Development History of Selaco

I usually prefer to not get too personal in the public. I feel 'safer' speaking on behalf of the team instead of myself. But now that Selaco is gaining traction I want to try and step out of my comfort-zone and get more personal with you by explaining the development history of Selaco and the obstacles we have faced during its development.
First and foremost, let me introduce myself. My name is Wesley de Waart, born and raised in a beautiful city called Amsterdam. From a (too) young age my father pulled me into the world of videogames. Like for many of us, I grew up playing the original doom and it has been my go-to game for years to follow. I started modding it, creating levels for it, and even obsessed over E1M1 speedruns for a very long time. After many years of playing games and creating mods where possible I decided to get back to Doom and create a standalone total conversion, that was 4 years ago.
Back in the day Selaco was called 'Project Ominous', a lovechild that took elements from FEAR and DOOM. The tone of the game was dark and there was a huge emphasis on horror elements. I'll share some fun in-depth looks into Project Ominous later on in this Patreon page. It is too much fun to look back at how much the levels and overall art direction have changed over the years.
I enjoyed working on Project Ominous, it was an absolute blast to finally have something I could call 'my own' instead of a modification of an existing game. But things did not go flawless; It was made in complete isolation - completely by myself for many years and I never bothered to share progress with anyone. Modifying existing games can be tough, but creating something from 'scratch' made me realize that game development is much harder than I could have ever imagined. Self-doubt was starting to show itself.
"Why would anyone care?", "I am nowhere near as good as the other developers out there" were thoughts that endlessly circled around in my head as I was trying to make the best game I could possibly make. I always considered myself creative but was always frightened to share and anxious for the response it might get. We both know how hostile the internet can be when it comes to bad video games. What if Project Ominous would be among those?

(Scrapped: The enemy type of Project Ominous. Textures are placeholder)

As someone who has been doing it alone for far too long, I don't recommend this. Isolated development is terrible. Working on something you are proud of but being far too insecure and frightened to share anything was dreadful. It made me miserable and depressed throughout the early years of development. I was often on the edge of finally making that 'big reveal' on the internet but always backed out when I felt like things could be better.
About a year ago I met a friend named Ken, an amazing writer who eventually grew to become the lead writer of Project Ominous. He gave me the boost in self-esteem that I was desperately looking for and often convinced me that Project Ominous is something special and worth sharing. If it weren't for him this game would not have been what it is today. Given Ken's background, I gave him full control over the game's narrative. The first big step was to ditch the name 'Project Ominous' and go with something else instead, something that fit his story more. We went with 'Selaco', the underground city the game takes place in.

(Scrapped: Probably one of the first proper rooms I have made for this project. Placeholders assets are present in this image.)

This was a huge turning point. The quality standard raised and a truckload of old stuff got scrapped and remade. As months went by, professional artists and voice actors were brought on board to help me achieve my vision and with spectacular results! We are a small team of developers and we operate like a well-oiled machine. The team is so passionate, they take it upon themselves to go the extra mile to make things better. The roomba, for example, was never meant to emote. Fgsdgs (one of our voxel artists) came up with the idea to add an entire emotion system to the voxel which added a pile of additional work on his plate. But that didn't matter, because of the amount of passion involved with this game.
Fast forward to the present day; I finally made the leap and announced the game nearly 3 months ago. Ken turned out to be right all along: Selaco is something special and the response has been more than amazing and probably a highlight of my life. If you have been following our Twitter for a while now, you might notice how thankful I am to all of you. From the bottom of my heart: thank you for making this possible.
I will absolutely share more about Selaco's development history: Project Ominous, lore, early looks at artwork, scrapped content,and much more on this Patreon page. This Patreon page will be updated frequently - you have my word.