Heya! I'm Kara! I'm one of the three lead devs of Ballast and I'm the one kind of spearheading the project! We're not the only devs by any means, but we're the ones in charge. Everyone working on this is pretty passionate about it and all have some amazing ideas, so I'm excited for you all to see what we come up with!
I'm an artist by trade; I've worked on Homestuck as one of the artists under the first wave of the Art Team back in the day (under my deadname), and I also designed a poster that made its way into Bendy and the Ink Machine! (Under my old username-- it was the Siren's Serenade poster!)
Needless to say, I'm comfortable with digital art as well as 3D modeling (I make stuff for VRchat, too)... but game development is a whole different beast! I'm learning Luau and animation as I go, I'm the one making the rooms, helping with props and concept art, and trying to dabble in music to help out there... it's a lot to juggle! All of us are adults (a few of us 30+!), and most of us have full time jobs, so what we do is where we can in our free time. I tend to have a lot more time than the others, so I'm working my hardest between my other obligations. As a result, DEVELOPMENT IS VERY SLOW, but it's coming together, piece by piece. We don't want to rush this, but we don't want to just sit on it without talking about it, either! We're doing our best to consolidate concept art, screenshots of props and the very few rooms we have so far to at least give you guys an idea of where we're heading with this. We've also got LOTS of lore; we won't share everything, but we'll share plenty! ♥
I had been a big fan of Pressure, like a lot of people. Around October/November of 2024, I had made an OC, a scientist, that I had wanted to utilize in that universe and explore his dynamic with the world and other characters. I got the idea for him while listening to EPIC; for obvious reasons, I needed to repurpose him... and so the idea Ballast kind of came about.
I made a post a while back asking people what they liked and disliked about Pressure... I took the answers we received, shared it with the other devs, and we took it all into consideration as we started development.
There's gonna be similarities to Pressure; that game is obviously a huge inspiration for this one, in terms of locale, gameplay and the SCP-like setting. However, WE AREN'T LOOKING TO BE A COPY, and it is far from the ONLY inspiration. I've loved the ideas of massive megacorps since The Secret World, so I drew inspiration from their Orochi Group. There's a LOT of inspiration from Epic, too, and we've also drawn from Portal, Bioshock, Lobotomy Corp and some more liminal space and horror media too; the Backrooms, Annihilation, As Above, So Below, etc!
We're taking these inspirations and aiming to make something new! Nostalgic, familiar... but not the same. We even have plans for a secondary game mode that plays entirely different from the main one, and we have ideas for other mechanics and elements that will keep things fresh!
I'm really, REALLY excited to share what we can with you. That said, I may not interact much directly myself; my flavor of neurdivergency makes me a not very social person, lol. Pookie and Rune will be running the social accounts, and I'll just be sharing in-character or dev responses as necessary! We will also very likely NOT be running a community discord... it's a lot to maintain and we hope you can understand. Updates and communications will be shared on our social media pages instead. ♥
We also ask that you keep in mind: what we share is subject to change. Nothing is set in stone, as to be expected in early development like this. This is already way too long, lol... all that said, I hope you guys enjoy what we can share with you! - Kara
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