4/19/2023 0 Comments Ambition a minuet in power![]() Do you think they don't like games? They don't like stories? That's preposterous. ![]() "We're talking about half of the human population. "Looking around at this very expo hall, not the market that is being catered to in games right now," Patenge says. Of the six date-able characters, two are women, and three are actual historical figures: aristocratic painter Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun, French general Thomas-Alexandre Dumas, and Jacobin leader Louis Antoine De Saint-Just. Not only do you play as a woman working to gain power from a situation of initial disadvantage, but there are also multiple queer romance options available. They need room to fail"Ī major part of Patenge's pitch for Ambition is that it's a game for underserved audiences. This is not a time of 'less is more.' This is time of 'more is more.'" They'll just go, 'What is the bare minimum thing that works?' And we're doing something in the rococo art period. Otherwise they will never manage to reach that art's full fruition. There's this whole adage about how competition and difficulty make good art, and I don't know if I completely agree with that. "The additional resources gave us more wiggle room. "Funding makes all things easier, and funding makes all things harder," Patenge says. ![]() Going through that process gave them the resources to advance the demo far beyond what it was initially, and also gave them the ability to prove to Humble there was already an audience for the product - something that's especially important in the more niche genres of dating, simulation, and period drama.Īnd though Ambition has effectively been delayed two years past its intended release at this point - and doesn't currently have a release window, though there is a free demo on Steam available now - Patenge is firmly of the belief that both the time and extra money were absolutely necessary to make something good. Patenge partly attributes the publishing deal with Humble to the game's successful Kickstarter. All these things are miracles - what's a few more, to get this thing done?" Luther Patenge - I sadly missed the opportunity to photograph him the day he wore his period gown Having a successful Kickstarter campaign is a miracle. "We joke that we have already performed so many miracles to get to this point. Everything takes so much longer than you would hope. "But also, when you're with a small team, any delay magnifies massively - because if one person gets sick, an entire division is functionally shut down. ![]() "We needed more room to iterate on some of the core design elements than we thought, and unfortunately, iteration with a small team takes more time than you would hope, because you have less hands to work on everything," Patenge says. When the team eventually ran out of runway, they were picked up by Humble to get the support they needed to finish it off. In 2016, they launched a successful Kickstarter campaign with plans for a 2018 launch. "When you're with a small team, any delay magnifies massively - if one person gets sick, an entire division is functionally shut down"īut the others felt it had promise. Patenge had been working on a prototype of Ambition as a way to teach himself Unity, and showed up one night at the group's regular Dungeons & Dragons game with what he had so far - at the time, "blue squares seducing white squares." When her fiancé goes missing, protagonist Yvette must learn to navigate society, advance her position, and remain safe during a time of political upheaval - all while staying fashionable and potentially wooing one of six eligible new suitors.Īmbition came about when Patenge, along with fellow developers Michael Seltzer and Alexandria Kairis, left their positions at mobile company Kabam in search of personal career satisfaction. Patenge's attire isn't just head-turning - it's entirely appropriate to his studio's game about a "woman of fashion" living in pre-Revolutionary France. He's wearing an enormous, light blue gown in a style he defines as "Rococo Lolita," complete with a tall white wig. At the PAX East booth for Joy Manufacturing Co's Ambition: A Minuet in Power, developer Luther Patenge is impossible to miss. ![]()
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