The Liquid Swords Update: Q2 2023

News from the Armory

Spring came pretty late to Stockholm this year. So late, in fact, that we skipped over it completely and jumped into Swedish summer. For the Studio, spring has equally zipped by in the blink of an eye. With everything from headline speakers to video game students to parties on our terrace, let’s jump into everything Liquid Swords this quarter.

Liquid Swords in the Wild

Our first game might still be unannounced and under wraps, but that doesn’t stop us from getting out in the world to spread the word of Liquid Swords. In April, our Senior Designer, Ricky Siddek, was a headline speaker at Reboot Develop Blue, which took place in Dubrovnik, Croatia. His talk about ‘Concept, Prototyping and Beyond’ was as interesting and insightful as the coastline of Croatia was stunning and serene. Check out Ricky’s full talk here and get a little insight into the thinking behind the development of our first game.

Last month, we kept things a little more local and attended Nordic Gaming Conference, just a hop, skip, and a train ride away to southern Sweden. In Malmö’s historic Slagthuset, those who attended will have seen our Liquid Swords booth. There we gave away some merch, played a few rounds of Super Smash Bros., and, oh yeah, were on the hunt for the best talent to join us! The highlight is always meeting our peers and hearing about their experiences and the amazing work they’re doing.

Liquid Swords x FutureGames

Our studio isn’t just about gathering the best veterans and talent from the industry; we’re also working extensively with interns, making sure we play our part in training the next generation of video game developers. In May, we gladly took up an offer from FutureGames to host a sizeable cohort of their students and talk about everything from how to break into the industry to a programmer’s typical day. Big thanks to Anastasia, Antonia, and Nathan for sharing their experiences of working in art, design, and programming. The students also got to hear from our founder and CCO, Christofer Sundberg, who shared a little wisdom from his rollercoaster career in gaming.

Hellos and goodbyes

At the time of writing this, our studio has grown to just shy of 80 swords, with our goal of reaching 100 getting ever closer. The whole studio, but especially our recruitment team of two, has done a remarkable job in getting us to this point. This is even more bittersweet as we’ve just said goodbye to JP Shammas, who’s been with us as a contractor, supporting our talent acquisition function, and it seems only right to publicly give him the praise and shoutout he deserves. This autumn and for the rest of 2023, we’ll be focused on the remaining roles as we look to begin production in 2024.

This leads us neatly to our next piece of news. This spring, we moved into pre-production for Game 1. For those that don’t spend their working days in video game development, this is the planning stage for the development of our game, where we’ll finalize concepts, fully establish workflows, and agree on the final and future parameters. This is a very exciting time and a huge milestone. Our aim now is to wrap up pre-production by the end of 2023 and enter full production next year.

Liquid Laughs

A vital part of video game development is constantly looking at the game you’re making and asking yourself, Is this fun? We also believe that this fun shouldn’t only extend to the game but the things we do as a studio too. This spring and summer have been sprinkled with sources of fun. We launched a new #LiquidSwordsPlays initiative both on our studio’s Slack and on our social channels, with the aim of getting together, playing games, and of course, having fun. We’ve also been enjoying being early birds with studio breakfasts, terrific terrace times, and a stupendous summer party.

This week is our final week before our summer office closure from July 3 to July 16, and we’ll take the opportunity to thank you for sticking with us this spring. We appreciate it can be frustrating when we’re so tight-lipped about development; however, we’re working toward, and hoping for, some exciting announcements before the end of the year. So stay tuned and enjoy the sun!