The first update in a very long time has been posted on the Elysian Shadows Kickstarter page.

God, I have dreaded making this update for so long… Not because I haven't been slaving away on this game day and night, abusing prescription amphetamines to stay awake and focused, losing sleep and slowly my sanity, but because I just wasn't 100% satisfied with the content we would be posting for the update. My perfectionism coupled with issues internal to our team causing levels to not be as developed as I would have liked them to be is what has caused such a gigantic delay in Kickstarter updates…

We have always been 100% transparent with our supporters in the past, constantly posting behind-the-scenes YouTube updates, and posting on social media daily, but suddenly I lost the courage to show the "real" game development once we accepted money from Kickstarter. I didn't want to show anything shy of perfect… But the truth is that sometimes game development is ugly and highly inconsistent. Some weeks you accomplish everything you ever dreamed and more, and some weeks you get stuck and barely finish a thing. It's the nature of engineering and creative work in general, and I swear from here forward to show the true, unadulterated, uncensored, behind-the-scenes progress.

One dev explains in the comments that things are progressing at a good speed now:

I was waiting for that question...

It's honestly hard to say right now. We were behind schedule from lack of level progress and our musician quitting, but now that we're all living under the same roof working together 12 hours a day (which we hadn't originally planned for), we're rapidly catching back up on everything... It'll be close.

If we don't make it by December, we have several options, and we will most likely wind up polling you guys. We could release things incrementally in chapters to let you guys start playing in December (and obviously you get the rest of the chapters for free, since you did pay for a complete game), or we could wait to release it all at once. At very least the beta backers should be well into play testing and playing through some serious content, so their opinions on the matter if that time should ever come would be more than welcome.

Also different platforms may take longer to complete than others. For example, if we screw something up on Steam or mobile platforms, we could easily push an update to fix it... If we screw something up on the Dreamcast, you have a coaster, so we want to make damn sure everything is solid before we press that to disc. Obviously if the Dreamcast version is released later than the other versions, we don't want to screw the DC backers over, so they will be able to play some form of digital copy in the meantime (and I will work on a save-file converter).

We also promised more than just Elysian Shadows itself as well. ESTk and our tools should definitely be very mature by that time, and there's almost no way they will not make the December release. We're actually very, very close to opening that up to beta backers already.

Anyway, this is all up in the air right now. I just want to be completely honest with regards to the fact that it could go either way right now and let you all know that we will do anything possible to make it right in case this does happen. If we do wind up being late, you will all know 100% exactly why between the weekly updates and Adventures in Game Development videos. You will know it will be for a good reason and that we are working our asses off. :)

Thanks Couch!

The Elysian Shadows Team posted a New Years 2015 Update. The update also includes a new video about the development of the their funded kickstarter game.

May all of your game development and indie gaming dreams come true this year! 2015 is going to be a huge year for Elysian Shadows and our friend projects here on Kickstarter.

While we were fairly silent during Q4 of last year, this did not mean we weren't literally working our asses off day and night in our indie dev caves. We decided to take a brief respite from the spotlight to recharge and focus on our product for awhile before reemerging... That time has finally come, and we have all kinds of awesome progress to show you. You're going to be seeing quite a bit more of us this year, especially on YouTube, where we're continuing our "Adventures in Game Development" series, giving you guys a behind-the-scene look at the ongoing development of Elysian Shadows.

Hardcore Gamer has news that Elysian Shadows has been Greenlit on Steam.

Elysian Shadows was a very promising new RPG on Kickstarter earlier this year. Many were drawn to the mix of retro and modern aesthetics which pushed it beyond an already hefty funding goal of $150,000. However, despite all the attention, Elysian Shadows simply couldn’t make it through Steam Greenlight.

This morning that is no longer the case. Now, visiting the Elysian Shadows Greenlight page reveals that highly-coveted green banner denoting a title has been Greenlit by the community. Now what? We must all wait until the game finally launches.

The latest update from Elysian Shadows Team talks about new payment options, and has news about a new stretch goal meet. It also comes with a new video.

Update #10: “New Game+” Stretch goal hit, PayPal and Bitcoin options added, Kickstarter/press shout outs!

Hope you all had a great start to the week, I know we have! As we start wrapping up this last week of our Kickstarter, we’re still working hard to stay on top of the massive amounts of email, comments and messages we’ve been receiving throughout the campaign. There are a few big news items that we wanted to update everyone on, so enough rambling, lets dive right in! 

“New Game+” Stretch Goal!! 

We are extremely excited to announce the first stretch goal, “New Game+”, has been hit as pledges have pushed us over the $170,000 mark. This option will become available to players who have completed the game at least once, allowing certain things such as experience or items to carry over and even allow for certain events to become available that would not be available during the first play through.

The next goal will be "Boss Attack", which is a mode of play that allows the player to run a gauntlet of sorts, facing bosses they've already defeated. Players will be graded based on time it took to complete, damage taken/received, weapons and abilities used - rewarding the players with unlockable unique items, trophies, and experience or other in-game points depending on their score.

PayPal and Bitcoins now accepted! 

Since we launched our Kickstarter campaign, we’ve had tons of potential backers reach out to us from all over the world asking us to accept PayPal as an alternate means of payment since they are not able to pledge through Amazon Payments. Today we are happy to announce that we’ve officially updated our page to allow for PayPal pledges! 

In tandem with trying to accommodate fan requests for alternate means of pledging we have also included a QR code and wallet address for Bitcoin donations. Although we will have to keep up with these pledges ourselves, please email us at Contact@ElysianShadows.com if you choose to send us a few Satoshi and let us know what reward tier you’d like and we’ll be in touch!

The Elysian Shadows Team announce their kickstarter game was successfully funded.

The next kickstarter update from the Elysian Shadows Team has infomation about the developer releasing the development tools of the game to all buyers, and backers.

We're Releasing ESTk - Make your own Dreamcast games

How's it going?

We have teased you all with big news and here it is:

We're excited to announce that we're releasing our development kit along side Elysian Shadows. We've been talking about doing this for years in the Adventures in Game Development series, and we're thrilled to officially make plans for its release.  

Aside from small miscellaneous tools around the net, up until now, developing for the Dreamcast has only been possible by investing hundreds of hours into building your own toolkit. The ESTk is a complete toolkit, with everything you need to start developing your own Dreamcast game immediately -- no programming knowledge is necessary to dive in. The ESTk is modeled after unity making it welcoming for beginners.

Our tools are as cross-platform as they come. You can create and deploy your games to PC (Windows, Linux & Mac), iOS & Android (Phones and Tablet devices), Ouya, and Dreamcast. In the future, depending on our stretch goals we would like to expand upon this by adding the next generation consoles like Playstation 4, Xbox One, Wii U, Nintendo 2DS/3DS and Playstation Vita.

How exciting is that? Let us know what you think :) Thank you for the support everyone! It really means the world to us.

The latest kickstarter update from the Elysian Shadows Team Has news the game is getting closer to being funded, Here are the details from the update.

Two Thirds Complete!

How's it going you awesome bunch!?

Did you see it? Is it a "where were you" moment? 

WE PASSED $100k!

That's two thirds of our goal with 2 full weeks to go. To celebrate we will be livestreaming again since it was really popular last week at around 3:30PM CST (9:30PM GMT) on YouTube. It was delayed due to a storm in Alabama knocking out Falcos internet connection. Our apologies for that. You can watch that here.

Yesterday (16th August) we released two videos - Adventures in Game Development: Chapter 27 and a special, new series of videos Adventures in Graphics Development: Chapter 1.

The Elysian Shadows Team next kickstarter update for Elysian Shadows has information about a new tier, and a new add-on to help fund the game.

New Tier and Add-on!

As some of you may have noticed we just added the most epic tier you will ever see on a Kickstarter campaign..ever..seriously!

The tier is for $5000 and it includes everything you would expect like the limited edition version of Elysian Shadows with all the physical and digital extras, but we took it up a couple of notches. Way past 11!

The Mentor

For those who have been inspired by our YouTube series "Adventures in Game Development" to become indie game developers or learn computer programming or those who chose that path as a life choice yourselves, The Mentor gives you the opportunity to travel down to us in Alabama, all expenses paid for one whole week and we will teach you what ever topic you want!

If you know C++ but want to improve your skills? We will teach you Intermediate or Advanced C++ to kickstart your development journey and endow you will the skills to finally finish that game concept you have been working on.

If you already know C++ but are having trouble learning or picking a graphics API to start your project, travel down to us and we will teach you beginner to intermediate OpenGL ES.

If you are totally epic and already know C++ and OpenGL but want to know how we solved some of the challenges we came across when developing Elysian Shadows like our dynamic lighting engine, rigid body physics system or even how we use LUA on the Dreamcast? What about developing for the Dreamcast console? We can show you the way!

Which ever path you are on you will get the opportunity to meet some of the team, visit the place where we make our dreams come to life and most of all - you get to play with our tools and software! That's right, take a look under the hood at our engine architecture, multiplatform framework or how we build levels with our editor!

This really is the ultimate opportunity for those who want to push themselves further. 

Some of you may know we are always open with our community and even a lot of our team were once fans of our project for years until they reached out to us. We always look for talented people to join our team, and who knows, given the right direction you could be the next person to join our team and help resurrect the 2D RPG and make it relevant by todays standards!

Strategy Guide Add-on

You asked and we delivered! Get yourself the physical strategy guide by adding $29 to your current pledge amount. No need to change your tier to anything higher (unless you want to) just add the amount and let us know which add-on you would like. You can find more add-ons on our campaign page :)

Lastly, we have hit Kickstarter full steam ahead and we are doing very well so far. I'm sure some of you are aware how Kickstarter works? The beginning period is usually smooth sailing and it's common to see an influx of donations early on like we had. Unfortunately, all good things don't last forever. The next 3 weeks are going to be a real challenge and we have seen our community and backers be really supportive of our project. We just need that to continue as much as possible because the sad thing is if we don't hit our goal we would find it really difficult to complete the project within the 18 month timeframe. We are extremely dedicated people (as our 7 year YouTube series shows) and the project will continue but at a much slower pace.

The Elysian Shadows Team latest update for Elysian Shadows  has news the game is now on Steam Greenlight, and they post a few links for two new interviews.

We are now on Steam Greenlight!

After day 3 of the campaign we have had many questions regarding the Windows, Mac and Linux builds of the game. Mostly regarding if you only get one copy of the game for only one operating system.

We knew this was confusing so we are here to solve that problem. For those who have and those that will choose THE RETRO GAMER tier to receive a digital copy of Elysian Shadows on PC (Windows, Mac or Linux), will hopefully get one Steam key allowing you to play on all three :)

To do this we need your votes for our Steam Greenlight campaign. Either by clicking the image above or visit this direct link :)

Thank you for the continued support so far!

In the media lately we managed to talk to Nichegamer this past weekend. You can listen here: http://nichegamer.net/2014/08/elysian-shadows-interview-fantastical-kickstarter-edition/

And Blaze Chastain from GhostVolta, wrote an article showing us love from the Ouya community! http://www.ghostvolta.com/exclusive-developer-interview-elysian-shadows-team/

Lastly, I would like to stress how genuinely moved the team is by all the kind words and support. We appreciate the amount of people helping to spread the word and we hope we can pay you back one day the most epic 2D RPG you will have ever played :)

The Kickstarter for the 2D RPG Elysian Shadows has been launched last Friday and have almost secured a third of their goal up to now.

Elysian Shadows is an indie 2D RPG being developed for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Ouya, and even the Sega Dreamcast (not even kidding). We fuse aspects of 16-bit classical RPGs with a highly stylized, modern vision by using dynamic lighting, physics, and audio engines along with swapping between 2D and 3D perspectives. Our goal is to create the "next-generation" of the 2D RPG in terms of gameplay, graphics, and audio. We want to reinvent and revitalize the aging genre for a new generation of platforms, while still remaining true to the 16-bit charm of the SNES and Genesis classics that we all grew up loving.

With Elysian Shadows, we want to push the boundaries of pixel art by creating diverse, lush environments for players to explore with beautifully lit scenes and advanced rendering effects that could not have been possible on older hardware. Our goal is to create a gigantic, open world with an emphasis on exploration and environmental interaction while still retaining the rich storyline and combat mechanics of a full-fledged RPG. Combat is fast, fluid, and action-oriented, sporting particle effects, rigid-body physics, and advanced AI, while simultaneously offering tactical and strategic depth through character customization, unlockable abilities and techniques, and an advanced class system.

Retro Gaming Mag has a new interview with with the team behind Elysian Shadows, and asked them a few questions about the game.

RGM- Why do a role playing game when everyone else in this area is doing much easier shooters or working with game engines of some sort?

ES- We honestly think the role-playing genre is the most powerful form of artistic expression there is. It’s a marriage of art, music, code, and especially writing. An RPG gives you the creative freedom to mold an entire world, storyline, cultures, and characters after your own vision. It gives us endless freedom to create an experience that is meaningful and is intellectually stimulating–and most importantly, it has the greatest potential for establishing an emotional connection between a game and an audience, which we think is truly the ultimate goal for any form of artistic expression.

Along that same vein, we have also found ourselves able to freely incorporate aspects of other games and even non-RPG genres into our own RPG, which I think has been a profoundly rewarding experience. You will immediately notice that we like to emphasize the “3D”-ness of the world of Elysian Shadows, and our players can even jump, climb, and interact with the world in a platforming nature. This has literally allowed us to introduce platforming mechanics and level designs from games like Mario and Megaman to spicen up the RPG genre.

Another aspect of this is our survival horror-influenced dungeons and ruins. Something we really wanted to establish artistically with ES is a strong dichotomy between the lush, beautiful, and vibrant overworld and the dark, gloomy, forboding ruins. We quickly found that with our dynamic lighting engine, we were able to create a sense of fright and tension in some of the environments that we don’t believe has ever been possible with a traditional 2D RPG… For example, in one of our ruins, the player is alone, in the complete darkness, with just a little torch to find his way around, with a multitude of creepy monsters coming after you with full surround sound sound effects–it’s pretty terrifying…. I think Connor, especially, who is a die-hard survival horror fan has really been able to find his creative place with ES and grow attached to a 2D RPG by being able to endow it with some of his survival-horror influences. The project truly is a melting pot of various inspirations.

he Elysian Shadows development team has released more information, and a new video with news about the games upcoming kickstarter in two weeks.

We're back with a gigantic update on Elysian Shadows and our Kickstarter campaign! The team takes you on a wild ride inside the high-stress, sleepless world of full-time indie game development, as they work day and night preparing for the launch of the campaign on August 1st. With almost a full hour of highly polished and sincere commentary from the team fused with unapologetically raw and uncensored footage, this is our most ambitious production to date... We truly wanted to show our fans everything that goes on behind trying to run a startup gamedev company and successfully running a crowdfunding campaign.

The date we've all been eagerly awaiting is rapidly approaching... We're both terrified and excited for it, and we have truly poured our hearts and souls into creating a product and a campaign worthy of your backing. Thank you for the continued love and support we have received from the indie game development community over the years. Let us know what you think of the stretch goals and if you have any input on the campaign. We would love to hear from you!

The Elysian Shadows development team has released a few new updates since the last time I posted on the game last month. Here are the two latest updates.

Adventures In Game Development: Chapter 26

We're back and we have been spending all of our time and energy working on content for out Kickstarter. We're continuing work on the battle system and are fleshing out more mechanics for the ruins, including survival horror-influenced gameplay.

We have also moved the engine over to the Ouya and are looking forward to supporting the console and being involved in the community.

We've decided to move to a much shorter format with much more frequent video updates in an attempt to provide you with regular content. Don't forget, our Kickstarter campaign will be launching on August 1st.

Adventures In Game Development: The Lost Chapter 3

Bloopers, cut scene and lost footage from AiGD Chapters 16-23. We're all balls deep in working towards the Kickstarter launching on August 1st. Hopefully this will tide you over until Chapter 27 :)

It's been a busy week for the The Elysian Shadows development team. The first big event was they now have a publishing deal with SEGA.

Huge things have been happening for us in the last several weeks. First of all, we secured a publishing deal for a deluxe physical release on the Sega Dreamcast from the awesome guys at Watermelon Corp!

We also received funding from private investment that has allowed some of us to quit our jobs and has propelled development of the project forward. The investment will keep us afloat until August 1st, which is when the Kickstarter will go live!

We are working on signing paperwork and formal agreements to partner up with a well-known gaming network with our "Adventures in Game Development" series. Expect much more frequent updates moving forward!

We have been in negotiations with the OUYA developer relations team and are proud to announce the OUYA and Sega Dreamcast as our two initial gaming consoles for release, with many others to come later as Kickstarter stretch goals!

With the Kickstarter date set, publishing deals, investments, and partnerships, our clock is ticking. Please help spread the word in any way you can, and if you're a journalist in the gaming press, we would live to do any kind of article, interview, or podcast with you for your site!

The second event was a new video interview with questions from the community.

Had a chance to chat with the developers behind the upcoming indie Dreamcast title Elysian Shadows. Lots of exclusive bits of information dropped including characters that will be in the game, differences between versions and much more. If you have been wanting to know more about this game, this is definitely the podcast to listen to. Don't forget that August 1st will be the start of the Kickstarter! With Elysian Shadows hitting the Dreamcast before any other platform, its easy to continue saying "It's still thinking".

The Elysian Shadows development team has posted news on Facebook about a new live team interview on June 7th with Vampyre Mike from Sega CD Universe.

Team ES will be doing a live interview with Vampyre Mike from Sega CD Universe this Saturday, June 7th, at 3PM CST! Falco, Tyler, Daniel, and Connor will be present, and they will be answering any fan questions submitted from the community! Post your questions on the video!

The Elysian Shadows development team sent out news about a new video update they released for their RPG game Elysian Shadows.

Video Update for Elysian Shadows, Next-Gen 2D/3D RPG for Dreamcast, OUYA, etc.

The Elysian Shadows development team has just released a huge update for their "Next-Gen" multiplatform 2D/3D RPG slated for the OUYA and Sega Dreamcast, among other platforms. "Adventures in Game Development Chapter 25" was just released as the latest episode in their massively popular "reality game development" video blog series, giving fans a behind-the-scenes look at the Elysian Shadows project and the life of a team of indie game developers.

The video focuses on a slew of new gameplay mechanics, including the prototyped battle engine, and is complete with the team's trademarked antics and the raw style that makes the series so entertaining to watch. 

  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEplKnoXBZQ

Some of topics covered in the video include:

• Improvements on the real-time dynamic lighting engine and the omnidirectional shadows.
• Improvements on the 3D particle system.
• Added the ability to jump and dash, adding action platforming mechanics to the RPG
• Scripted NPC's with dialogue relevant to the story of Elysian Shadows.
• The real-time combat system.
• Physics engine and destructible terrain
• Three new, original music compositions
• New areas and concepts unveiled 

 
The team's vblog will continue to be updated regularly, detailing their trials and tribulations breaking into the indie gaming scene as they work towards launching their Kickstarter campaign this summer

Some of the team has also appeared on three podcasts this past week, over at TwoDashStash, Core Elements and Week In Geek, discussing the game and revealing new information regarding the storyline, gameplay mechanics, and the Kickstarter.

Falco Girgis & Tyler Rogers talk with Two Dash Stash about developing for the Dreamcast, and answer submitted questions for Elysian Shadows.

In this edition of the Indie Stash Cast we welcome Falco Girgis and Tyler Rogers, the developers behind Elysian Shadows, to the show. In addition to talking about the game, the team shares their experiences about developing for the Sega Dreamcast, and we answer the questions you submitted to us!

Elysian Shadows is a new 2D RPG being developed for Windows, OSX, Linux, iOS, Android, Ouya and Sega Dreamcast. If this game has caught your interest and you want to follow the its development, you can head over to their website and subscribe for regular updates. If you are an aspiring game developer, or want get an in depth behind the scenes look at the development of Elysian Shadows, you can check out their Adventures in Game Development YouTube channel where they give advice, tips, and lessons in game development while developing Elysian Shadows.

he developers of Elysian Shadows have sent out a new press release with information the games kickstarter is now live. Here are the details from the press release.

Discover A World Separated By Magic and Technology

Elysian Shadows is an indie 2D RPG being developed for Windows, OS X, Linux, Android, iOS, Ouya and Sega Dreamcast. We fuse aspects of 16-bit classical RPGs such as Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, and Final Fantasy, with a highly stylized, modern vision by using dynamic lighting, physics, and audio engines along with swapping between 2D and 3D perspectives. Our goal is to create a "next-gen" 2D RPG in terms of gameplay, graphics, and audio while still remaining true to the games that inspired us to become developers.

We have been documenting the development of Elysian Shadows for nearly 7 years since 2007 and the videos have been uploaded to our YouTube channel in Chapters  http://youtube.com/gyrovorbis

We have a Kickstarter campaign planned to launched this coming Summer. We have a dedicated page on our website at  http://elysianshadows.com/kickstarter/

Story

Elysian Shadows takes place in a world caught in constant conflict between magic and technology. The gift of magic is bestowed upon loyal followers of The Creator, while the nonreligious sects of society are forced to rely upon technological advances in their daily lives. Upon uncovering a mysterious artifact deep within one of the ancient ruins scattered throughout the land, Julien and friends find themselves thrust into the middle of this mounting conflict, and they must now solve the mystery of the ancient civilizations to prevent the destruction of their own.

Visit our official website  http://elysianshadows.com

What Makes Elysian Shadows The Next Generation of 2D RPG's?

With Elysian Shadows, we want to push the boundaries of pixel art by creating diverse, lush environments for players to explore with beautifully lit scenes and advanced rendering effects that could not have been possible on older hardware. Our goal is to create a gigantic, open world with a Zelda-style emphasis on exploration and environmental interaction while still retaining the rich storyline and combat mechanics of a full-fledged RPG. Combat is fast, fluid, and action-oriented, sporting particle effects, rigid-body physics, and advanced AI, while simultaneously offering tactical and strategic depth through character customization, unlockable abilities and techniques, and an advanced class system.

Let's take a look at some of the features of Elysian Shadows:

·  2D/3D Dynamic Camera
·  Dynamic Lighting w/ Bump and Specular Mapping
·  3D Positional Sound Effects
·  Dynamic Music, Influenced by Environment
·  Dozens of Vast, Open Worlds to Explore
·  Hundreds of Items, Weapons, Equipment and Armor
·  Real-time Combat Engine
·  Customizable Characters
·  In-depth Class/Job System
·  Full Rigid Body Physics
·  3D Particle Engine
·  Day/Night System
·  Transfer Save Files Between Platforms
·  Full Controller Support for PC/Mac/Linux
·  Supports Keyboard, VMU, Rumble Pack, VGA & SD Card for Dreamcast

Before you start wondering, Elysian Shadows is planned for release on PC, Mac, Linux, iOS & Android (smartphones and tablets), Ouya and Dreamcast. This project originally started as a Dreamcast exclusive but with the advancements of our proprietary game engine and toolkit it allowed us to build Elysian Shadows for other platforms.