 The year was 2007. The Nintendo Wii was the biggest new name in console gaming. Indie gaming hadn't yet emerged as a respectable alternative to traditional game publishing. Retro-style games were few and far between. Simon Anderson had an idea. He wanted to make a new game that felt old, something that sparkled with pixelated charm, while utilizing the advancements in storytelling that had come over the years in video games. With Eganus, Simon gathered a small team of friends who shared his vision. They figured that they could have this small little project finished relatively soon and then move on to other things. In 2018, Simon's game finally released on console platforms. The journey to finish this project had been long, hard and full of setbacks and sadness, but also moments of joy, excitement and satisfaction. This is the story of Owlboy, the game that took 10 full years to make it from the drawing board to the home console. Simon Anderson and his friends had been working on video games for a while, in a small studio that used a very basic game engine that didn't require much coding. Simon's strength was artwork and his particular passion was pixel art. When he was a child, he and his mother had worked on cross stitches together, which used similar blocky patterns to create pictures, and his interest in games had naturally meant that he'd been interested in learning how to make these on the computer as well. Playing Super Mario Bros. 3, Simon started thinking hard about the Tanuki suit. Mario could gain a power-up, which meant that, if he got a good run-up first, he could launch into the sky to fly horizontally with a lot of speed. Simon wondered what it would be like, if, instead of needing to run to activate his flight power, Mario could go straight up, effortlessly taking off from the ground. This essentially felt like the opposite of the Tanuki suit, but the idea of a 2D platformer where the character could fly effortlessly wouldn't leave Simon alone. He started brainstorming ideas for a character, thinking possibly about a girl with pigtails who could spin her hair around to achieve lift, much like tales from the Sonic the Hedgehog series. As Simon pondered this, his girlfriend, Julianne Royce, made an alternative suggestion. What if the game's main character was an owl? After all, owls were cute! And so, Simon and Julianne created the initial idea for Owlboy, and Simon started working on a prototype. He quickly found that a lot of other people were also interested in the game idea. At a party, he met a stranger, Joe Remy Madsen, who was preparing to move to London to begin work at Lionhead Studios. This should have been Joe's dream come true, but the moment he saw Simon's prototype for Owlboy, he couldn't get the name out of his head. He went ahead with his move to England, but he spent as much time as possible on his computer, talking with Simon, and lending his talents to the game. The pair worked hard for a while, and created a demo that they were fairly pleased with, which they released onto the internet. To their complete surprise, they immediately found themselves nominated for a prestigious Visual Excellence Award as part of the 2010 Independent Games Festival. This seemed too good to be true. The pair were expected to show off their game at a booth at the festival, and so, Simon packed his bags, and flew from his native Norway to San Francisco. The second time he ever met Joe was at the airport, and he wasn't sure he even remembered what Joe looked like after all that time. Having a booth at the convention was fun, but it was clear that the Owlboy team were a little out of their depth, compared with some of the more professional offerings at the festival, such as the booth next to their own, which was showing off a little game called Limbo. When it came time for the award ceremony, Simon and Joe didn't even realise that, as nominees, they had their own table with several bottles of champagne. Instead, they sat in the audience with all of the festival attendees. While Owlboy didn't win the award that it was nominated for, gaining the prestige that came from this recognition opened a lot of doors. Soon after, the team was again nominated for an award from the Norwegian Game Awards, and this time they won, gaining a $10,000 prize for their trouble. Things really seemed like they were looking up, and Simon was eagerly anticipating releasing Owlboy the next year. Alas, though, it turned out that $10,000 wasn't a lot of money compared with what was necessary to complete a video game. The team sought additional funding, gaining a grant from the Norwegian Film Fund of all places. Things progressed, and a demo for Owlboy was released online. The response was mixed, to say the least. The demo had come from a mid-part of the game, where it was assumed that the player already knew the controls, so there was very little hand-holding. Simon and his team watched in dismay as YouTubers slammed their creation, complaining about many of the core mechanics, as well as the difficulty of actually learning how to play the game. While some of this was excusable, it became clear that Owlboy wasn't yet at the level of polish that would justify release. Reluctantly, the team began overhauling almost every mechanic and control within the game, trying desperately to make something that was more enjoyable to play. The game also suffered from bloat, as new ideas and mechanics occurred to the team. Minecraft was popular at the time, so the group floated the idea of adding a crafting element to Owlboy, before thankfully thinking better of it. Nevertheless, the team was caught in a cycle of self-improvement, constantly trying to make things bigger and better. This was in large part due to the phenomenal hype that it developed around the game. It was clear that the burgeoning Owlboy fan community demanded perfection, and Simon and his team were desperate to meet these expectations, even if it meant uprooting all the work that they'd already done on the game. This, though, was just one of the challenges that the team faced. Something a lot more painful was about to hit the project, causing many more delays, as real life got in the way of Owlboy's completion. Simon had suffered from depression since he was 10 years old. It was an illness that had been with him for as long as he could remember, and while he did his best to live with it, sometimes it got the better of him. As work on Owlboy dragged on, and the experience became far more stressful, Simon felt his mental health suffering as a result. There wasn't much he could do when this was the case, and, as such, sometimes he simply couldn't muster the emotional resources to work on the game. Meanwhile, Joe was suffering from the loss of loved ones. When he'd started work on Owlboy initially, all parents had been alive and healthy, and were eagerly supporting his work as they cheered on the project's successes and its awards. One by one, Joe's grandparents passed away, and he was left dealing with the fallout. He also suffered the loss of one of his childhood best friends, who unexpectedly died of a heart attack while Joe was on his way to meet him for lunch. The personal tragedies kept mounting up. Simon's parents got divorced, and his childhood home burned down. All the while, the entire team was living hand-to-mouth in order to save money, rarely having enough funds for decent meals. This labour of love was taking a lot out of them, and as Simon did his best to support himself with side projects and commissions, he naturally didn't have enough time to work on his passion project. Throughout development, Simon kept promising Julianne, herself a member of the Owlboy team focusing on merchandising, that the two of them would get married once the game was finished. As the years went by, it became clear that this wasn't going to happen any time soon, and their wedding was repeatedly postponed. So, eventually, Simon and Julianne decided to get married anyway. If Owlboy wasn't going to be finished any time soon, it was time to stop delaying their happy moments in the meantime. This became the focus of the entire team. They couldn't allow work on this project to get in the way of enjoying themselves, and they couldn't let their personal tragedies cloud things so that they couldn't also enjoy happy moments when they came. The team began living in the moment, and would try to get every possible moment of enjoyment from times when they attended conventions and festivals. There were plenty of opportunities to talk with fans, and lots of moments where they could smile and laugh, despite their hardships. Simon took particularly leave from one event, in which he was asked to attend an art school and give a lecture on the creation of Owlboy. This felt like a particularly sweet victory in and of itself, because that school had, years ago, rejected Simon's application to study with them. Even as work dragged on with Owlboy, there was a chance to feel like the project was, in and of itself, an achievement worth being proud of. Where necessary, they took breaks, allowed themselves to recharge, and did their best to enjoy themselves. It was during one such period that the team put Owlboy aside for a little while, in order to make a completely different game. Just for fun, as a way to flex their creative muscles and shake out the cobwebs, they created Savon to Scent, a quick, simple to make game that in theory should only take about five weeks to complete. As it turned out, there was a lot of extra work to go into making Savon to Scent a legitimate release. There was marketing and promotion work that took the better part of half a year, further delaying Owlboy. But the team felt refreshed, and recharged. They could continue their work without feeling too bogged down, because they'd managed to enjoy a feeling of success as they actually got a game out the door. The plan was always to use this as merely an exercise in staying alert and fresh, and as such, the team figured that they'd release Savon to Scent for free, as publicity for Owlboy. At the last second though, it was decided that they should put the game on sale for just one dollar, to see what would happen. Considering that the game went on to sell 500,000 copies, this was probably the right decision. Enough money trickled in from this over the next few years that the team managed to stay afloat. And finally, after a long, long period of work, Owlboy was released for PCs in November 2016. The game was a hit, people loved it, and the fans who'd waited patiently for so many years were satisfied with what the team delivered. A year and a half later, in 2018, the game also made its way to console platforms, coming to the Nintendo Switch rather than the Wii, as Simon had initially hoped. They'd finally achieved the impossible, completing their big passion project and earning the respect they deserved. The moral of the story is that you should always look to the good in life. Heartache happens, loss and sadness are inevitable, making the world feel like a bleak place. When things go wrong, it's easy to throw in the towel or to feel like you're never going to achieve your dreams. Don't let yourself get caught up in the big problems of life, find joy in your journey, even and especially if it's not always easy to do so. Cherish your small victories and keep pushing forward towards your hopes and dreams. If the creators of Owlboy could weather their storms, so can you. No matter how long it takes you to succeed, what matters is that you make the most of your time along the way.