PROJECT REVEAL!!!

Today, I am very pleased to announce, that:

We are NOT doing scented candles. 

We are NOT making a theme park.  

WE ARE MAKING A GAME. 

What kind of game? One with CARDS. (And lasers!) 

Go on...  We are making a rogue-like game, with turn-based strategy and RPG mechanics. Right now, it's working title is "Interstellar Pest Control".

What format? Digital.  

When? We plan to have an alpha build by the end of the year, launch a beta in 2023, and a full release in 2024. But we aren't in a hurry. (I've got 200 monsters to paint after all... )

Will the beta be public? We want to share this project with everyone as soon as we can. So there will be a limited beta in 2023. If you want to be a part of it, keep following us here on Patreon and watch for announcements at the end of this year!

Will there be a kickstarter? Very likely. It will include physical rewards, an art guide, prints, stickers, early access, etc. More information on this later this year.

Who is making it? Myself and a very small team at the moment. It is very indie.  I will be introducing everyone else involved down the road!

Are you hiring? Not at the moment. But if and when we do need some help, we will post on here and on our discord when we are ready to bring in new talent. 

What will be going on here at the Justin Gerard Illustration Patreon?  

Things will be evolving for our Patreon this year as we shift focus to producing new game assets and sharing this crazy new adventure with you. 

1. New Monsters every month. As usual, there will be monsters. And you will see them either in a Creature Guide, or as a Game Card, with their in-game abilities next to them. The cards will focus more on stats and abilities, while the guides will focus more on lore.

2. Game art. We will be sharing a lot of background art, splash illustrations and a ton of little UI spot illustrations (like all the art for character abilities). A brand new kind of content we've only ever dabbled in before and that I am excited to get into. 

3. Developer Blog Posts. We will be updating everyone who wants to follow along by doing developer posts (like this one) which will track our progress and share what we've been up to. Eventually these will turn into little movie posts and livestreams, where we can share gameplay shots of everything in action.  

4. VOTING! As with previous projects, in the coming months there will be a lot of voting to decide what to paint. FIRST!: In the line-up below, you can see the initial outlay of Playable Characters in the game. I will be doing more refined drawings of this image (hopefully a painting) and writing short backstories for each. After that, I will be posting this again in a poll for you guys to decide which characters sound the coolest, and then we will let the chips fall where they may.

So what is the narrative experience here? What is interstellar pest control? To answer that, next month we will be doing a story teaser, and will delve into the space opera lore of this anarchic vision of the future.  Who are these characters? Why is there a space rat? And how did giant bugs get to be such a problem up in the space colonies of man's future? All that and more in our next developer blog post!

Lastly, and perhaps most importantly: Thank you! I am so excited to be working on this game, and I couldn't have even started it without you. By supporting me here, YOU are making this possible. I appreciate it and I hope to deliver something crazy and fun and completely new this year. If you'd like to support this endeavour more, please consider signing up for the $10 tier if you aren't already. It actually does make a big difference for us. A new post is up today in that tier which shares a new martian character as well as the new brush set we have been using to do all the art thus far! 

I'm looking forward to a new adventure with you this year. Let's see where it takes us!

-jg