New Beginnings.

First off allow me to introduce myself, My name is Michael a 39 year old husband/father/solo developer currently trying to realize his lifelong dream of creating games to share with the world. While this is my first commercial venture I began making games very early in life, at first just pieces of paper sprawled out across the floor depicting vast dungeons I would role play my characters through. As i got older I moved to the digital medium and used such programs as RPG Maker 95/2000, Blitz 3D, Realm Crafter etc, etc. and while many projects took shape with some of them being finished I never publicly released them.

As the years went on this didn't set right with me, I had all these stories and worlds living inside my head just itching to get out. I once again started tinkering with new projects, one in particular showed promise and was in the late stages of development. Unfortunately this is when life once again had other plans, not entirely vigilant in my backup process I was struck with power surge, destroying my PC and subsequently my nearly 2 years of hard work. Devastated I once again walked away from game development convinced this just wasn't meant to be.

That was nearly 10 years ago. During that time a lot of things changed in my life, I was blessed with a special needs son whom I raised by myself for the first 7 years of his life before meeting my now Wife and having two additional children of our own, twin boys. Bringing our grand total of children to 6 between the two of us. Sounds exhausting huh? It is, but I would never change that about my life even if I could.

Some things didn't change over this decade, I continued to write and dream up worlds, knowing one day the right set of circumstances would come about that would allow me to share these tales with the world. Here we are.

My current project Kaia : The Last of the Ancients has been  in development a little over a year, most of this was spent prototyping and finding the right format for this adventure. At this point the core systems are largely complete, the story is nearly finished and now I begin the journey of realization. I will periodically share updates here as well as on X/Twitter and possibly YT as I get closer and closer to the finish line.

So what the heck is this project I speak of?

Kaia : The Last of the Ancients is an adventure RPG Platformer inspired by such classics as Dark Cloud, Ni No Kuni : Wrath of the White Witch and various other games I remember fondly from my childhood. In this tale Kaia, a young woman embarks on an epic quest to save the world and restore the memories of her friends and loved ones; stolen by an ancient evil. The goal is to provide a fun, engaging heart warming and thought provoking experience that is able to appreciated by gamers of all ages and backgrounds center around our memories and the profound impact they have on our lives.

If you like the sound of this please consider following along on this journey with me, as I intend to share with you the process and insights of my game development.