A Letter from Ganymede Games CEO, Jerry Prochazka

Published November 22, 2021 during Kickstarter campaign

First, I want to personally thank those of you who backed us. Your faith is inspirational to the team and me. I want to share something personal with you for those who have yet to support us or are on the fence.

When I was younger, I had all the time in the world to explore my favorite RPGs.

I relished in epic worlds, 100+ hours of gameplay, maxed out achievements, side quests, and sometimes even multiple playthroughs with different characters.

And then, like most of you, life happened.

I don’t have the same time to play epic RPGs today as I did when I first played Baldur’s Gate and Mass Effect, but I still love the characters, stories, headspace, and decisions they offered. Today, I want a digestible experience, something that I can walk away from for a few weeks and come back to without being overwhelmed or lost. I want an RPG where I can finish and feel rewarded, even if I only have 30 minutes before bed in the evening.

So, I founded Ganymede Games with like-minded developers to make games for players like us. We’re on Kickstarter to connect with other RPG players who feel the same way.

I also want to share my motivation and inspiration for doing a deckbuilder.

The truth is that I never got into card games when I was younger. I always felt the collectible ones were a money grab with too much randomness. Then, over time, I started playing them as board games like Dominion and Mystic Vale.

Recently, there have been many card games trying new things. For example, Slay the Spire added roguelike gameplay, spawning a new genre, while SteamWorld Quest added casual role-playing elements. After giving these games a chance, I realized the exciting mechanics and decisions that cards can add to the depth of a game system while being easy to pick up and put down. I also liked that deckbuilders:

• are digestible and allow you to play at your own pace
• reward clever thinking
• allow you to define your playstyle and find unique synergies

And that led us to Xenotheria.

We’re merging RPG mechanics with deckbuilding and card battling, creating an experience tailored for those without a lot of free time. It’s not a roguelike or a roguelite. There are plenty of those games. It’s an RPG with deep skill customization that allows for replayability via different characters with an exciting skill tree that directly affects the cards. In short, your cards evolve as you level up and customize your characters.

Xenotheria has been in development for about a year now. We’ve built an internal prototype and hired the core team. We’re here on Kickstarter today to:

• Validate that we’re not the only gamers out there who feel this way and show our investors that further investment will only make our game better
• Gain valuable feedback from players on our vision for the game
• Raise additional funds to make the best version of Xenotheria possible. These funds go directly into giving us more time to make the game, allowing us to raise additional funds because of your excitement and support

We’re planning to release the first chapter of content in Early Access on Steam in Q4 2022, with the full game release coming Q4 2023. However, we want to involve players in the development process to make the best game possible, so we’ll be running a Beta test in Q2 2022.

Thank you,

Jerry Prochazka