It's that time again! Time for another year end report! We hope everyone has had a safe and happy holiday period over this month. That said, let's get right to it!

The VLOG version of this report you can click on below!

This has been a monumental year for Broken Hammer as we move forward with releasing our Project 2 title: The Father's Story. While we've had to push Dust and Air development back a little to work on it due to engine concerns, the project is coming along well with just UI and music work to go.

It has challenged us and shown us a lot which we're going to carry into Dust and Air. Development in Unity did present a learning curve. One which we have to admit, Tyrano is still the best engine at developing quickly. We understand the desire of fellow devs to try and salvage it as there is now a slew of attempts to do just that.

If our designs were not as grand in scope, this probably wouldn't have been an issue as much of our issues with Tyrano stem from just the inability to handle content additions very well.

Will we backtrack and give these new efforts a serious look before going forward with Dust and Air? It's possible. When we decided to jump to Unity, many of them did not exist. Effector was in it's infancy with a Russian only translation and it was barely a blip on the radar. We did dabble a bit in Renpy but ultimately chose Naninovel to take advantage of the Unity engine capabilities.

We do like the options that Unity brings us. If fellow devs weren't doing so well with salvaging Tyrano, we'd not even question a full switch to Nani for everything. But such is the gaming industry. We're sure there's going to be even better engines releasing in the days ahead with the proliferation of AI. Which raises a serious question. Given Musk's pressure on the industry and talks of forming his own gaming studio with AI, we can see where the wind is blowing. There is coming a day when we'll probably be able to ask an AI to design a VN game engine like Tyrano and it'll wrap it up within seconds to minutes.

It's a brave new world we're embarking on. One which may see content creation skyrocket. What used to take hundreds to create may be reduced to a dozen or less. What seemed impossible will become more possible. While this may seem like fantasy still to some, it's something we have to still consider in the back of our minds.

That said, we certainly wanted to handle development of two titles better than we did. Our Project 2 team really excelled while the Dust and Air side ended up getting caught up with some real life troubles as situations in Europe have been rather chaotic. Many gamers would say we've abandoned it but, that's not true. It's always our main goal to finish it. This is just the reality of our little remote studio vs a local dedicated office.

2025 should see progress on Raven's Prayer pick up a bit as we don't have the heavy Unity workload. We'll also be shifting work loads and bringing over talent from the Project 2 team into Raven's Prayer.

On that note, we're happy to announce that Ingrid will be brought into Dust and Air for both modeling and key image work. She's also been expanding her skill set in BGs and may even shift into that more in 2025 as well. She has been practicing this over the last month and so far she's made some great progress.

As far as music development goes. We're going to be touching base with a few musicians in January for both Father's Story and Dust and Air. We've already bookmarked a few so, hopefully one of them will be a good fit.

Really, we're looking hopeful for 2025. We expect The Father's Story to get a release sometime this year, along with all the excitement that will entail. 2024 had it's ups and downs but, we weathered it and now we're moving forward once again.

Alright, that's it for this report. Thanks for following along and we'll see you in the skies!