Concepts First, a Long Hold, and Now a Studio
Two games have lived as concepts since October 2024. They now have a studio, a website and six steps to walk through, in order.
Violet Arc started the way a lot of studios do: as a folder of ideas with nowhere to live. From October 2024, two games existed as concepts. Documents, sketches, and a few spreadsheets that knew far too much. Then life did what life does, and the folder stayed shut for longer than we’d like to admit.
It’s open again, and this time it’s moving. The work picked back up in full flow, and the things that were missing have since been put in place: a name for the studio, this site, and a structure to hold every game to.
The structure is six steps, taken in the same order every time.
- Paper. The design has to hold up written down, or it goes no further.
- Systems. The maths and logic are locked in a working prototype.
- Vertical slice. One stretch of the game, built to the standard of the finished thing.
- Full game. Everything else, built to that same standard.
- Playtests. People who owe us nothing get their hands on it.
- Release.
Each world page shows which step its game is on, and you’ll hear about it here whenever one moves.
The two games are Conquest, a strategy game about roads and the trouble they cause, and Skybound Sanctuary, an exploration game about wind, birds and knowing when to head home. Neither will be dressed up as further along than it is. Nothing is announced before it runs, and when something doesn’t run, these dispatches will say so.