and discussed again the design of the game, put it all in a Game Design Document, and got ourselves to work. We couldn't have moved forward without reinforcements, our two new members: our artist Nico and our sound engineer Anton. We also got a lot of help from an artist who had helped us with our first project, Ribka. We also felt the team was too big with eight people and our level of experience, so we split the teams in two, and the other team worked on Protectors. So in the end, our team was composed of six people, a number which we felt comfortable with.

But the most important thing we realised was that what we really really needed was commitment, hard work, and passion. Sure, our skills might not have added up that much but with those three things we can find our way, and for skills, we can always learn them.

This post didn't really talk a lot about the game itself, we'll save that for the next post. In our next post, we'll be writing about the game design and also art of Valanthion.

See you there!
- Phobez