Mezzanine Stairs

World’s End was, we thought, at least above average when it came to Flash games. Labor of love though it be, why shouldn’t we seek to earn a bit of cash for our efforts as well?

Patreon didn’t yet exist, and Kickstarter wasn’t on our radar at this time, so we figured we’d seek out a sponsor through FGL (AKA Flash Game License). Despite ad revenue being far more lucrative in the era before the widespread proliferation of adblockers, such would remain a mere drop in the bucket compared to the massive sums we could potentially earn (at least according to some of the info put out by unusually successful Flash game bloggers).

So as a consequence of our brilliant idea, we were stuck having to create promotional material for FGL. Based on our mildly extensive research, it seemed that no game would catch a sponsor’s eye without a flashy game icon and, more dreadfully, a proper video trailer.

This was particularly awful for me, as the World’s End “artist”. Art has never been my strong suit, and crafting commercially-oriented designs is a thing in which I still have essentially no expertise.

Nonetheless, based on some ideas gleaned from research and with guidance from Crack, who actually knows a thing or two about visually appealing design, I cobbled together the lovely thumbnail which still adorns World’s End Chapter 1 on Flash game sites to this day.

It took me forever and a day to churn out a rendering of the main three party members that made them look vaguely human, but that was the easy part! Now we were burdened with having to assemble a gameplay trailer. Having a budget of approximately $0 meant we needed to resort to freeware and/or trial versions of some pretty wretched software to assemble the thing.

Looking at the trailer now (yes, the very same one that still resides on YouTube) will showcase not only my lackluster editing ability but also the somewhat more primitive nature of the game environment at that time.

It’s particularly weird to see World’s End without fast movement, and beyond that, it’s dreadful to endure the ponderous demonstrations of the various gameplay aspects which we deemed necessary to include in this trailer. Never mind that utterly ghastly serif font.

I wanted to show off the mechanics that made our game stand out amongst SRPGs (and really just Flash games in general) but I definitely could have tightened things up significantly. Oh well! The train mowing down the Redshields is still the best part and I have no regrets including that!

In spite of all this, no one really took the bait. I mean, we had a couple of rather paltry offers from sponsors, but they were hardly worth taking. We had to try, but it was really for the best that in the end we went our own way and retained absolutely every last right to what we’d created!

I don’t want to sound resentful by any means, but it was apparent that World’s End was a poor fit for what sponsors wanted, which was cheap, simple games (picture very basic match-three, dress-up, find-the-hidden-object type junk) that they could dump all over the Flash game universe, and not some edgy, wordy RPG about drugs and skeetly bogos.

So we said “screw it” and, for better or for worse, just released the damn thing on the major Flash game sites. And that’s that. The rest of the history of World’s End has played out before the very eyes of you, dear reader, and the rest of the Flash game playing public.

I guess that brings us to the end of our history, then? Well, not quite — there is a lot more that I’d like to say (imagine that!) but much of it has to wait until Chapter 4’s release.

So for those of you who’ve been reading thus far, let me extend my sincere gratitude for allowing my desultory ranting to gobble up your time. I didn’t intend for this history for be quite so long-winded, but as they say, “it can’t be helped”.

With that said, I’ve probably glossed over a lot of pertinent details, or focused too heavily on stuff only I care about. Have you a question about anything World’s End related? Please do ask away, and we’ll answer it to the best of our ability…

...Barring, that is, anything that might spoil Chapter 4. Oh, and don’t ask about any release dates either!

Thanks again for reading! Until next time...!