Q: Were you happy with the Halls of the Dead: Faery Tale Adventure II on the PC?
A: No. We had worked tirelessly for two years but we kept cutting back the scope of the game due to financial pressures. By the time the game was near completion, the Dreamers Guild was going bankrupt, and I worked for three months without pay to finish the project and get it into a publishable state. But the game was a pale shadow of what we had intended, and both us and the publisher were in chapter 11.
The failure of both the company and the game - and my breakup with my girlfriend, Allison - left me emotionally drained and burned out for many years. It was at this point that I started to succumb to clinical major depression, and it got worse over the next seven years until I finally got up the courage to go see a doctor and get on anti-depressants, which I still take today.
A sad story. For every happy larper who wastes 26 millions to spend some days on the orbit without a functioning toilet, there are hundreds of those who emerge as smoking ruins from the game development.
For all its drawbacks and swats of unfinished stuff, FTA2 is a surprisingly enjoyable romp.