Hi and welcome to the very first issue of Below Deck!

The team at Cass Bay Games are all very excited to finally start talking about who we are and what we've been working on. In this newsletter I'm proud to introduce you to Davy Jones Deckhand!

Almost five years into my game development journey, I'm finally settling into my first commercial project. Since November last year I've been designing a single player card game, in the vein of Slay the Spire, but with some ambitious twists and a unique flavour that should tug on the nostalgia strings of others like me who grew up on Tintin, Guybrush Threepwood, and Captain Feathersword! I've been pulling together a truly incredible team of developers, artists and musicians to help me bring this project to life.

As of August this year, we have officially switched over from an intense phase of market research, grant applications, and design, into starting the build. The sudden switch from big picture dreaming and design, to the nitty-gritty details of building the game, has been both exciting and rather jarring.

I've found that to avoid being overwhelmed as a programmer, it requires a level of looking at your feet, rather than looking up at the mountain you're climbing. But for the past nine months I've done nothing but study the mountain! Starting out with such a keen awareness of the enormity of the journey ahead can be daunting. It's also nice to have a clear direction. So we're reminding ourselves to just put one foot after the other and trust that persistence will get us there.

It's an honour to have you join us on this incredibly adventurous voyage!

- Ben Childs (Programmer / Creative Director)

Our game…

Break free from Davy Jones’ locker in this wild swashbuckling adventure where every voyage is a roguelike deckbuilder!

Craft the perfect deck, carefully select your ship’s cargo, and hone your strategy to survive brutal voyages, as you sail the globe as an undead pirate on a daunting quest to kill the dreaded Leviathan and free your soul from Davy’s grasp.

Features

🏴 Freely navigate the map by completing mini self-contained roguelikes known as voyages

🏴 Roguelite progression integrated into an immersive narrative

🏴 Systems-based and endlessly replayable

🏴 “Just one more run” addictive unlock loop

🏴 Piles of plunder to discover

🏴 Tintin inspired art, “a playable comic book” with a pirate theme

(Environment concept sketch by Cass Bay Games’ artist Tepene Marsden)

Tep’s recent environment art explorations

Over the past few weeks, environment artist and UI designer Tepene has spent his development time researching old ships and practising some beautifully accurate line-art depictions. He's also exploring detail levels, line weights, and how we'll immerse the player through a point-and-click inspired UI design.

(On deck lighting concept by Cass Bay Games’ artist Tepene Marsden)

What’s next?

We're now two months into building Davy Jones Deckhand (albiet at a very part-time pace) and we're looking forward to taking our first playable demo to a local playtesting event in October. We'll make sure to share some photos from the event in the next 'Below Deck' email in a month or two. And we'll have to introduce you to our character artist Nik, who's doing very exciting work! Meanwhile, if you'd like more regular updates and to chat with the team then please join our public Discord server, we'd love to have you join our crew. You can also follow us on social media at the links below.

Discord invite: discord.gg/Es3BsqFHxH

Until next time me hearties, yo ho!

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