We had the pleasure of chatting with the creators behind Voyage to the Beyond! Be sure to check it out to learn more about them!
1. What inspires your work?
Voyage to the Beyond was inspired by Saturday morning cartoons and science fiction flavors that we grew up on. Our goal is to make a game that we would enjoy equally as a kid, and now with our kids. We also want to stay true to the utopian visionaries like Gene Roddenberry and build a diverse, all-inclusive world full of thoughtfully represented characters. We want our game to appeal to all ages, where younger players encounter meaningful lessons, parents can experience accessible gameplay alongside their children, and more experienced gamers will have a compelling narrative to invest in.
2. Tell us about your game? What can fans expect?
In this 2D RPG space adventure you play as Ava Albright, a young ATLAS ensign aboard the Galactic Starship Elpis, as she tries to save a newly discovered species from extinction. Across the game, you’ll meet our eclectic cast of crewmates and through bonding with them upgrade your starcraft. We’ve got a branching dialogue system for players to personalize their playthroughs. There’ll be a variety of replayable minigames including resource scanning, runner-style chase sequences, and card-based ship combat. It’ll take diplomacy, ingenuity, and a mastery of space combat to thwart this cosmos-spanning energy crisis and find these Zumroks a new home.
3. What are your goals for 2023?
We’re going to be pitching to publishers/funds during the rest of 2022 while we continue building out our vertical slice/demo. We already have a lot of back-end systems functional thanks to our awesome programmer and they’re ready for more come 2023. Due to our hand-drawn art style, our talented art team has a mountain of assets in front of them – they’ve made some amazing eye candy so far. On the narrative side, we’ve got our key story beats outlined and our next priority is finalizing the script so we can get the voice lines recorded and put into the game.
4. What advice would you give to someone who wants to do what you do?
Don’t work on anything that you don’t have a passion for. Our team is fortunate enough to have found each other and we’re all super passionate about the project – so even if it’s not a commercial success, we can still call it a win and know that we made something worthwhile. Also communication is key – our team is all remote, spread across three countries and three time zones. Coordinating meetings is not easy, but as long as everyone communicates and shares, we all know where everyone is with their tasks, and we all know if we’re on track.
5. Where and how can people support your work?
Our website is up at https://voyagetothebeyond.com, where you can sign up to our mailing list. We also have our own Discord set up at https://discord.gg/wh2G3uqxkV where we post all our announcements and VA auditions first. Lastly we have the usual Twitter/Instagram/TikTok/Facebook accounts – all of which can be found under @skinnylattedev. We hope to see some new ATLAS recruits soon!
