Aaron Bishop, the creator of Egoboo and SoulFu, might actually finish a game on his own. Now before fans of his previous games get torches and pitchforks, let’s have a moment of honesty: as lofty and as wonderful as both those games could have been, Bishop ultimately abandoned both of them and left them for the community to continue developing. Egoboo benefited greatly from the community’s hard work and they ultimately created a game that was fleshed out and much more playable. That’s the truth of the matter.
But this time out, I think Aaron Bishop is going to actually finish his latest game, Lords of Uberdark. In case you haven’t heard of it, it is a 3-D voxel-based mining and building game for the PC that uses a unique painted art style to make the world and its objects look smoother. It’s like Minecraft with a facelift… In August of 2011 Bishop successfully raised over $20,000 to develop the game and has been toiling away ever since. There’s an entire YouTube channel dedicated to the game here, and from what I have seen Bishop is putting a lot of effort into finishing the game. He is obviously obligated to deliver a completed product because he took $20,000 in funding, and because he’s selling early access to the game for $15 a pop via PayPal (with the promise of a final product at the end of the development cycle, of course). So there’s a strong financial obligation this time around.
But I think more than the money, Bishop has finally reached a level of skill where he is able to create the kind of games he could have only imagined in the past. Certainly Egoboo and SoulFu helped him get to this point. So while it might sound like I’m bad mouthing Bishop and his work, I am actually excited to see him going at it again and his alpha builds continue to be impressive. He’s currently at Alpha 42 and the game is shaping up to be a serious offering when it is done.
I want you to know more about it, and if you think it’s good enough to let him know so he is encouraged and motivated. I want Lords of Uberdark to be the first and best finished game Aaron Bishop makes in his career as an indie game developer…
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