Our last post was at the end of 2023, and it was optimistic. We had a host of plans for the future, for the then-coming year of 2024, and we were excited to get started on all of them.
So, what happened?
As you may know if you've looked at our "About Us" page—have you explored our site yet? You should!—we're presently a "one-man wrecking crew". And, if you've been paying attention, you'd know CORAX studios hasn't produced our first game yet, meaning we aren't making money as a studio, meaning said one individual has a "day job". Said individual is, of course, me.
January 2, 2024, my employer, who was in her 80s, had a nasty fall as a result of a respiratory illness having caused secondary complications in her inner ear. She then passed on February 7. I, as the next in line at this business, had to hurriedly pick up everything she'd been doing; this was made a significantly more challenging task as, while she was alive, she refused to tell anyone anything about what all she did. We'd actually hired a number of different office administrative assistants to help her, but she'd always run them off because she refused to let anyone know what she did or how she did it, nor did she ever let anyone try to help. We had nine employees on the roster, all of whom needed to be paid, not to mention all our various other business needs.
The first half of 2024 was learning all of that on the fly. The second half was spent recovering from the massive time loss that caused for me in other obligations, namely my Master of Science program in Physics—which was slated to be completed in 2022, right before the other former-employer passed, her husband. So, I had a long, uphill road to travel.
The good news is, I'm almost done. The MS is just awaiting a finished and approved manuscript, and I can walk in May. Then, I can dedicate all the time I'd been pushing into that project, back into CORAX.
Truth is though, I never really stopped developing. I've written up much of the necessary material for our first game, That Abandoned House on Parkview Drive—characters, level design, level progression, and SO much more. There's still plenty of work left to do, but it has been progressing as well! I've also come up with another couple new game concepts in the interim, which I'm really looking forward to sharing more about once we get our first few games out. Be on the lookout! (And to that end, you should really join the mailing list! I've not shared a whole lot on it because, I've not had a whole lot of audience to share it with; you should help fix that! Get me off my ass and posting more content!)
I've also got a couple... other concepts on the horizon. Definitely keep an eye out for future updates; there are a LOT of super-exciting things coming down the pipeline, and you won't want to miss any of it.