A game in development · Stage 3

Scene Seven

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

Scene Seven title screen: a pixel-art writers' room with the menu Make a film, Full screen, Settings.
Play the pre-alphaIN YOUR BROWSER · FREE · AI INCLUDED

The pre-alpha is playable now: rough, unfinished, and it changes often. Saves may not survive updates. The Windows download comes later.*

* told you I love sharing things early. tell me what breaks.

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.

Walking through the writers' room in Scene Seven, top-down pixel art.
New: walk your studio. Talk to the writers, sit at your desk, walk out of a door into the corridor.
Build mode: the studio lot from above with rooms and a corridor.
New: build mode. Place rooms on your lot (casting, editing, sound, VFX...). Every room has to touch a corridor, or nobody can get in.
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. PLAYABLE
    Stage 2: the studioWalk around your studio as one world, room to room through the corridor, and use whatever you walk up to.
  3. PLAYABLE
    Stage 3: a studio that growsMoney, a lot to build on, saves, casting from sixty actors, a poster maker, levels and skills, a calendar, rival studios, a weekly box-office chart and yearly awards.
  4. DESIGNED
    Premiere nightWalk into the cinema, meet the fans, watch the room react.
  5. PLAYABLE
    Pre-alphaRight here in the browser, with the AI plugged in. Rough on purpose.
  6. NOT YET
    LaunchA finished game, and a download for Windows.
  7. 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 pre-alpha is playable

Scene Seven runs right on this page now, with the AI plugged in through the site. It's rough, things will break, and saves may not survive updates. That's what pre-alpha means.

A new name: Scene Seven

Project Studio is now Scene Seven. Same game, a name that sounds like a film.

Rooms are decisions

Every department you own asks you something about the film, in its own room: the look, the cut, the score, the effects, the campaign and the opening weekend. Its head reacts straight away, and the critics hear the same note.

Rivals, a weekly chart and awards

Five rival studios with names that wink at the real ones release films on their own schedules. Every weekend is a box-office chart with your rank in the news, and the year ends with the Silver Clappers, four prizes opened one envelope at a time. There is always a next goal.

A calendar

Films are shot and finished over weeks, things go wrong on set, the money arrives by the weekend, and your studio gets a name.

The poster maker, and a studio that gets better

Seven choices make a poster: layout, palette, figures, backdrop, lettering, an effect and the tagline. The room says what it thinks of each one, and a good poster opens bigger. Every release now earns experience: levels, and twelve skills that each change something you can see on the next film.

Casting, judged fairly

Sixty fictional actors, each with a CV, a fee and a quirk. Who takes your call depends on your reputation. The critics don't only ask "was this the ideal actor?": getting the best one a small studio could actually sign earns praise.

One studio, one world

Walk out of a door into the corridor and into the next room. Doors got wider and easier to walk through, and every room is easier to read at a glance.

Stage 2 and 3: walk the studio, build it, keep it

You walk your studio and use what you walk up to. There's money, a lot to build rooms on, and saves. The game is drawn at your screen's real resolution now, and the plan for moving it to Unity is written down: what ports as-is, what gets rewritten.

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 ]