Edd Parris, the sole developer of the anime-styled Cyberpunk JRPG Jack Move, has been making games for over a decade. The majority of his early work was small-time games designed for his fellow community members to enjoy. This has changed with the release of Jack Move, a futuristic Cyberpunk RPG.
Parris would face personal and professional challenges to bring it to the public’s attention. The trials and tribulations of developing his first commercial game required him to work long part-time hours and move around the world before finally finding a publisher and a great team.
So Romantic was founded to support the transition from hobbyist to the serious game developer. Jack Move, Parris’ turn-based role-playing game, had been in development for years, and new opportunities in life finally pushed Edd to take the leap into the unknown and commit to finishing his first commercial game.
He had to first figure out who would help him scale the game into a polished product. This, however, meant he needed to find a publisher and secure funding. So Romantic’s Edd Parris spoke with Game Rant about the lengthy development process and the challenges of working as a solo developer.
Parris had been working at a marketing agency, building websites and backend systems, but he wanted to see if he could break into the game industry. He’d made a few small games for his friends and the local gaming community in Brighton, UK. However, there was no obvious way for him to change careers.
Hosting game jams and organizing events was one way to get my foot in the door. Bubble Tennis: Infatuation, one of his games, was created for a community event called Games by the Sea, which took place during Brighton Develop, the country’s premier game developer conference similar to GDC.
There were no immediate opportunities as a result of the events, but Parris still had Jack Move, which he had been slowly developing. Since first posting about the game on TIG Source in 2013, Jack Move has gradually grown in popularity. The game’s scope was much larger than his previous works, but it was still a one-man show with limited resources. However, a new turn of events would force Parris to consider a drastic change in his life, with far-reaching consequences for Jack Move as well.
However, So Romantic released Jack Move for PC, Nintendo Switch, and all other major platforms in September 2022, more than nine years after the initial Jack Move post addressing the indie game developer community. As strange as it was for Parris to see other people playing his game, and as stressful as it was to think that some of them might run into bugs, it was also the first time in years that he could finally breathe a little.
Jack Move is now available on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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