The clear goal: Unreal Engine

     Unreal Engine is officially our main engine. Other engines may be used as well, but most likely for smaller projects. Currently, there are only days until the release of DYNAMICA 27, the first 3D installment in the franchise. Also, we have an incredibly big project in development in Unreal, which we cannot spoil whatsoever; just know it's incredibly big.

    We feel like programming and logic are no longer a big problem, but our main problem continues to be art. Models and textures are the main issue, since after all they make up 70% of the art in a game.

    A new problem arises: Unreal Engine 6. Blueprints will be deprecated with the release of UE6 and the engine will switch to a new programming language: Verse. It is currently used in UEFN, the Unreal Engine version used for creating minigames (?) in Fortnite, and it is Haskell-inspired. Despite the fact that the Verse developers aim to make the language easy to learn for beginners, the community claims it's hard to read and tough to learn. However, it is designed to handle complex multi-threaded game logic safely, attempting to prevent crashes and corruption. The first Unreal Engine 6 release ever will be Rocket League; they will switch the game to Unreal 6.

    What will happen to us when the switch to Unreal 6 takes place? We'll see. Even after Unreal 5 was released, for a period we made several projects; some used UE4, some used UE5, so maybe that will be the case again. We'll have projects in UE5 and projects in UE6. The biggest concern we have regarding UE6, besides the new Verse programming language, is the stability of the engine. Noticeably, Unreal 5 runs pretty well on something weaker, but it tends to crash VERY frequently compared to a more powerful computer, where it still crashes but less frequently. Funny story, we recently had a level with about 3 full days of progress and NO backups. And then, we randomly chose to save it after doing something in it, and Unreal thought it was the best moment to crash while it was saving. This resulted in the level becoming corrupted, and we had NO manual backups. Thankfully, Unreal had made an autosave of the level 3 days ago that was hidden somewhere in the files and was obviously lacking 3 days' worth of progress. That corrupted level is now lost media. Anyways, with UE6 switched to Verse, we expect a STABLE engine; even if it has a million billion trillion different systems, IT'S SUPPOSED TO BE STABLE, NO CRASHING.

    As Cotangent Games AND formerly as Futuresoft, we have NEVER released a paid product, but that day will come soon, and the day we publish a game on Steam will also come. For now, what we are working on will still stick on Itch, GameJolt, and possibly IndieDB.

What is Cotangent Games now?

Undoubtedly, we have failed to deliver enough projects like we used to, but also each new project has increased complexity. This means that we will no longer deliver batch games made in 7 days like we used to 5 years ago. Now, we are revolving around our "zone of comfort", which is mostly Unreal Engine and C++. To leave that zone of comfort, we try new stuff now and then. Recently, I've experimented with Raylib, a C++ library that is insanely easy to use to create both 3D and 2D scenes. We have managed to make (but not finish) a 3D game engine that includes a map editor with entity types and whatnot. It also had lighting, simple physics, and animations, but it became too complex. Probably would've kept going if there were tens of people at Cotangent Games.

Last year, in the August-September period, we leaked two pictures from two different games; one was supposed to be a weird game that takes place in Northern Siberia in a real-life abandoned Russian town called Yurshor. The other game was a horror game inspired by The Nun movie, and we initially aimed to make it unbearably creepy—so creepy and unsettling that, despite its pixelated graphics, a jumpscare could cause nightmares. The sheer tension and fear caused by the game are not to be underestimated. Now, where are those games? Nowhere. The Yurshor game had nothing in it except a small explorable town with no real features, and the other one would have taken too long to make, and we lacked an inspirational plan at the time of development.

However, now I can say (like I always do) that new projects are underway. Wanna know what's different this time? We actually try and make a GDD (game design document) before actually doing anything significant in the game. We attempt to make the GDD as complex as possible to NOT forget any ideas or themes or even feelings that we want our game to give off.

The most significant release in the past 12 months is definitely the atom game. You wouldn't believe how much math, how much learning, and how much STRESS have gone into making that game, and yet it's imperfect but NOT broken. It's definitely a good release but not well-received, unfortunately.

This period has definitely been silent in terms of actual releaseable projects, but there's definitely one thing that has been happening: LEARNING.

Cotangent Games - our first release

 We have released our first game after the rebrand, starting it as Futuresoft and ending it as Cotangent Games. 

 ANTIMEMORY was a game of which the development was not complicated, it just took time and creativity. The environments, the mechanics and the audio design are crucial for our game, considering it's a PSX horror puzzle. We will MAYBE release a DLC, cannot confirm yet, and it will be packaged with upcoming versions.

 To update you on other projects, Chronic Reflex has not received much progress, currently we're lacking creativity on it. We believe the environments and gameplay are the most important thing in our shooter game, so that's why we need time to think about the right environments and take our time to place the enemies in the right place while we polish their AI and improve the player mechanics and shooting. Currently, there are only 3 levels, first two are finished, only remain to be polished, the third one is under development and might take a while to finish, since it's pretty large and... beautiful.

 For other unconfirmed projects, we've working on some ideas for another horror game based on a small suburban house, opening the front door, checking the cameras, etc. Still thinking of mechanic ideas that are original. Another project is a prototype for Agency of Fear 2 that has MANY new additions, such as an inventory, beautiful animated UI, items such as a flashlight, torch, pistol, photo camera, video camera, etc. We're still thinking of a good story and environments to add.

 Another paused unconfirmed project is a text-based batch game that contains different maps, movement, key and door mechanics, probably our most advanced batch project. However, we're still thinking of new things to add to prevent repetitiveness. 

 Another paused unconfirmed project is a weird one, we're not sure ourselves but we really like the prototype. A 3D first-person game in which you, I don't know, live life I guess? You have a house, a car, there's people on the street, you can interact with them, you can work jobs to earn money, buy guns, buy better houses, etc. Sounds like a very long development path, longer even than Agency of Fear, but that is if we ever get to finishing this game.

 To leave you with conclusive words, we hope to be more creative and consistent as Cotangent Games and to know what the player will like, then improve the game to their liking. Playtesting is always done for our games and the game is always improved to the playtester's liking, as long as the mechanics remain the same.