I finished a vertical slice demo of #DERELIKT in late 2022. I worked alone by myself, next to my day job, on fridays and weekends. When I felt I was done, I sent out the demo to a few publishers - the worst they could say was no. Amazingly, one said yes.

I was offered a job at their studio, a team, and two years to create #DERELIKT. A literal dream come true! In February 2023 I quit my job and became a professional game developer. Talk about being thrown in the deep end! It was the best time of my professional life.

Alas, it was not to last: Remember the big industry layoffs in 2024? Me too - I was there! Our parent company cut costs and projects got cancelled, including #DERELIKT. A ton of employees were let go, eventually including me and my team.😥

So here I was - unemployed, with nothing but my old #DERELIKT demo from 2022. I couldn't continue working on the full version because the code belonged to the company. I had no team and no money.

Instead of giving up, I wrote to more publishers. Over a hundred. All of them declined. All but one. It took a full year, but I managed to secure new funding for #DERELIKT. The budget was smaller - I could only afford a team of three. But we'd make it work somehow.

Work on #DERELIKT essentially restarted in December 2024. While we could reuse most assets, we started from scratch on the code side. That brings us to today. The whole story is even crazier than this, WAY crazier in fact - but due to legal stuff I can't go into more detail. 😅

I hope you found this entertaining! All I want to ask from you is: If #DERELIKT looks interesting to you, please wishlist it on Steam and tell your friend about it! https://store.steampowered.com... This is basically all the resources we have for marketing, so anything helps! 🤝