small cheer and great welcome makes a merry feast

Welcome to this blog, which intends to document the progress and processes behind creating Tea For Three Studios’ upcoming game, Shax  (or shax—we’ve not yet decided on the stylisation). Samantha here—hope you’re ready for some reading!

The (Pre-)Beginning

Sometime in March (2016), about a week before I submitted my PhD thesis in Shakespeare studies in the UK, I went searching for some funfunfun academic conferences to attend in Europebigland before I had to return to my native Australia. I stumbled upon a super awesome conference that would be held during the weekend of Shakespeare’s 400th deathiversary in the Kronborg Castle of Hamlet’s Elsinore. While my research area was Shakespeare film adaptations (and specifically the function/s of film soundtracks), I saw there was a panel called ‘Shakespeare and Technology’. In my ‘spare time’, I had been writing iOS games with my amazing indie team at Tea For Three Studios, and had kept a Shakespearean production at the back of my mind. The conference—and Shakespeare’s 400th deathiversary—seemed like a pretty good time to play around with some ideas, and after some transcontinental brainstorming with Melody, our team’s extraordinary games designer and developer, we had a very rough idea about our next project: Shax.

In April, we brainstormed a bit more, and then put together a very rough prototype for my presentation at the Elsinore Conference. But more importantly, we established some fundamental ideas about our Shakespearean game:

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