Some of the things that we ponder here from time to time at NCL are: a) Where are we now? b) Where are we going? c) Is this stuff worth fighting for?
These kinds of questions should pepper the mind of anyone engaged in creative projects. It is so easy to become mired in the insanity of the day-to-day. And yet, it is questions like these that tend to invigorate and renew our drive to keep building in this world of Soma that we hinted at with the release of our game two years ago, ‘The Healing Blade’.
Brandon Patton, bassist for the godfather of Nerdcore HipHop, MC Frontalot, contacted us shortly after that Blade was released, with an email so infused with excitement, we had to follow up.
My girlfriend is working towards a doctorate in cell biology at Yale and we would love to share the game with the other scientists and MDPhDs. Also, I’m working on a very simple card game based on assembling atoms into molecules, if it turns out to be fun (haven’t tested it yet) maybe we could trade with each other.
Then and there, it was decided that he was our kind of crazy. We sent him out a game and, as hoped, shortly thereafter a series of in depth analyses on the game started coming in. In truth we were both a little excited and a little terrified at the granular detail Brandon was parsing out our little game. Fer pete’s sakes, Jim, I’m a doctor, not a game-designer! But what this did was lead us to the truth that perhaps, just perhaps, it was time to re-invest into our little company by bringing on board someone that could apply this type of attention to detail with the actual gameplay to match our love of the actual science.
As it turns out, Brandon was touring with MCFrontalot and wooing his then girlfriend at the time who he mentioned in his original email. The time-space continuum moved in our favor, and Brandon felt a hankering to settle down with his amour. We’d like to take credit for this pairing as we believe that it was the many frustration filled sessions of playing the Blade most likely resulted in igniting the passions of these two young lovers. Anyhow, I’m more than pleased to announce that Brandon has generously agreed to give us a hand with NCL and in the coming months you’ll start to see the fruits of his hard work. Welcome aboard, Brandon! (Image courtesy of BambooNation)