nb: i've changed access mode for the EFA page to restricted. if you'd like to see it or access downloads, the pw is efa / let us know.

hello all! jake here, the unable-to-dev side of Ghostknot. 

it is with a heavily spore-infested heart that we formally announce the end of design and development on Escape From Aeon. 

the base experience of working on EFA was incredibly positive, but its sheer weight and scope kept it from being properly paced for the both of us. while i think better project management on my side would've made a sizeable impact on progress, in the end, EFA just held too many ambitions in tumultuous covid / other-life-occurances times.  i can comfortably speak for the both of us on this, though: the support and feedback we we received was beyond incredible to see. knowing that other breathing humans — not yet infected by deep space mind-control spores — enjoyed this weird thing we were making kept us engaged for a long, beautiful time.

to that end, i would love to keep making games in this vein (appropriately scoped). on a personal level, EFA's aesthetic and genre provide a big 'ol garden of creative and expressive space to play around in.  in a wonderful karmic circle, we began development on a small pixel-art shump as a side project called 99v in late 2020. with a much more digestible scope and being built in the slightly more user-friendly Godot engine (as was EFA in the earliest days!), i may be able to use that as a jumping off point for two other projects i've been pixeling and concepting in my limited downtime (have a freshly made newborn at home!).  that's the dream. 

i'm slowly finding balance in life and stuff i enjoy like this, and that usually leads to more focused creative work — it's a nice feedback loop to get stuck into, and i hope to get in that zone consistently again soon. i truly think EFA deserves a nice postmortem, too — i'll get w Rauno and maybe we'll put up a nice effortpost / tombstone in the future.

if you're still here, please do stick around! 
it won't be fast, but it'll be fun. 

next time,
jake