Short Summary
Hello all! My name is Joseph Caddell, founder and Creative Director of Studio237. I racked up 8 years of experience as a 3D Artist in the games industry after graduating with a B.S. degree, majoring in Game Art & Design. I also dabbled in film vfx. I’ve done everything from creating environments, lighting, effects and all the technical aspects that come with it. I’ve worked alongside skilled artists from studios such as MPC, Method Studios, Fox VFX Lab, Aaron Sims Creative, and Digital Domain. I worked from the smallest indie mobile games, to blockbuster animated feature Mouse Guard, and The Call of The Wild (2020).
About Vodou
The Elevator pitch: “The year is 1930. In the southern United States, a black farmer (Arthur) is suffering from PTSD. Arthur Discovers Vodou and begins a journey to regain control of his mental stability and heal his dying father, in search of a better life”. It’s a 3rd person psychological horror that’s inspired by the Vodou religion (proper spelling), and HP Lovecraft cosmic horror.
Behind the concept (TL;DR)
This game is a culmination of my personal life experiences, and my family heritage. Although we’re designing it to give players a fun and horrifying experience, it’s also very emotional, and narrative driven. I also want to find a way to show the richness of black culture in the lore. The game does not pander to social or political agendas. My vision is to balance the recognition of black culture in games, badass memorable gameplay, and deliver a rich narrative.
https://www.stu237.com/games
This game is a culmination of my personal life experiences, and my family heritage. Although we’re designing it to give players a fun and horrifying experience, it’s also very emotional, and narrative driven. The idea is not to make a game that panders to social or political agendas. Ultimately, my vision is to balance the recognition of black culture in games, bad ass gameplay, and deliver a rich narrative.
What We Need & What You Get
The TL;DR
The game has been in pre-production for six months, since its inception. Here’s the short and simple of our 2020 road map.
June - RELEASE TEASER TRAILER: We’re working on making a teaser trailer for a June release.
July-August - RELEASE VERTICAL SLICE: Ideally we would like to have a vertical slice (VS) completed by June, since the first two quarters of the year are critical for investors to make financial decisions for the year. Unfortunately since we’re short a programmer, we’ll have to trust fate that we can release it later. So anywhere between July and August we want to have a VS completed, so we can pitch for higher funding.
December - RELEASE ALPHA: By this time we should have the alpha completed and ready to send to a select group for play testing.
Budget breakdown for 2020:
Gameplay Programmer/Engineer: Implement all gameplay mechanics and features. They need to make sure the framework of the project is shippable for current and next-gen consoles, and PC. = $4,000/month. About one and a half months of development is required for the vertical slice.
Music & Sound Design - 4 new pieces of music for the game we have planned out, plus custom sound effects = $6,000
Concept Art - We have many more environments that need to be created. Arthur’s farm/home, Antagonist place of residence, gameplay way points, local forest and places for the player to explore, and a few others without spoiling the game (all of which equal out to 15). Lastly creature designs, and special ability animation designs = ~$6,590
Some parts of the funding will come out of pocket from myself. There’s obviously more detail that I have in regards to budget, but for the sake of simplicity and not to bore you, I believe this should hopefully suffice. I may come back to edit this. Of course, if you have any questions about funding, please ask! :)
Rewards!!
Those who support us receive access to the vertical slice, which is normally exclusive for investors and publishers. It's not common for vertical slices to be given to the public. Lastly, a free copy of the game when it's released. I'm thinking about signed art work, but still figuring out the legistics, since our concept artist is in Spain.
Risks & Challenges
The risk of this game is the potential for it to not be funded. That's the bottom line. Regardless what happens we will continue to build this game until it's finished. This isn't a one off hobby project, and we take the work we put in seriously. The plan I have for Studio237 is to become a self sustaining studio that will build creative projects for years to come...or at least until carpel tunnel takes over.
Funds help us accelerate production and bring more people on the team we need. With funding we can focus more hours to add features and quality to the game. Most importantly, it can even lead to us quitting our day jobs and working on this full-time!