The Story of ‘Stitch’
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 by Greg
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It all started when I met up with Matt Kempke (creator of What Makes You Tick?) in September 2007 for a hiking trip into the Swiss Alps. What Makes You Tick? had been out for about six months at that point, and Matt’s batteries had recharged enough that he was starting to think about game development again… and he had an idea brewing.
As I fought off trans-Atlantic jetlag on my first night in Leipzig, I stayed awake to hear out Matt’s game concept that built upon the themes of Franz Kafka’s “The Castle”. His concept had nothing to do with WMYT – or at least, it didn’t until the random idea emerged to throw in some WMYT character cameos. Suddenly the concept took a turn: what if this Kafka story WAS a What Makes You Tick? sequel, but took a sideways approach at joining into the first game?
Those familiar with Tick would probably understand why we thought an immediate resolve to the original story would feel a bit anti-climatic. Therefore, the idea of a new story with a new hero on a new mission really appealed to us. It gave us the opportunity to kick off a new game that walked circles around WMYT until finally joining up with the original story at an “opportune” moment.
So, our hiking trip proceeded with many ideas brewing. I hammered out a feature list for the next generation of the Lassie engine (which would be specifically engineered to power this game), and we visited some fantastic locations that ultimately inspired the world of Ravenhollow (Füssen, Germany and Jungfrau in Switzerland have made very direct appearances within the final world). At the end of the trip, we hammered out the last of the major story arc over pints of beer in an Interlaken tavern after coming off the trail.
However, like all good ideas – Stitch went on the back burner once we returned to our normal lives. And it stayed there – for almost a full year. Finally in fall of 2008, after lots of talk and no real action, Matt and I met back up in Prague, Check Republic (more great world inspiration, and ironically the home of Franz Kafka) to hammer out a hard plan and production schedule. Finally, in late October 2008 the first real production began.
It’s been a long, hard haul over the past year, but the game is looking great. We’re looking forward to wrapping up major development in 2009, then going into testing and debugging in 2010. So, that should bring readers up to speed on where we’ve come from; and we’ll keep you posted on where we’re going…
