Project Gorgon has a new dev blog out this week that both fans of the game and those curious about buying in will want to read up on. The piece is actually penned by Sandra Powers, one half of the husband-and-wife duo who originally founded the game (the husband being Eric Heimburg). Powers begins by announcing a 75% discount for the game that extends through July 27th, and she does not hold back about the reasons for the sale: The studio needs funds to pay somebody to help replace her.
That’s because as longtime MMO readers know, Powers has been undergoing chemotherapy for liposarcoma, which has fortunately “helped [her] enormously,” but of course it means she’s not yet back to full-time work, and the whole ordeal has cost Heimburg time for obvious reasons too.
“So we’re down a dev and it’s slowing everything down,” Powers says. “To be blunt, more people means more money means we can pay another developer to pick up the slack for me. Our last sale went really well and allowed us to work with the indomitable Nick — the engineer responsible for most of the last year-plus of QoL (Quality of Life) improvements. Imagine what we can do with another Nick!”
The sale brings the game down to $10, so it’s not a big ask.
The second chunk of the dev blog focuses on the game’s development roadmap priorities; the studio is focused on balance, “getting to a place where [it] can find the fun in all the skills,” the city of Statehelm, quality-of-life, friction-inducing gameplay elements like transmutation and inventory management, controller support, and orcs.
“As balance comes together, we’ll be able to launch the next phase of content: the city of Statehelm, jewel of Alharth and capital of the Council Lands! More importantly, Statehelm is the home of the level 90 trainers. Along with Statehelm will come Vidaria, an outdoor hunting zone filled with content for level 90-100 plus several new high-level dungeons. A couple more outdoor zones will follow that, each with their own set of dungeons, but those come after Statehelm. Statehelm is our biggest immediate focus, but somewhere in there we want to launch playable orcs, with their own newbie area and mechanics, similar to fairies. Other items on the mid-range radar are housing and guild housing in Statehelm, more Animal Husbandry species with Genetics, some new high-level crafting skills like baking, and a bunch more guild quests.”
