Greetings, fellow travelers,

We've heard from a few of you that you would like to hear from us more regularly, and so I've decided to set up a schedule to let you know what we're up to every couple of months.

Today, I'm going to mention the active contract projects we're finishing up, turning our full attention to our upcoming, early '24 game, one of my favorite recent vignettes from our universe, and some brief commentary on the state of the industry.

Since you last heard from us we've been finishing up the last two contract projects on our plate, from contributing to Brain&Brain's new game idea to Brendan's Voyage, an adventure game made in collaboration with researchers at Vanderbilt University and Baylor University to teach the Old French language and culture. Finishing up these projects means we can turn our attention wholly back toward Project: Aftermath, our upcoming game that we plan to release in early 2024.

This week we are playing and evaluating what we have in Aftermath and placing our bets for the next three weeks' worth of work. We're focusing in on the opening sections to see how we can hook all of you into the story of Joni Evers and whatever sinister being is present.

As some of you know, we regularly share new vignettes from the Worlds Across the Causeway—small views into stories that take place across our universe—and I'd like to share one of my favorites from the recent tales as a small slice of life and some insight into our friend Joni:

Joni Evers curls her feet up to balance on the wooden seat of an old metal stool. She leans forward, resting her elbows on the workbench and scribbles numbers into a spreadsheet detailing parts, order numbers, and invoices. The jangle of the Auto Shop’s bell disrupts Joni’s emerging state of zen.

“I’m closed,” Joni says.

“Uh… Ms. Evers?” The voice is so sheepish, Joni can barely make out the words...

Continued in Not Hiring.

The game industry as a whole is in an ever-more-frustrating place as studios and companies make record revenues and profits, have unbelievably high leadership compensation, and yet are making the choice to lay off massive amounts of workers both veteran and fresh-faced. I want to acknowledge and send my own hopeful thoughts to the folks laid off recently from Bungie, those affected by the multi-pronged mess that is Embracer, the people let go at Epic, Team17, TellTale, Ubisoft, and so many more. Layoffs are a failure of leadership that instead punish workers, and their impact will reverberate into the next decade's worth of games through lost expertise, domain knowledge, camaraderie, and trust. The way our industry operates needs to change, and it is our hope that Causeway Studios can have some part in that.

Thank you for following along and being a part of our game development and storytelling journey. Our goal as a studio is to bring people together in stories of the deeply human within the vast, and the strange within the mundane, and each of you is contributing to that mission by listening and sharing.

If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing it with a friend who loves story games. And if you want more frequent tales from the Worlds Across the Causeway, make sure you add the "Worlds Across the Causeway" updates via our website.

'Til we cross paths on the Causeway,

Kjartan Kennedy (he/him), Studio Director