To anyone who visits this blog regularly, above all, I thank you! But also, I hope you will keep Lila Dreams on your radar. The project is at a standstill, but it’s not dead.
Cave Story took five years to be created, and it’s not even an online game. I’m not saying expect that kind of epic time frame, just that the previously planned release date worked on the assumption that there would be funding and a team. Well, it’s just me and my pocket lint now. 
Lila Dreams is no longer slated to appear on Kongregate as a premium game. In fact, Remnants of Skystone is the only premium game which will be released in the future. Kongregate will not be green lighting any more games. The economy is bad, so certain things had to give, I’m told.
[Correction: I was under the impression that Skystone was the only other game to be released after Zenning, but it sounds like I may have misunderstood what I was told. My apologies. I didn't mean to confuse or misrepresent anything/anyone. I wish the best for all the developers who will release their premium games with Kongregate!]
This is actually not a bad thing! Since I retain all the intellectual property rights, I am now free to pursue other ways of getting the game off the ground.
The Project
The current circumstances are that I can’t continue the project immediately. I have to build my way up, starting with some other projects which are all designed to get me to the point to where I can work on Lila Dreams again. I need backend infrastructure. I need client code. I need art. And so on. That’s all coming, but being one person, I can only do it in stages.
The Technology Platform
I am pretty sure that I will be using Unity for the client. Lila Dreams will be a 3d game. Being web-embeddable or downloadable is also a nice option to keep open. Plus, there’s a fast growing number of people working with Unity, so I think the pool of talent will be rich enough to tap into later.
The Game Design
I am going to make some fairly big revisions to the design as described in this blog. The game has to be scaled down to a size I can manage alone. I have some ideas for directions I want to go, but I’m still contemplating several different possibilities that I like equally. The difficulty is to choose which one best fits this setting and what I want the game to be about in terms of multiplayer activities.
The Future
My plan is to keep quiet about the project for a while. I don’t want to raise any expectations until I have something tangible to show for it. I don’t want to reveal anything until it’s a certainty, be that gameplay, art, or business model. I will post here from time to time, but there won’t be a lot of noise until significant progress is being made.
This is indie game making, and this is reality. I am sorry to those I have disappointed, but I hope you will give me another chance later. This is a game that I won’t stop working on.
So, some time from now, when you see that Lila Dreams is back in production, it will really be back in production!
Willian Gallis, from the site KongBr, did an interview with me a little while ago. On his site, the text is in Portuguese (he translated it–unfortunately, I don’t speak the language). He generously gave me permission to post the English version of the interview here. Thank you, Willian!
* * *
Willian Gallis: First of all, I wanna thank you for this interview.
Jason McIntosh: My pleasure!
Well, the first thing everybody always wanted to know is: Who are Creatrix Games guys?
Greg Tice (the game’s visual designer) and I have been making games and games designs for a long time together. Creatrix has been around for about two and a half years as a company (as in, being full time developers) and we made a few downloadable games in the past. I have no “real” game industry experience, other than as an indie developer trying to build an established company. When we started Lila, I brought Neo Binedell on board as the lead programmer.
We have a second (non-MMO) project in the works, and there are other people involved in that team. So Creatrix Games is made up of a couple of teams, all working remotely via the Internet. It works out well, actually.
So, it’s your first big game?
We made a casual game for Playfirst, which was funded, so I guess this is our second “big” game, though none of them are big in terms of budget.
And how is the experience of developing one of the first Premium Games for Kongregate?
Working with Kongregate has been great. We are given basically as much creative freedom as we want, and you can’t really ask for more than that. It’s been lots of fun, but really challenging because the game deisgn and the actual development are very ambitious.
What [is] the major idea behind Lila Dreams?
The player is a being called a “memekin” which exists in the psyche of Lila, an 11 year old girl. So the game world is all in her mind, and all the locations and game elements usually take on some aspect of her personality, thoughts, and memories.
There isn’t really any single “goal” for the game, since it’s more like an ongoing world that you can explore. But there are creatures, villains, and some characters to meet. The game is very light on story, though, and is more about exploring and going on short adventures with others.
And from where the inspiration for this game came from?
I don’t think there is any single inspiration, other than I knew that I wanted to make a game in a world without a lot of rules. But I didn’t want it to be a typical medieval fantasy world, so I chose to make it all in a little girl’s mind.
I saw something about Lila’s mood affecting the whole game. How it is supposed to work?
The idea is that players can collectively change Lila’s mood, and the emotion of her mood determines some benefits and changes to the game world. Certain areas opening up or closing, creatures appearing or disappearing, and other changes like that are determined by Lila’s mood. There will also be visual markers to depict her mood, like sky colors and various statues and things in the geography.
I loved this concept. But how exactly can the players change her mood? Doing some specific quests or just acting weird?
Acting weird? I wish we could use webcams and players that behave the strangest would change her mood!
Haha. That would be nice.
There are some mechanics to make it happen, but those are top secret right now. The mechanics are intended to allow every player to contribute to which mood he or she wants to choose. But the outcome depends on large groups working together.
The cooperation is very distributed, though, so it won’t be like raids or something in WoW. It’s much more casual than that.
Are there other types of player interaction? Like Player battles, Cooperative quests, etc.?
Players will be able to group and go adventuring together in instanced labyrinths.
I have all kinds of ideas for other things, but the initial release will be only a slice of the full design due to budget constraints. After launch, we hope to be adding new things all the time.
Another thing I heard is that the game won’t be a grind MMO. How is the game gonna work?
Weeellll.. that is all secret at the moment. But I have tried to remove as much grindy gameplay as possible. There are no levels or experience points, for example.
So, the equipments will be one of the ways of measuring the player skill?
Equipment will be a very central part of it, yes.
These equipments are the usual ones (swords, armors, etc.) or something new?
I’m trying to stay away from medieval stuff as much as possible, and since we’re talking about a world made of psyche, there will be a mix of things, including medieval, modern, and futuristic stuff.
Any chance of having a Plasma Rifle? I always wanted a Plasma Rifle.
There might be something like it. But we’re trying to be unconventional and stick with the theme of the setting, so it won’t be like a totally incoherent mix of swords, guns, and lasers.
It will all have a connected feel that fits the style of the world, so probably you won’t see a plasma rifle by that name, but maybe functionally there will be a weapon in there that would be similar.
Another interesting feature I saw is about the [creatures]. What can you say about them?
We’re going to have quite a large bestiary. Each area has a set of creatures that inhabit it, so there will be different types of things to encounter that fit with their habitats. We’re trying to make their behaviors as varied as possible so you always find something new.
And what can you tell about the cities?
There are a few major cities, and I hope we can get them all in the game by launch, but if not we’ll just have more stuff to give people later! Cities will be the main social areas, as well as centers for recuperating after a long expedition.
Most cities have a story and are based on some aspect of Lila’s personality or life. So, depending on how much time we have, I’d like to give each city some mysteries to be discovered by players. We’ve certainly got plans for it, but again budget is such a constraint that we will probably defer a lot of this kind of content until after the game’s initial launch.
There is a lot more I could say, but I don’t want to disappoint players if we don’t actually get to implement some of it.
Are you guys planning to open a Alpha Test like some of the other Premium Games?
There will be closed Alpha testing, and then probably closed Beta, then an open pre-release period. My guess is that a lot of the testers will come from the Kongregate community for the closed phases.
Of course, betas are buggy and incomplete, but that’s the price of admission, I guess.
Ok Jason, thank you very much of the interview. Do you have any message for the Brazilian Kongregate community?
I would love to see Brazilian players in the game! I usually only think of it in terms of North America because that’s where I live, but the thought of an international audience is really exciting and humbling to me.