The Future of FunnerSoft

What happened to RelicMerge?

First off; sorry I have been so quiet. I have been nose-down working, and should have been updating you all more often. That's changing now.

RelicMerge is still being developed. I spent a year or so working on it's first playable build. It was very fun to play at these early points, and started to come together as an actual game.

But, it's a big and ambitious project. Years more work to do, and lots of art and audio to create.

That's ok though. I knew this. That was expected, and that's why it was time to start showing off RelicMerge to publishers. The goal was to find funding and development support in exchange for royalties. It's a pretty common type of arrangement, but you have to find the perfect team / publisher partnership to make it work. There are a lot of fantastic publishers out there, but I never did find the right one for RelicMerge and FunnerSoft.

In the end, I came up with a different idea ...

New business plan

FunnerSoft now operates with a 50/50 business plan.

50% of the work hours are spent working on internally developed projects that FunnerSoft owns, maintains, and publishes.

The other 50% of the work hours are spent doing contract work. Other game dev studios will contract FunnerSoft to do various types of projects / code / work for them. This type of work supports FunnerSoft and keeps the internally developed projects funded.

FunnerSoft has been operating this way for about a year and a half now, and it's working great.

This means that FunnerSoft is 100% self funded. There is no need for outside investments / funding, and FunnerSoft doesn't need to give up anything to another company. It makes for a low stress development process with maximum freedom to design games the way I want to.

However, it also means everything takes twice as long ...

How to finish RelicMerge

But RelicMerge is already a huge project with a long timeline to release, and now it's moving at half pace? That means FunnerSoft wouldn't be releasing anything for a few years, and that just won't work.

In come the smaller projects.

RelicMerge is missing lots of features and code still. But a lot of that work can be generalized and used for many different game projects. So, the plan is to create smaller games, one after another, that both live on their own and fulfill a need that RelicMerge has.

I evaluate a need that RelicMerge has, design a new project around that same need, create the new project, back-port the new work into RelicMerge, and then repeat. RelicMerge advances forward, and FunnerSoft is shipping games.

It all sounds easy on paper. The tricky part is designing a smaller game, focused on a specific element, that is still fun in it's own right. I am not interested in just making a game that checks some boxes off a spreadsheet.

Every game still has to be fun!

Brewery Boss

And that finally brings us to BreweryBoss.

I have been working on it for the last year, and it's nearly ready to share. It will release for Android and iPhone.

You are the boss of a startup brewery.

Your customers will want to order certain beer styles, and you will need to learn them. Once you learn the recipe, your brewery will automatically start fulfilling customers' orders.

A pretty chill game. It's part idler and part management sim.

Keep learning new brewing recipes to keep your customers served. Discover ways to improve the quality of your beer so that you can sell it for more.

Optimize your brewery for the fastest growth possible. Eventually your brewery will reach it's full potential, and it's time for you to open another one. Keep repeating to grow your brewery empire. Each new brewery brings new discoveries and passive income.

I look forward to sharing it with you all soon.