Eschalon: Book III Development Update

Before we head into the new year, Basilisk Games’ Thomas Riegsecker has provided us with a development update on Eschalon: Book III that also informs us about their ongoing promotional efforts for the series’ first two games. The main thing to take away from this is that a 2012 release of Book III is likely, and that’s pretty exciting:

Real development on Book III in didn’t begin until early 2011. One of the big differences with Book III’s development over prior games is that we are working with more people this time. New artists are helping us to bring Book III to life more than any previous game (the Book III teaser image in March was just a glimpse of what we are working on). But working with people remotely slows things down- it’s just the way it is when contributors must communicate via email and Skype. The quality of your game increases, but managing the whole project takes more time.

And while development of Book III is in full swing, continued sales of Book I & II are still extremely important to us as the ongoing revenue keeps the bills paid. It eats up quite a bit of our time promoting our games and working to get Eschalon as widely available as possible. Mac App Store, Desura and OnLive are three of our newest partners. Many of you may also remember our efforts earlier this year to get Humble Bundle to give us a spot. We are still trying to convince them that we’d be a great addition, so don’t be afraid to send them an email to let them know you want to see us included in the next bundle. 😀

Oh yes, and to top it off, during all of this we moved the studio a couple month ago to give us more room. This is still somewhat ongoing as we’re awaiting some additional equipment and furniture. Growing the studio is ultimately a good thing, but it pretty much brought all development to a halt for several weeks.

What this all means is: YES, Book III is coming!! We really blew our development schedule in 2011, missing almost every deadline we set for ourselves. But 2012 will be a productive year for us, and we are working hard right now to get everything together to make the formal announcement. This requires a press release, logos and artwork, screenshots, and we need to be able to answer questions when requests for info and interviews come our way. We certainly think that a 2012 release for Book III is possible, but we can’t make any promises to anyone right now.