2025 has been a wild ride of a year! We've been hard at work on a new game, gone through some Intellectual Property drama, put on events, taught a coding camp, met lots of you folks, and spent a lot of time working on new projects!
Qumaq:
Qumaq is a survival-horror-action game being made in collaboration with YK Delta writer Don Rearden. Set on a remote island between Alaska and Russia pitting the survivors of a shipwreck against strange creatures, the environment, starvation, and an organization that would rather keep Quarrel Island a secret.
We've been hard at work on Qumaq for several months now. While we're not ready for a demo or any significant footage, we did have a playable build at the Alaska Gamedev Expo 2025 in November. Qumaq has been shaping up into a really unique and engaging title that we hope to be showing more of over 2026,
Qumaq is intended to release in Q4 2026 or Q1 2027
The Raven's Gift:
While we'd started out the year having great talks with Don Rearden about adapting his story of survival and pandemic in the YK Delta The Raven's Gift, even announcing it was beginning development on socials, we've had to put that project aside for the time being.
There were some questions on rights to adaptation of the novel, and it was found that when we'd started development, we did not have the rights to do so. Since that time, Don has regained the rights to his novel, and we fully intend to make an adaptation in the future, however we want to make sure we've put time between us and the previous ownership structure before we do so. We want to make games, not deal with lawsuits.
Stories of the Real People:
The prototype/vertical-slice of SotRP is available on Itchio, however the full title is still on hold due to funding issues. In late 2024 we'd managed to secure a partnership with a native corporation to help fund the project through grants and their non-profit arm so we could pay those working on the game, pay storytellers for their time, and make the game 100% free for everyone to enjoy.
Unfortunately upsets to federal grant funding in January 2025 sent ripples through the nonprofit funding space and forced our partners to refocus on their core funding needs, leaving the project in flux for the forseeable future.
We still fully intend to make Stories of the Real People, and are working to secure other funding sources, however we are an independent and self-funded team and sometimes that means waiting for the right conditions.
Events:
We worked with the Alaska Developer Alliance (Link) on putting on several events over the course of 2025.
We put on two Alaska Gamedev Expos (Anchorage and Bethel) inviting gamers and curious individuals to play games made in Alaska, speak to the developers working on those games, and get plugged into the growing Alaskan Gamedev Scene.
We hosted another successful Arctic Comic Con booth, connecting with hundreds of local geeks and fans with public demos of our games, and even got to go on Hometown, Alaska to promote the event and talk about the local gamedev scene.
We worked with the Kuskokwim Consortium Library to put on both the "AK Gamedev Expo Kukso" as well as a Coding Camp that taught 9 kids the basics of putting together a simple game in Phaser (Link, a free Javascript Library for game development) which was an absolute blast.
What's coming in 2026?
- We're aiming to have a public demo of Qumaq up and available for everyone by the fall.
- We'll be at the KuskoCon on February 20-22 in Bethel, AK with Don Rearden to talk about Alaskan game development and Qumaq
- We'll have a booth with the AK Dev Alliance at Arctic Comic Con April 25 & 26 in Anchorage, AK
- We'll be at the Alaska Gamedev Expo 2026 in October (No dates set yet!)
- We'll be in the office working hard to make Qumaq the best game we've ever made!
Thank You!
Thank you for supporting us by buying games, donating to the AK Dev Alliance, showing up to events, and just generally being interested in Alaskan-made games.
If you want to support our work, consider supporting us on Ko-Fi
-Wyatt White