About Templar Games
TL;DR Version
Created by Brian Hudson, a life-long gamer, Templar Games was formally incorporated in 2011 and relocated to Detroit in 2014, becoming Detroit's first dedicated game development studio. The first official release was in 2013, with several more smaller projects released after that. Currently Templar Games is developing Unto the Breach: Episode One, the first of a multi-part retro-style RPG with modern gameplay elements, along with a tie-in novel and a board game set in the same world.
The Full Story
My name is Brian Hudson. I'm a life-long gamer. Literally the first thing I remember is getting on my dad's computer early one morning when I was 4 to play Reader Rabbit. My dad was a sci-fi junkie, so I grew up on movies like Forbidden Planet, and shows like Star Trek: The Next Generation. Sufficed to say, I've always had a pretty active imagination.
During high school, I started getting into not just playing video games, but making them as well. Custom maps for Warcraft 2 and Starcraft, mods for Morrowind, etc. I developed a penchant for telling stories through writing as well, and did a lot of what was basically fan-fiction. I was also playing a LOT of JRPGs, either on my Playstation 1 or via emulators for older NES/SNES/Genesis ones. When I discovered RPG Maker 2000, it was like a whole new world opened up for me (somewhat literally), and the first seeds of what would become Unto the Breach and the Templarverse were planted.
Game development largely took a backseat while I spent 4 1/2 years in the US Army, usually working 50-60 hours every week and finding my spare time mostly eaten up by things like World of Warcraft and Warhammer 40,000. Still, I put a little time towards writing and re-writing background lore for my RPG idea, and trying to learn more about game development. After I finished with the Army, I went to college, initially at Full Sail in Orlando for game development before returning home to finish a degree in Creative Writing at Grand Valley.
By this point, Unto the Breach was finally moving past the conceptual stage, and I had a general layout for the "Templarverse". I got Templar Games officially incorporated as a business in 2011, choosing the name from HammerFall, my absolute favorite heavy metal band. In the vague narrative of their songs, the Templars are a sort of freedom fighter group, relentlessly standing up against forces of oppression and destruction, never yielding in their beliefs and occasionally just having epic adventures. And the songs are just awesome.
With a full script written, I started re-learning RPG Maker, since it'd gone through several new versions by then. I started small with a side-story, and in 2013 completed Unto the Breach: The Tournament, a self-contained adventure about Mileena. It was a good start, and I moved on to the main game. By this point, RPG Maker VX Ace had come out, so I switched over and started building things out. I also formally relocated Templar Games' registered address to Bamboo Detroit, a co-working space, allowing me to claim the title of Detroit's first incorporated game development studio.
As it turns out, making a complex and full-featured RPG, even one as retro-style as this, is a metric frak-ton of work. And with life being life, development hasn't always gone as fast as I'd have liked, but I've never given up on my mission to see this story through to completion. Pushing forward, I made and released Unto the Breach: Episode Zero in late 2016, a prologue adventure of sorts, and Templar Games' first commercial release.
Following this release, I learned of yet another new version of RPG Maker, MV. Although at first I hadn't planned on switching, after learning of how significant of an improvement it was over past versions, I ultimately did switch over, using a script for VX Ace to export my databases to avoid having to completely start over. However, with MV switching to Javascript (previous versions used Ruby), that did mean starting over from scratch on the programming side. But I resolved this would be the last time I'd start over, no matter what else happened, and so development of Episode One has continued, life permitting, and I've begun recruiting actual help to accelerate the process and take care of things I'm not necessarily proficient at.
And so I and Templar Games continue to push forward, never giving up. I've written so much about this universe I've created, and I'm excited to share these stories with you. While I continue to do the majority of the work on Unto the Breach, I have been joined by a number of talented individuals contributing to the project. They include:
Aaron Walz/Walz Music: Original Soundtrack
Carissa Vadella: Programming (Menu System)
Michael Hense: Programming (Battle System)
David Sondered: Monster Art
Kristina "Pokey-chan" Ganda: Character Art
Tanis Kowalik: Character Sprite Art
Michael "Galefire" Rookard: Cover Art
Looking Forward
I've also been writing a tie-in novel to Unto the Breach, taking place about a thousand years before the game, and going into the events of the Fall, the cataclysmic battle that saw Terranis nearly destroyed. I've also been developing a board game, Seven Families of Jorandek, also set on Terranis, in which each player is a noble family vying for control of the city of Jorandek. The board game is nearly finished and mostly I just need to find a publisher at this point. Further video game plans include several different possibilities set in the Templarverse, such as a sci-fi FPS game, a twin-stick shooter with giant robots, and possibly even a MOBA. Until then, the fire burns forever...