Hello! It has now officially been over one week since Ardency was released…and oh boy! I wanted to come back to write a little postmortem, talk about the project from the beginning, what went right (and wrong!), how it is going now, and what's next (plus some secrets about Ardency that you may not have known!)

Ardency originally spawned right after the release of my first visual novel, Snips & Snails. I wanted to write a story about King Arthur, but with my own little twist on it. I always have said characters just "come to me", so with that, Artie, Moira, and Claudin were born. Kasanov was actually an original character of mine I had in a private story (fun fact — you travel with him to Kedarn in that story! He had long hair and was MUCH meaner!) 

I got straight to work, plotting out all the beats I wanted to hit in each character route. My scope was big — MORE CGS, MORE SPRITES, VOICE ACTING, etc etc… I wanted to put as many choices as possible and really make the game I would enjoy as a player. The voice actors I was very lucky to find (thanks to my mom and boyfriend for helping me sort through so many auditions!) And things were well underway.

I originally had tons of endings, but eventually cut them as I felt the story wasn't progressing the way I wanted — so the story at least fit into my scope easily.  (I was going to offer “bad endings” where you don't get a romance, but hated how all of them turned out!) Once my story was set in place, I got straight to work, writing day in and day out.

Then there was the burn-out period (dun dun DUNNNN)…most game devs know what I'm talking about. I just felt no passion for the project and felt at a stand still. I spent hours every day plugged in, enjoying Red Dead Redemption instead…then I decided a cowboy game of my own was what I needed to get myself out of the slump. Thus, Roped In came to be! And it worked! I was back and ready to go for Ardency.

About this time is where I met Joy and Snakkiez, two of my now closest friends. As a naturally introverted person, I never had such a support group like this within the dev community, and they were a huge help in getting Ardency to where it is today.

During the two years of development, a lot changed for me in my personal life too (Lacy lore as my friends call it). I changed careers, made new friends, lost old ones, lost family members, discovered new things about myself (diagnosed with autism!), and so much more from where I started. It is crazy to think how different life was 2 years ago when Ardency was an idea. 

I jumped on that idea after being encouraged. When I first began this dev journey, I made Snips & Snails as my debut visual novel, then just disappeared. After a pep talk from my boyfriend (one I will never forget!) I went in full force to game deving. I am proud to say I am still going strong making the games I always wanted to play. 

But that brings us to now… Ardency is out on Steam and itchio, reviews come in steadily, and that's that…right? Well, yeah…sorta! I am open to someday maybe doing a DLC, maybe not! I will revisit a story if I feel like it needs it, and I think we wrapped the stories with the rangers pretty well. (Besides, I got cowboys and aliens on the brain!) 

I am going to take the next couple of weeks off to enjoy my time with my best friend coming to visit, and just overall begin my summer to get refreshed for what's next. 

Thank you for reading this far (everyone knows I hate writing long devlogs and this really was just a rambley postmortem) so here are some secrets about Ardency's development:

• Allton is named after my pig plushie, Ton Ton
• Moira is from a sci-fi story I originally wrote (she had purple hair in that!)
• Claudin's name was chosen because of Prince Claudin(e) from the Arthurian legend
• Artie was originally going to have an eye patch (lol)
• Kas was supposed to have long blond hair before I redesigned him

And that's all I can think of! I hope you all continue enjoying Ardency and look forward to my next release (cowboys are coming back soon!) 

That is officially a wrap on Ardency: Heart of the Rebellion!

-Lacy