Why do we need a partner? Well, we’ve been working on CotD for a long time, and it’s been the largest investment our little studio has ever made. The “problem” is that we were able to dedicate two, three, maybe four people at one time to the project. It gets you a long way, but in order to finish the game, and make it the best it can be, we know we need the effort of the entire team for a couple of months to make it happen. This is (unfortunately) something that is not possible with our own financial means.

In the past couple of months, we have been talking to different parties, but we have come to the conclusion that nothing is going to happen anytime soon. In this light, we’ll also offer the people with pending book pre-orders the Frisian version or a refund. That’s it for the bad news.

The good news is, we’re taking the project in a new direction, and we’re not giving up.

Soon (and with soon, I mean in the next couple of weeks) you will be able to download the Cross of the Dutchman demo for yourself. We plan to crowdfund the remainder of the development in a way very similar to the Kickstarter campaign. However, this time, we are taking smaller steps. When we are able to fund a month of development time, we will create a new part of the story and the game world, and release it instantly.

For now, we invite you over to our forums to discuss our plans of releasing this demo. You can help us by sharing your ideas or examples about how to turn our luck around for CotD, and create something we can be proud of.

Steven

Hi to all the readers of this blog! A couple of weeks ago Bram’s marketing internship at Triangle Studios ended. But there’s no reason to stay sad because I’m the new guy to fill the gap! My name is Steven, the new intern who will keep you informed about everything concerning Cross of the Dutchman and other projects at Triangle Studios.

I am just as enthusiastic as you are about Cross of the Dutchman, so please feel free to take part in discussions, ask questions at the forum or in the comments below. If you wish to know a bit more about me quickly rush to my profile in the ‘Meet the Developers’ section.

T(om)hanks!

All good things come to an end. It probably has been said way to often. But today is a valid day to use it, as it’s Bram’s last day at Triangle. He boosted the Cross of the Dutchman community with lots of posts when he started his marketing internship back in september 2012.

Bram mostly worked on the Cross of the Dutchman community, wrote articles, did interviews, set out a social media strategy and replied to anyone who had questions. We were very happy to have him on board as he took a lot of work out of our hands. As a non Frisian he easily integrated in to the Frisian culture, he might even have learned some Frisian words. Oant sjen!

Thanks for everything Bram,
it was a hell of a ride!

We couldn’t let the opportunity pass to give him a Frisian boxershort :)

From 2013 on, every two months or so, we drop everything we’re doing and start a fresh two-day Game Jam, resulting in a playable prototype that will be available to everyone to play.

And you can follow everything! During the Protocannon Jams we have our intern (me, in fact) running around, taking pictures of everything and putting them on the live blog at Protocannon.com. You can even talk to us in our very own chat room during the Jams if you’d like!

Getting excited? Be sure to check it out in the next couple of days!

Many things happened to Cross of the Dutchman in 2012. The three most important ones we think are the Kickstarter campaign, the Cross of the Dutchman novel we released and the demo we’ve created. In this article we elaborate on these things.

Let’s start with a look at the website. The number of members more than doubled to a total of 131. In September I joined the studio with writing new articles for the blog as my primary task. This resulted in a more steady flow of articles and a higher average of articles per week.

The visitor number crossofthedutchman.com in 2012 (Graph by Google Analytics)

The first thing to notice in the graph are the two big spikes in visitor numbers. The first one is from January 24, the date we released the teaser trailer of Cross of the Dutchman. The second big spike is from May 2, the second day of our Kickstarter campaign. Over the year 2012 we’ve had 20.816 unique visitors, who generated over 114 thousand page views and spend a little over 3 minutes on average on our site. Over 38% of the visitors returned ate least once at some point during the year.

Kickstarter

One of the important things that happened in 2012 was the Kickstarter campaign we did in May. Unfortunately we didn’t reach our goal, but it absolutely gave us a lot of media attention that helped us spread the word about Cross of the Dutchman. It also made us think really hard about how to continue the project, which led to new ideas to cover the cost of developing the game. More on that later.

The Novel

First announced during the Kickstarter campaign, the novel finally launched in November. Starting with the Frisian version, which is now available for purchase. The announced Dutch and English versions however are a bit postponed. We have agreed with our publisher to release those once the game is ready. So rest assured, they’re not cancelled! The writing has even been finished, we just don’t have a date for them. Yet!

The Demo

In September we announced a new sprint that worked to finishing a demo. This demo was finished early October. But maybe you wonder: “Why hasn’t it been released to the public yet? It’s been almost three months!” Well, releasing the demo to the public as soon as possible was actually our first idea, but that plan changed. You might remember Remco going to GDC Online in October to “do some important business stuff”. We weren’t kidding. That important business stuff was in fact Cross of the Dutchman! Armed with a laptop with the freshly made CotD demo he went to the conference to look for potential investors and let them play the demo. And they were interested! That was really good news for us, but it’s also the reason we haven’t been able to release the demo just yet. We want to give the interested parties the chance to check out the demo exclusively, allowing them to come up with a plan on how the game would fit their portfolio, and how they would be able to do proper marketing for it.

So, that was our 2012 in a nutshell! We hope we’ve clarified how things are standing, especially with the book and the game. Let’s hope that the new year will be the year that we can finally finish Cross of the Dutchman and release the story of Great Pier to the people.

]]> http://www.crossofthedutchman.com/2013/01/2012-review-kickstarters-novels-demos/feed/ 5 http://www.crossofthedutchman.com/2012/12/thank-you-gerard/ http://www.crossofthedutchman.com/2012/12/thank-you-gerard/#comments Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:02:34 +0000 Bram http://www.crossofthedutchman.com/?p=4734

In this picture, most of them are already gone.

Today was an awesome day: we got to eat donuts! But it was also a sad day: it was because today we say goodbye to Gerard. He started about a year ago with his internship at Triangle Studios to work on the Cross of the Dutchman project.

Gerard worked mostly on Cross of the Dutchman. His tasks involved 3D modeling, designing levels, making animations and doing motion capturing. When he started working here it was meant to be an internship of half a year. He liked it so much however, that he decided to do his second internship at Triangle Studios as well. But all good things must come to an end.

Thanks for everything Gerard,
we had an awesome time!

Thank you for everything Gerard!

And here are some farewell gifts

The resemblance is uncanny…

Cross of the Dutchman action starts at 16:45

Johan said that we’ll try to hone his skills by making more Great Pier drawings, so we may even see more of him in the future!

Have made a fan art of your own? Why not send it in? We’re always happy to show it to our fans and link them to your blog or website.

We didn’t only have the article, we are running a text message context as well at the moment in which you can not only win the book, but also get an original sketch by Pascal along with it!

If you live in the Netherlands you can still enter to win one of the ten books signed by Ate Grypstra, including one of the sketches you see Pascal working on here! Here’s what to do:

Answer the following question: What was Great Piers place of residence? Text message the word ACTIE [space] and the answer to 2255 (€0,60 per message). The competition closes tomorrow (November 21) so be fast!