Welcome back, Optimum Link!
What is it? I’ll explain.
Optimum Link’s “Home” world, from version 0.3
In December 2016, I released Optimum Link version 0.1 on Game Jolt and Itch.io as a work-in-progress game. Unexpectedly, it got quite a large download count and people actually found it enjoyable, albeit buggy and not very sharp. A lot of players, however, had little to none understanding of what the project was, and I hadn’t really explained, either.
I’ve been making games for an [actually] unknown amount of time, but probably around 8+ years. But, these games never surfaced. I was mostly just experimenting, never really getting serious about it. I designed a lot of stuff that never became a reality. When I started using Unreal Engine in late 2014, I realized the potential of my assets and skills with the engine so I set out to make a game called Skyfear, which was designed in 2010–2011. Back then, I had no idea the game would ever exist.
Skyfear, in 2015
The game proved to be a massive challenge without fully understanding the software or having a full team to work with. So instead, I worked on a variety of very small prototypes, learning Unreal Engine as I went. Eventually, I happened to end up with a level that resembled my hometown, though with some really cheesy-looking house models. Optimum Link was the result of no real intention or design, but rather a snowball of prototypes that all fed into each other over time. By mid-2015 I had this wacky project that was ongoing. Lasers, robots, large bags of potato chips, silly MakeHuman rigs, blender assets I made without much art alongside it.. It was a mess, but many of my friends found it amusing. Optimum Link, as I started to call it, was never a pretty game, but it had a strange charm to it. It was just fun nonsense.
By this time I had gained enough confidence in using the engine and handling the process of creating and using assets. I had also learned a book’s worth of things about game design from my experiments, also with the help of the wonderful Internet. I was ready to make my dream game, Skyfear. By the end of 2015 I had three new games in progress: A second or third attempt at Skyfear, a horror game, and an open-world pirate game.
Exciting, right? Games, however, are an extremely long, stressful, complicated process and doing all of this (though half of it non-serious) was not the most efficient way of doing things. I was getting a good workout with the creation process and the software, though. That’s the good thing.
Getting back to the point — I made lots of game content and chipped away at mentally building these ideas until Fall of 2016. It was here that I decided Optimum Link deserved to be played by people in the real world, and by this point the game had a decent amount of content. I had only released one game prior, a very small horror demo that would later become the horror game, my second release. But by December, Optimum Link was done (0.1) and I explained to any viewers/players that I would continuously update the game with new content and features.
Optimum Link, version 0.2.1
Many new projects followed, and, with the unexpected success of the game, I started gaining a small following. I decided to go all in on this journey and really run my project, Protoria Studios. I asked two of my most creative and strong-minded friends to join me, and together we started to build a somewhat-structured ‘studio’. In Winter [early] 2017, I released Optimum Link’s new additions in version 0.2.1. The rapid expansion and the content I wanted to include, however, had left more room for bugs and I hadn’t yet started the overhaul I wanted to give it. Meanwhile, Skyfear was just getting to a playable state and it was attracting too much of my focus.
I worked on a 0.3 version of Optimum Link which included a basis for multiplayer, but as 2017 went on, it became clear that a “never-ending” game simply couldn’t exist by force. At least, not in my situation, not without dedicating more time to it. But the game had already had significant improvements and new content, so there had to be a release. Sadly, 0.3 never came in 2017.
Optimum Link, version 0.3
I have to stop myself here and actually get back to work, but in short: Optimum Link will return in 2018. The game will have some new stuff and a new shine to it, and it will be released on larger markets like Steam. More information will be shared this Winter/early 2018. Be on the lookout! This has been a fun and interesting project and seeing it in a new way makes me excited. 2018 should also see the release of Skyfear, the project that seeded the creation of Optimum Link in the first place.
