Owen Goss

But we showed it to some friends and @rje asked me to send him my Unity scene. He put in a skybox and relit it, and suddenly we thought we could see how it would work. (The only version I could find is this gif that @mikemeade made, I think) pic.twitter.com/7UvFZaWaEk

I had never really done any 3D modeling before, though, so we knew this was a huge risk. It was going to add a lot of scope to the game. This was late 2014. We thought it might push the release into late 2015.pic.twitter.com/vQCLcPJOJD

I started making this weird procedural building generation system, because we thought it might save content creation time or something? Ha. This all got ripped out eventually.pic.twitter.com/uwquMUiyTL

But, we were starting to see how the game could work in 3D, visually. The gameplay was still a left-to-right game in a flat plane. I started playing with the visual style and Matt got a playable 3D version of the game running.pic.twitter.com/XFELKqXi3e

Then we decided it would be cool if we could twist and turn the tracks. The gameplay would still be 2D, but would really take advantage of the 3D environment. That was very complicated. (you can read the details here, if you like math: http://futuregrind.tumblr.com/post/101354098523/the-math-behind-the-futuregrind-track-editor …)pic.twitter.com/uMHzzWTa8I

And at this point we were having trouble visualizing what the game could look like. I was kind of fumbling around in Blender making stuff that didn't look great, but trying to learn, and doing some rough sketches for environments and stuff.pic.twitter.com/GMwfEnQ6Zv

So we approached @sillikone about doing some concept art for the game. And I'm so glad we did! We talked with him about the feel we were going for, shared my sketches with him, and he came back with some beautiful little sketches that immediately captured the feel we wanted.pic.twitter.com/AFWYUYePox

Then he started doing incredible drawings of bikes. He showed us the value of working with a talented concept artist. He helped us to visualize exactly what we wanted for the game.pic.twitter.com/QjybkWVUol

With that, I was finally able to start working on some proper environments and bike models.pic.twitter.com/b5UNRfQ9yN

At that point we honestly believed that we were going to ship the game by the end of 2015. Ha! We grossly underestimated the amount of work we still had to do. Here's our original logo, and the first bit of promotional art we made for the game.pic.twitter.com/kwM54hyRL9

It took nearly 4 more years to finish the game (with some breaks in the middle). We created 5 new environments, 4 new bikes, refined the gameplay significantly, added a huge story, cut the scope of the story way down, made and remade the UI, ported to consoles, and on and on.pic.twitter.com/mZECZEyiMd

At one point we hired an artist named Brian Yu to help me with the bike modeling. The bikes were at the edge of my modeling skill level, and Brian was able to do an amazing job in much less time than I could have. We prob should have done that sooner. pic.twitter.com/tdhKcADpUo

In the end, we're really happy with where FutureGrind ended up. We know it probably wasn't the best idea to spend so long making it, but we're extremely proud of this game. pic.twitter.com/T9cEOvLwnA