This piece is what I call a vignette, something not long enough or fleshed out sufficiently to be considered a short story. I use these as writing experiments, allowing me to play with mood, setting, action, dialog, etc. This is the first of several that I will be publishing here over time. I hope you enjoy it.
It was a dark and stormy night. Wind howled in the trees and a shutter banged relentlessly against the side of the house like a half-crazed lunatic trying to get in. Lightning would split the sky like a white hot knife, or backlight the clouds with no warning. Thunder would rattle and shake the windows, doors, clapboard, timbers as it rolled and boiled through the air. This was not a night to be outside. This was a night to be in another town, another country, another continent.
We had our game, 3SB. Before diving into marketing and promotion, which would cost money, we released the game into the world. It was free. And life would intervene.
With an idea and a rough semblance of a plan, the beginnings of how to approach this technologically, and a newly-minted corporation, it was time to build a team and the game.
With an idea in mind, and both a specific short-term direction and a long-term vision, Jonathan and I embarked on making it real. The first steps were the foundational ones.
(This is the second part of a multi-part history of Vintrock Studios. Read the first part in Our Origin Story).
Okay, so Vintrock is coming back to life. But how did we get here in the first place? Here is the first part of a brief history of Vintrock before The Change.
Welcome (again) to Vintrock Studios. I am in the process of altering the direction and vision, and changing the focus from game studio to other types of creative works. That isn’t to say that games of some kind aren’t going to be made. But this is meant as a somewhat different vision. As I continue to build and develop the key relationships, as well as update some of my creative works, I’ll be updating this site.
People who visited here before may notice that the team on the About page is somewhat smaller. With the re-imagining of Vintrock, the team has changed. Specifically, it is currently just me (Geoff). My intention is not to erase the work that Jonathan, Tracy, and Joanne did with me. It was my honour and pleasure to work with them, and we had a good time while we built 3SB. But things change, and rather than let Vintrock just fade away, Jonathan and I decided that one of us would take it over, and use it for something else. Frankly, the name was too cool to just let it disappear, and after several conversations, Jonathan allowed me to take control of Vintrock and try to build a legacy with the company, albeit different from what we had first envisioned.
In the coming months, I will start to publish some work that I’ve had sitting around for some time, but never put out there for people to read. It will start with short stories and some works I call “vignettes”. My vignettes aren’t really a “story” per se, but are an attempt to experiment with different elements of story telling. This includes elements like dialog, action, suspense, and scene-setting. Some of them may become the kernel for something larger in the future.
