A game in development · Stage 1

Project Studio

Run a film studio. You cannot watch the film you make. You can read it. Critics quote your scenes back at you.

Project Studio title screen: a pixel-art writers' room with the menu Make a film, Full screen, Settings.

Both are coming. Not very soon: I'm in my final year of high school.*

* demos and pre-alpha builds will be playable right here on the site before that. I love sharing things early.

Tell me when it's out

Screenshots

Taken from the real game.

No trailer magic: every picture here is the actual Stage 1 build, running in a browser.

Three decisions screen: genre Fantasy, tone Earnest, ending Bittersweet.
Three decisions: genre, tone and ending. Each one costs something.
A development question: how should it open? with suggested answers and your own idea.
Shape the story: pick an answer, write your own, or leave it to the writers.
The board: eleven colour-coded scene cards from setup to resolution, with the writers' room split below.
The board: the film as scene cards. The writers' room argues underneath, and it doesn't agree.
A scene page: Setup, scene 1 of 11, a mountain pass in snow with two characters and the scene text.
Every scene gets a page and a picture. You can cut it or rewrite it in your own words.

Roadmap

Where it is.

"Playable" means it runs today. "Designed" means it's written down in detail but not built. I only build the next stage once the current one feels right.

  1. PLAYABLE
    Stage 1: the filmPick a logline, shape the story, read the scenes, face the room and the critics. Keyboard and controller.
  2. DESIGNED
    The studioWalk around your own studio, casting, budgets, and films that take time to release.
  3. DESIGNED
    Premiere nightWalk into the cinema, meet the fans, watch the room react.
  4. NOT YET
    LaunchPlay in the browser, and a download for Windows.
  5. THE DREAM
    ID@XboxApply, and one day play a game I made on an Xbox. The code is already written so the rules can move to another engine.

Devlog

What changed, and why.

Straight from the commit history, in plain words.

The two sides of the room stopped reading each other's notes

The advisors were quietly agreeing because they could see each other's answers. Now each side judges the script alone, so the disagreement is real.

Every scene got a picture

Scenes fill the screen now, the text is readable from the couch, and each scene is drawn.

Release takes time now (on paper first)

Knowing the box office the moment you release killed the tension. I wrote down why release needs time, and what that costs the scoring, before touching the code.

The board

The film became a board of scene cards that say what happens, not where. You can see the shape of the story at a glance.

The room disagrees instead of giving a verdict

The first version had one editor telling you the right answer, which turned a creative choice into a maths problem. Now several people argue, and you decide.

Played Stage 1, wrote down what it broke

The review, the rule it broke (never tell the player what's correct), and the plan to run without internet on a small local model.

The design, before any code

The whole studio game written down first: the promise, the screens, watched production, and how to spot a copied script.

More

The full story → Where it started: Pixel Publisher

[ THE DIRECTOR ]