April Kickstarter Update

April is now behind us, and it’s been a strange month, with everything happening in the world around the COVID-19 pandemic, and much of the world in lockdown. Hopefully, you’re all managing to stay safe and healthy, both physically and mentally, and finding ways to keep your brains busy and curious. Trying to look for the positives in all this, if you’ve got more time on your hands than usual, it could be the perfect time to try something you’ve always wanted to do - learning a language, writing that novel...making a game, even?

For this month’s backer update, I wanted to do something a little different, since it’s been a pretty reflective time for me lately. Instead of focusing on the progress I’ve made this month, I’d like to talk about something that I stumbled over while cleaning up my project folders…

I often get asked where my inspirations come from, and honestly, I often don't know myself. I draw inspiration and influences from all kinds of sources - games like Mario, Journey, FF7, even WoW (which I never really even played) have all been influential in some of my thought processes and design decisions for Omno, but I think I draw inspiration equally from art, movies, books etc too.

At the very beginning with Omno, I just had this feeling and an idea of a lonely character in this vast world, being on a journey. So very early on in the process, even before prototyping, I did some vague landscape tests (also to learn the technical aspects, since so much of this was completely new to me). Some of those landscape tests already felt right, while others seem completely ridiculous now! Some of the other landscapes I made looked cool and I would have loved to let Omno players experience those, but they just didn’t fit the context of the game as it’s developed.

Those very early "mood" tests definitely shaped the way the game will look and feel, but whilst there’s ideas and settings that are still present in the Omno of today, they’ve changed beyond recognition from those original landscape ideas.

There are also dozens of puzzle prototype maps for Omno and mechanics that never made it into the game, which I’d definitely like to show you more of at another time. It’s a similar situation to the landscape tests, really: some of them work great, but just didn’t feel quite right for what the game has become as it’s evolved over time.

Looking back on these prototypes and tests now is rather painful in a way, as I really like so many of them, but for various reasons I know I have to "let them go" in order to make Omno the best overall experience. I guess that everything - all products/designs/creations - that look good and work well have so many iterations and failed attempts behind them, which most people will never see. Even skills work that way. You cannot draw all of a sudden, it takes hundreds of bad drawings until the first good ones appear. Even the very best skateboard professionals have had many broken bones…

I guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe this unprecedented time we’re living in right now has the potential to give people the time to just get past some of those failed attempts, in whatever they want to achieve, and get closer to the place they always wanted to be. Also, I think it’s important to realise that you should be proud about those “failed” attempts. Every single one of them gets you a step closer to where you want to be, so in a lot of ways, you owe to them whatever it is that you ultimately achieve.

Take care of yourselves and your families, call your loved ones, and if you have the time, go make some mistakes :)

-Jonas

To keep up to date on Omno development and discuss updates with the community, you can join the official Omno Discord here.