Mission and Goals

Well, I'm Eric Wuss, an English teacher turned indie developer. March 2011 I expressed an interest in learning how to build games and one night in August, I stumbled upon the IGF's website and decided to put my new found knowledge to the test. After a hard seven weeks, I finished my first prototype for Where Are You.

  Since I started this project I’ve fallen in love with building games. It is still my hobby, but I want to change all that with this game.

I want to give this game a fighting chance at being finished, and not only getting finished, but getting finished right. I’m starting this project at IndieGoGo because I want to get support for it, and see it finished and enjoyed by all. This game has given me the motivation and drive to learn and create something new yet old, familiar yet unique, and I want to see it through to the end.

If you want to try the demo you can download it here

If you contribute to this project you will not only be helping me get more work done on the project, but you will also allow more content to be made and added to the game. 

Why I need your help

You may be asking yourself, how can I trust this person, well I’m not going to tell you that you should trust me, but I will tell you what your money would go towards.

So the project costs round out to about $10000 worth of extra equipment and man hours.

What extra equipment would you need, you might ask, well I’m talking about audio recording equipment, for new sound effects, narration and dialog recording. The rest of the money would be used to put more hours into the game to create more content and iron out all the bugs.

When I started learning about making games I had no idea just how much I would love it. I’m not a professional nor am I a coding wizard, I’m just a regular man with two kids, a wife, and a dream to one day be a successful indie games developer.

All my life I’ve played video games and ever since I played Portal, I’ve wanted to get into the game making scene. When I happened upon the IGF banner on a webpage that’s name now escapes me. I felt this uncontrollable desire to build a game to enter that contest. The IGF was the catalyst to my first ever game. You can see my entry here: http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2012.php?id=514

For the next few days I planned and organized my efforts in creating my yet to be named game, as I only had seven weeks in which to build a working demo. One night I had a horrible nightmare in which I was trapped in a coma and no matter what I did I couldn’t wake myself up from the coma. When I awoke from the nightmare it hit me. The bad dream could be the basis for the game. From there elements of the game just fell into place. Though the games demo development was going great, I had to find premade sprites in order to make the deadline. For me It was a little disappointing to have to use generic models, but it was just a prototype and the real thing would have all original sprites. After the demo was completed and submitted, subsequent updates were made up until the end of the first week of December. Though Where Are You didn’t become a finalist at the IGF, I still felt it right to finish it, and the people that helped me with the play testing also wanted me to finish it, as they enjoyed playing it.

So here I am today, wanting to finish the game, but with no spare cash off hand, am not able to put the required time in on the game that it deserves. That is why I'm here at IndieGoGo. 

 Things to do on the game:

• Build new open world engine
• Integrate open world engine with platforming engine
• Create customizable key mapping
• Create controller pad support
• Rewrite dialog and record
• Record narration
• Create sound effects
• Build new sprites

All this can be done with or without your assistance. The thing is that if it is done without your assistance, it will take years instead of months. Even if I don’t reach my goaled amount, I will still go ahead and push on with the development of the game. It might take a little more time, but I will get it finished in the end.

If you can’t contribute money, but you want to help in other ways, please spread the word about my campaign. Thank you for your support.