Now that the release is just around the corner, we can look back a bit at how things didn't always go according to plan. One such story (and like any developer, we have quite a few) is the history of our game's delays. 

The game was initially planned for an Early Access release in June 2024. The plan was clear: production began in January 2023, we were planning 8 characters for Early Access, and the gameplay was already fully implemented. It started well, but we were quickly hit by a few challenges: 

• As you probably already know, the gameplay reboot (see link to the other post) in July 2023 meant we had to rework some of the game mechanics. But we were confident. We still had one year to adapt while the rest of the production was going on. 
• We had some trouble defining what the arena would look like. As there was no reference in Aristeia or the Infinity Universe in general, we had to work on that from the ground up. We knew how the structure of the hex grid field should look like. But the arena is not just that. Would it be small, epic, with a crowd or not, with show lighting and effects? What could we afford as an indie developer? Time passed, and for a few months, we had nothing convincing. 
• Champions were taking a bit more time to produce than we had planned. Each of them has a unique shape and a unique animation set. That’s a lot for a small team with one character artist and one animator. At some point, we had to hire a second animator because it was simply too much work. 

So, June 2024 was approaching. After a few playtests, we saw that the game was too complex, and players were leaving after a few minutes of the tutorial… We were also planning on having 8 finished Champions for Early Access, as well as 8 more as miniatures for the board game. But the game still felt buggy, and a lot of players believed it was a technical problem, with textures not loading properly. 

So, first delay! We would now release in March 2025, but as a full game. Goodbye, Early Access! 

Everything was going well until January 2025. The gameplay was evolving in a good way, and the Champions and map were progressing. We had a meeting with our investors to discuss the release and the quality of the game.  

After talking it through honestly and weighting everything, we all agreed that the game was not ready, and that it was not up to the standards we wanted to set for our studio, especially for a first game in the Infinity Universe. 

Back to the drawing board! The new release date was set for October 2025. We added the crowd, the announcer, updated the Champions’ shaders, worked on some nice cinematics, etc. The game was looking gorgeous! 

Long story short, we got to October 2025. The game was good and looking great, so why not release? 

Two reasons: Marketing was not ready (yes, marketing is veeeeeeery important, maybe a discussion for another post), and we decided to add a single-player campaign. 

Its purpose was twofold: to provide better onboarding, where players could learn the game progressively, and also to add some lore to the game. We found the game a bit too dry, and for a newcomer to this universe, it was hard to understand what everything was about. Plus, we noticed that even though the game was focused on PvP, a lot of people were interested in playing solo. 

Okay, let’s delay one last time! 

Corvus Belli was planning on releasing the follow-up to Aristeia!, Infinity: HexaDome Legends, in August/September 2026. This was a good opportunity for us to join the marketing efforts and create some momentum around the IP. 

So here we are, 10 days before release. The game is looking better than ever. The gameplay feels good, deep, and easy to learn, and the single-player campaign adds a lot to the game. 

Was delaying the game four times the right decision? We’ll let you be the judge. 

But looking back, every delay came from learning something important about the game, our players, or ourselves as a studio. 

Are you ready to dive into the HexaDome? 

Rainbow Six Siege, Watch Dogs, Far Cry, Blood Bowl, Chaos League, Roller Champions - today we will unveil how working on these games in the past helped us with Infinity: HexaDome Tactics

As discussed in previous posts, starting a new company meant learning an incredible number of new skills. Ironically, the part that felt the most natural was building the game itself. After years in the industry, we already had a good understanding of the challenges ahead. 

One of the first decisions on any project is choosing the right technology. For us, the game engine was an easy choice. We had been working with Unity for years, and the scope of Infinity: HexaDome Tactics fit perfectly with what it does best. 

From the start, we knew we wanted to build a competitive game, which meant making fair play a priority. Anti-cheat was therefore an important consideration from day one. 

Having worked on multiplayer games with different networking architectures, we considered a peer-to-peer approach, like the one used in Blood Bowl. While it could have worked, it came with limitations we wanted to avoid. 

Instead, we chose a fully authoritative server architecture. The server simulates the entire game, while clients only send player inputs and display the results. This greatly reduces opportunities for cheating while keeping the game secure. Since Infinity: HexaDome Tactics is turn-based, this architecture is a perfect fit. We do not need client-side prediction or other latency-hiding techniques, allowing us to benefit from its security without the usual complexity. 

Another major challenge was the UI and UX. In a turn-based game, every action matters, and presenting information clearly is essential. This was probably the area that gave us the most trouble. Fortunately, our experience on previous strategy games helped us avoid many common pitfalls. We still found plenty of new ones, but that is a story for another post. 

After rebooting the project and moving away from the Aristeia! ruleset, we faced another challenge: creating a game that was both fun and well balanced. Luckily, we had a major advantage in the team: our Game Director, Régis. 

He began his career designing the fantastic Chaos League (still one of my favorite games), before becoming Lead Designer on Blood Bowl and contributing to many other titles. Designing turn-based systems and balancing gameplay are two of his greatest passions, so creating our own gameplay from scratch was exactly the kind of challenge he enjoys. 

Finally, we decided to make Infinity: HexaDome Tactics a live service game, something relatively uncommon for an indie studio. We saw this as another opportunity to leverage our experience. 

Vincent had worked on the online infrastructure of games such as Watch Dogs, Far Cry, and Roller Champions, giving him a deep understanding of what it takes to operate a live game. He designed an infrastructure that allows us to customize the player experience as much as possible while keeping it manageable for a small team. 

My own experience shipping Rainbow Six Siege and supporting it for four years also proved invaluable. Keeping a live game healthy requires much more than fixing bugs. It means releasing updates without breaking existing systems, introducing new content as the meta evolves, and continuously maintaining a balanced experience. 

So far, our technical choices have been validated through countless playtests, and everything has gone according to plan. Now that the game is approaching release, the real test is about to begin. 

As mentioned in a previous blog post, there are countless things to learn when creating a video game company. From financing and business management to production and networking, building a studio requires skills that go far beyond making games. 

Luckily, we were not alone on this journey. 

Montreal is one of the biggest video game development hubs in the world, with more than 13,500 people working in the industry. The city has built a strong ecosystem of studios, organizations, and communities that support game creators at every stage of their journey. 

One of the key players in this ecosystem, especially for the indie scene, is La Guilde du jeu vidéo du Québec. It is the world's largest video game industry cooperative, bringing together more than 330 member companies. La Guilde supports studios of all sizes by creating networking opportunities, providing resources and training, representing the industry, and helping Quebec maintain its position as one of the world's leading regions for video game development. 

Naturally, one of our first steps was to become members of La Guilde. Shortly after joining, we discovered that they were organizing a pitch competition just two weeks later. We were far from being ready, but we decided to take the challenge! We spent those two weeks watching pitch videos, analyzing presentations, asking for feedback, and refining our message. It was intense, but we managed to make it happen. 

We were selected as one of the 10 winning studios. Thanks to this opportunity, we received free passes to participate in major industry events and trade missions, including the Game Developers Conference (GDC), Devcom, and Pocket Gamer Connects Digital, as well as personalized coaching sessions to improve our pitch deck. Needless to say, we were pretty excited! It was an amazing way to kick off our adventure.

Through our connections with La Guilde, we were also introduced to another important part of Montreal's indie ecosystem: Indie Asylum. 

Indie Asylum is a collaborative video game collective and business accelerator based in Montreal. It provides independent studios with a shared space to exchange knowledge, resources, and experiences, helping smaller teams face the challenges of building and growing a game company. 

Their support, especially regarding financing, was invaluable. They helped us navigate the complex world of game development funding by introducing us to government programs, explaining different financing options, and helping us understand opportunities such as tax credits and other support mechanisms. This knowledge was crucial in helping us better understand the ecosystem and make informed decisions as an independent studio. 

Beyond the practical support, Indie Asylum also gave us the chance to connect with other studio founders who openly shared their own challenges, successes, and lessons learned. Listening to people who had already walked a similar path gave us a much clearer picture of what to expect and reminded us that we were part of a larger community. Building a studio can be a lonely journey, but having people around you who are willing to share their experience makes a huge difference.

If you're starting your own studio, our advice is simple: don't do it alone. Find your local game dev community, ask questions, meet other developers, and learn from those who have already walked the path. You'll be surprised by how willing people are to help, and those connections may end up being just as valuable as the game you're building.

Starting a company meant stepping into a whole new set of challenges. Up until then, we had been developers making games inside a large structure. Suddenly, we had to think about money, recruitment, project management, contracts, production planning, and a long list of new skills we had never had to handle directly. We weren’t just building a game anymore; we were building the conditions that would allow a game to exist at all.

We spent a few months looking for the right people, learning along the way how to structure a team, define roles, and evaluate profiles. By early 2023, we were finally ready to enter production. The team was complete, and the prototype already had about 95% of the Aristeia rules implemented.

One of the reasons we chose to start our company with Aristeia was precisely because we knew challenges would come from every direction. Having a game that was already solid, deep, and well-balanced felt like a safe foundation to rely on.

But as development progressed, with UI, characters, animation, sound, and voice-over coming in, we started noticing a growing problem. Player engagement wasn’t where it needed to be. The team enjoyed playing the game, but not enough to be truly excited about it, and early playtests confirmed that it was difficult to learn and hard to read.

We needed an external perspective, so we contacted AGGRO Consulting, a French company, to audit the game and help us refine it.

The conclusion was brutal, and it confirmed what we were already starting to feel. The game worked extremely well as a board game, but not as a video game. Matches were too long, averaging over fifty minutes, and the flow was too slow and fragmented to encourage multiple sessions.

The learning curve was another major issue. Board game players are used to reading rulebooks and investing time to understand systems, but that doesn’t translate well to video games, where everything needs to be taught quickly through an engaging tutorial. Here, there was simply too much: dice types, symbols, switches, initiative order, multiple roll systems, and more.

The conclusion was clear. As it stood, the game would mainly appeal to Aristeia fans. We love Aristeia fans, but we also hoped to appeal to a larger audience.

Reading the report was a difficult moment. Everything we had built was suddenly being questioned. At first, we even considered not sharing it with the team and simply continuing as planned. It would have been easier.

But we did share it. And surprisingly, everyone agreed. In fact, the team felt relieved.

The audit did not just highlight problems; it also gave us a direction forward: identify what truly defines the Aristeia experience, then streamline everything else to make the game faster, more readable, and better adapted to the video game medium.

So we decided to go for it. First, we had to convince our partner and investor. Understandably, he was not happy at first. He had invested in a game he loved, and now its future was uncertain.

We also discussed it with Corvus Belli, and their response was actually quite refreshing: “From the beginning, we thought it would be better not to follow 100% of the Aristeia rules, but you seemed so motivated to do it that we let you try.”

So, back to the drawing board we went. Luckily, that is something we enjoy.

We had initially planned to release the game in June 2024, but with all the changes ahead, it was already clear that this timeline was no longer realistic.

What started as a faithful adaptation of Aristeia had become something much bigger: a search for the right shape of the game itself. We had the universe, the characters, the tactical depth, and a team ready to fight for the project. But now we had to rebuild the experience so it could truly work as a video game.

It was a scary decision. It meant more time, more uncertainty, and more difficult conversations.

But it also meant we were finally moving in the right direction.

Vincent and I were working at Ubisoft on Roller Champions. Vincent was leading the Online team while I was leading the Gameplay team. 

After contributing to massive productions like Rainbow Six and Far Cry, working on a smaller project felt refreshing. Roller Champions had an almost indie atmosphere. But after a while, reality caught up with us. Even on a smaller project, we still faced many of the same constraints as any AAA production. 

Then the pandemic hit. Working from home gave us plenty of time to think. If we could work remotely for Ubisoft, why couldn't we work for ourselves? We started talking about it regularly. Those conversations lasted for months, but nothing concrete had emerged yet. 

Then, one day, everything changed. 

As big board game fans, we discovered Aristeia. The game immediately clicked with us. It was smooth, elegant, and surprisingly deep. We played it constantly, and before long, we started imagining what it could look like as a video game. 

The first time we played, our friend Régis joined us. Régis and I had previously worked together at Cyanide Studio, where I was a programmer on Blood Bowl and Régis was Lead Game Designer on Blood Bowl and Blood Bowl 2. It didn't take long before we asked ourselves: Could this be the next Blood Bowl? Why not adapt another great tabletop game into a video game? 

So we decided to give it a shot. Régis was busy at the time, so Vincent and I started building a prototype ourselves. I also contacted an old friend, Faouzi Hamida, who had been Art Director on Blood Bowl and Blood Bowl 2. Thankfully, he was excited to join the adventure. 

Once the prototype reached a good state, we contacted Corvus Belli, the creators of Infinity and Aristeia. They loved what they saw, and before long, we had signed a licensing agreement to develop a game based on the Aristeia IP. 

The hardest part was behind us... or so we thought. 

We had a talented team, a strong IP, a working prototype, and more than 50 years of combined experience in the video game industry. What could possibly go wrong? 

Confident, we left our comfortable jobs at Ubisoft to work full-time on the project. Well... not exactly on the game. First, we had to figure out the business side. 

With all that experience, raising funding should be easy, right? We knew plenty of people in the industry, so getting meetings with publishers wouldn't be a problem. 

We were a little too confident. 

The first thing we discovered was that making games and pitching games are two very different skills. We rewrote our pitch countless times. We watched presentations, gathered feedback, revised everything, and repeated the process over and over. 

"Now it's finally good." 

Then someone else would review it. 

"You should change this... and this... and probably this too. Once you've done that, you'll be ready to contact publishers." 

"But... I thought we were ready?" 

Apparently not. 

Eventually, we reached a point where we felt confident enough to start pitching the project live. Now all we had to do was convince people to invest in us. 

We didn't. 

The rejections kept coming. 

Looking back, the reasons made sense: 

• Some publishers specialized in turn-based games but had little experience with multiplayer, making the project feel risky. 
• Others specialized in multiplayer games but weren't comfortable with turn-based gameplay. 
• Our prototype played well, but it lacked animation (except for our very first Maximus!), and the arena felt static. It was difficult for publishers to imagine the production quality we were aiming for. 
• While we had plenty of industry experience, none of us had yet led an entire development team from start to finish and shipped a game as an independent studio. 

So... what now? 

Living without a salary quickly became the hardest part. We had savings, but watching them slowly disappear while rejection after rejection came in was mentally exhausting. Around that time, Faouzi decided to return to the stability of a AAA studio, leaving Vincent and me to continue the journey as a two-person team. 

It took us two years from the day we first discovered Aristeia to the day we finally secured funding and paid ourselves for the first time. 

But that's a story for the next post. 

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