Hey everyone, it's been
a long time since I made any appearance here. I want to update people on the status of LC and also on what I'm working on now and in the future.
First things first, what's going on with LC?
It may already be obvious, but development of LC stopped around 8 years ago. I never officially cancelled it, and whenever anyone asked me I would often say vague answers with a bit of hope that maybe one day development would resume. At those those times I had the intention to do so, but as time moved on I simply let go of that possibility. I'm 32 years old now and long since moved on to other things. So, as sad as it is to say, development will no longer continue for LC.
But... it's not all bad news. I'm still around!.
What have I been doing instead, then?
I've been busy!
15 years ago I made the decision to start LC on a whim. And working on a project like that changed me forever and I had tremendous amounts of fun. After creating so many scripts and maps and story events it inspired me to want to go beyond ROM hacking and to create games of my own. So, 12 years ago just 3 years after starting LC I began studying and learning the skills required to be a game developer. It was my intention to enter the industry full-time, start my own company and then work on my dream games.
What ended up happening instead was me entering the web dev and devops/sysadmin industry instead, since I was focusing heavily on my programming skills. I naturally expanded out to websites and then servers and then Linux and then found myself as devops. And I basically stayed there until around 2 years ago when I moved country. It was then that I decided it was time to start becoming a game developer and
realise my dreams.
I taught myself a lot of skills to be able to realise that dream of being a game developer. Being solo dev and doing things yourself isn't easy and requires a lot of time and effort, and skills. I made myself into a great programmer up until now but needed more skills. So I taught myself how to draw digital art like sketches and concept art all the way up to finished assets. And then I taught myself pixel art! On top of that, I taught myself how to compose and produce music in various genres. And finally, I felt ready to make my own game.
I already made my first game!
In the last year I worked on creating my first game. I wanted a project which would get my foot in the door of game development while testing my skillset in the process. So I came up with the design for a little casual game called Boatload!
Boatload is my
first game so far and it's a tower stacking game. I know, it's nothing to do with Pokemon or LC, but I wanted to share it with my fans and this felt like the best place to do that.
The game released in April 2023 and is available (both free and paid)
on itch.io for Mobile and PC!
What's going to happen next?
Well, I
rebranded myself with a new nickname ElGatoPanzon. I have a
new website, an
Itch.io store page, a
new Twitter and
a Discord server where you can chat with me about anything. I'll be posting everything I do from now on under that name and in those places. If you'd like to stay updated
check those places out for more.
As for the type of games I'd like to make, I have a looooot in store and only just getting started. Games inspired by my favourite series like Zelda, JRPGs like Persona, Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy, Golden Sun, MMBN, and of course Pokemon itself what started it all! I have a lot of ideas and I'd love to share those with my original fans:
you guys!
Thanks for everything
I wanted to say thank you to everyone who played LC over the years, from the original 0.1 Beta, to Beta 1.1, to Beta 2.1 and then the overhauled Beta 3.1, all the way up to the last released Live Beta. I want to thank every member of the team (wherever they are) for the work they did with me. Even to this day I still get people messaging me or recognising me and it touches my heart that LC was able to reach so far, and I'm very thankful for that!
Oh, one last thing:
consider this post as permission for anyone to continue/re-release/re-base LC into your own project, with full permission to release it with credits to me (linkandzelda) and the LC team for the original works, including crediting those mentioned in the official credits on the first page. Let the spirit of LC live on!
Hope to see some of you around in future!
