For the last year, I’ve been quietly producing melessthanthree’s incredible action-adventure game, Lucah: Born of a Dream. Lucah released today on PC and MacOS on the Itch.io and Steam platforms, and its easily one of the best games I have ever worked on.
Shortly after Chambara released in July 2016, I was winded and took a few weeks to visit friends and come out of the isolation of the late project. I visited my friend Colin, who was an advisor on Chambara, to test out a new prototype that he made for a melee combat-centric action game. I gave him feedback and testing data and left to go on my way.
After Chambara’s intentional placidity and pacifism, I wanted my next project to be one that embraced and explored violence more directly. The social conflagrations of that year’s election cycle imbued me with complex feelings about rage, conflict, and confrontation that I avoided confronting about during Chambara’s development. That’s why I secretly wanted to work on Lucah and sought to help Colin out any way I could.
I temporarily moved back to San Francisco in the Spring of 2017. In April, I visited Los Angeles to interview to work on a VR project. While I was there, I met Colin in a Little Tokyo coffee shop where I learned he was planning on launching a Kickstarter to make Lucah his full-time job. Having some experience running crowdfunding campaigns, I offered to help him out.
The Lucah Kickstarter launched on June 9th, 2017. Using the skills I picked up from Chambara‘s launch, I developed press releases, handled communications, and conducted competitive positioning research. The campaign was an intense emotional rollercoaster, and as people would pledge, back out, and return again whenever we got coverage, we felt our hopes and faith in the project rapidly fluctuate. Ultimately, we succeeded and raised $22,017 to fund a year of development on Lucah.
In January 2018, I returned to the team as a producer to keep the game on track to release on time, on a budget, and to the standard of quality we wanted. This was a thrilling project to work on, and I’m incredibly proud of what we have accomplished.
Lucah: Born of a Dream is $20 on Itch.io and Steam. Purchase it now and support courageous, personal, and breathtaking experimental work.
KEVIN JAMES WONG 