Drysdalia

the best in the west | pfp by @dm0nst3rr | Eternus Deadlock on a good day and VGC enjoyer

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

Spectre is a gem of a game and I'll always cherish the people I met through it, its a shame to see it shut down so soon but that's just how it goes. There's a lot to be said about what went wrong to get us here but that's for another day (probably an eventual youtube video). o7

[Spectre Divide @SpectreDivide]

A message from our CEO about the future of Spectre Divide and Mountaintop Studios.

[Lionzblade @LionzbladeYT]

Why do G2 fly to every single international to shit their pants? Why do they show up in Shanghai, Santiago, Bangkok, or whatever tax-haven arena Riot books this year just to get absolutely bodied in the group stage? It's not for "experience." It's not to "win an international." It's for the frequent flyer points. Every time they qualify for Masters or Champions, the entire roster collectively creams their pants thinking about the miles. While you’re sitting in discord servers malding over a 1v4 clutch, these guys are in the team Discord calculating exactly how many more losses they need before they can upgrade to business class on the way back from London. It all started in 2024. G2 gets invited to their first big international. They show up and suddenly the entire org gets a notification: "Congratulations! You've earned 187,420 SkyMiles™. You are now Gold Elite Status." The players looked at each other like they just discovered a new ability. Icy stopped entrying. Valyn stopped smoking. They all just stared at their phones whispering "Elite... Status...". Now it's a business model. Coach just walks into the pre-match room "Alright boys, today we are running the 'Maximum Layover Strat.' We lose to the China team in regulation, force overtime against the EMEA squad so we get delayed in Tokyo for 14 hours, and if we can throw the decider in a way that sends us through Istanbul layover... that's 45,000 bonus points and free lounge access with unlimited croissants." The analysts aren't even watching VODs anymore. They're on the rewards app. "If we drop to lower bracket round 1 we get routed through Dubai. Dubai has the Emirates lounge with the unlimited champagne. If we somehow make Grands we only get Qatar Airways and their lounge is mid. We cannot afford to win this game. Every single player is in on it. BabyBay shows up to the server with a neck pillow already on. "Sorry guys, gotta keep the neck supported for the 17 hour flight we're about to earn."

[Cory Sifers @PronoiaVGC]

Went 7-5 to place 81st at Toronto with hard trick room! I love this team and I'm happy I made day 2 at my first ever Regional. Wish I could have done better in day 2 but I can't complain after how much luck I had in day 1.

Paste and stuff in comments

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

finally escaped deadlock pisslow

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

what the fuck is happening on spotify

[vegas @vegasdl]

What 12 hours of drifter does to a man 🌕🩸

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯who couldve seen this coming 🤯🤯🤯🫃🤯🤯🤯🤯🤯

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

Its insane how scarce pokemon cards are now, i went to target to grab some random things and saw literally 0 pokemon packs on the shelf near a ton of magic/whatever other tcg packs. Same story at pretty much any store i go to

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@roddydom i think playing a lot of different characters helps but idk exactly how it works

just win more games 4head

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

wanted to work on youtube content during the summer but unfortunately deadlock

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@BixLeGG sell paladins ip to valve so they can add mal'damba to deadlock 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@Tyrantll @badjurTV +1 you know ball

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@roddydom Game of the year 2027 trust 🙏

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

haven't tweeted in over a month wtf im becoming normal

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@itsBrodrian @1047Games @Splitgate 🔥🔥🔥

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

Finally got around to beating animal well, overall very well made, would recommend (only a few hours long for the main story).

Does anyone have banger single player game recs? Been taking a break from competitive stuff recently.

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@itsBrodrian ❤️

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

Spectre is a gem of a game and I'll always cherish the people I met through it, its a shame to see it shut down so soon but that's just how it goes. There's a lot to be said about what went wrong to get us here but that's for another day (probably an eventual youtube video). o7

[Spectre Divide @SpectreDivide]

A message from our CEO about the future of Spectre Divide and Mountaintop Studios.

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@itsBrodrian You did an incredible job with what you had, you’ll bounce back from this 100%. Thank you for everything you did to make Spectre truly special

[Brodrian @itsBrodrian]

I haven't cried this hard in a very long time. This post will get inevitably get long, contain typos, and leave names out by accident, so apologies in advance.

In 2022, Mountaintop took a flier on a guy who'd never worked on a game before. I had a year and a half of professional experience at a games-adjacent brand and many more years running communities as a volunteer under my belt, but this was something entirely new.

I first played what would become Spectre Divide shortly after the team had made the decision to go all-in on the Duality mechanic. I got to see a team of wildly talented and creative designers, artists, engineers, producers, QA, and more build something special from the ground up.

My first real project was managing some of our earliest external playtests with the community and potential investors. I saw our Discord server slowly grow from <100 friends and family members to 1,000 then 10,000 then 100,000.

I can't explain how infectious the energy was during those early years of playtesting before we'd officially unveiled the game.

Watching Truo, SteazE, BixLe, Aira, K2, Moepork, Ski, Indysaurus, Blackfire, and dozens of others fight tooth and nail to reach the top of these seemingly pointless little leaderboards for a game fully under NDA was incredible. I will forever treasure my memories of sitting in call for hours and listening to new players argue about how ridiculously overpowered some gun or ability were after weekend playtests.

Those who played the game a lot understand that there really was something magical about the first time you feel the two body mechanic "click" for you.

The first time you start defusing the bomb and swap bodies to cover yourself.

The first time you tag someone from one body, duck behind cover, swap bodies, and finish them off from a different angle while they're distracted.

The first time you lose a body at the very start of a round and manage to pull off a huge clutch with your surviving body.

The first time you fat-finger the wrong button and accidently throw your Puck into the middle of the whole enemy team when you meant to throw a grenade and your whole team starts losing it in a Discord call.

That shit was special. It just was.

Duality challenged our whole team to think about tactical shooters in genuinely new and fascinating ways. We spent whole nights in after-hours calls theorycrafting crazy plays and strats to pull out in our own internal playtests and tournaments. We'd brainstorm wild abilities, maps, and weapons that would never see the light of day.

We loved Spectre.

It hurt deeply when it became clear that our initial PC launch simply wasn't good enough to make that magic real to a large audience. We knew it was had a long way to go and I wish we could have done more to communicate transparently at the time.

It hurt a lot more to see what was special about the game get totally overshadowed by other narratives.

It kills me that so many people will never know of Spectre as anything more than "Shroud's Game."

Spectre Divide was not "Shroud's Game."

It was Mark's Game where he wrote pages upon pages of worldbuilding documents that we'll never have the chance to bring to life.

It was Jake, Devin, and Michael's Game, where they came up with an endless supply of wildly creative Sponsor ideas and ways to show off Duality.

It was Brent's Game, where he crafted weapons that felt satisfying and interesting to fight with, while putting up with an endless stream of feedback about how everything was both overpowered or underpowered.

It was Sydney, Christian, and Barane's Game, where they added a hundred extra details to the UI to sell the fantasy of being a competitor in this wild, futuristic sport and made it all function how it needed to.

It was Clint and Jud's Game, where they confidently tackled all the wild challenges that came with designing maps for players with two bodies.

It was Jostin, Gabe, Kyle, and Jared's Game, where they meticulously made sure that no bug went undocumented and spent hours upon hours fighting to make the player experience as great as it could be.

It was Marcus, Sam, and Aidan's Game, where they stayed up impossibly late to make sure patches were deployed properly and didn't mind being woken up in the middle of the night to deal with emerging issues.

It was Matt, Kathleen, and Rod's Game, where they dug into every possible option to keep players safe and keep cheater vendors mad as hell at us.

It was Dan, Kevin, and Melvin's Game, where they jammed for endless hours to actually make this crazy game work in-engine without exploding.

It was Orlando, Brandon, Jon, and Andrea's Game, where they dreamed up some of the most gorgeous concept art I've seen and inspired our team's work.

It was Seth, Matt, and Dasha's Game, where they brought to life the people, fashion, and customization of Santai competition.

It was Hans and Andrew's Game, where they brought the environments of Breakwater to life across Spectre's maps.

It was Christian and Dominik's Game, where they made sure that art was actually all working for players and was more than just fun to look at.

It was David, Nhathy, Justin, Andrew, Bob, Jeff, and Alex's Game, where they poured in incredible effort to make sure that a million deeply complicated, critical systems were organized and running smoothly for players.

It was Zully, Andy, Kevin, and Rey's Game, where every single day they helped our different teams stay on track, prioritize, and succeed.

It was Kristi and Sam's Game, where they brought the music, sounds, and audio environments of Spectre to life.

It was Brian's Game, where he designed thoughtful and unique systems for players to engage with and find community through.

It was Justin, Charles, Conner, and Anne's Game, where they meticulously handled thousands of player support tickets and wrote countless help docs to help players deal with all our ups and downs.

It was Tim, Ian, Cris, Dermot, and Josh's Game, where they designed graphics, art, and videos that fueled our marketing and social content.

It was Steven, Joe, Atty, Chris, and Jeff's Game, where they busted their asses to make sure as many people had the opportunity to hear about Spectre.

It was a game that belonged to dozens and dozens of others who I wish I could include with a hundred times more detail than this one post.

It was my game.

It was my game where I spent hundreds of hours playtesting with every name on that list.

It was my game where I wrote up rambling, multi-page docs about how we could make our game even more engaging for players and bring the world to life.

It was my game where I pulled an all-nighter to process playtest applications because our Discord bot broke and I didn't want a single person to miss the chance to play in that playtest.

It was my game that gave me the chance to sing overly intoxicated Taylor Swift duets at karaoke with Orlando.

It was my game where I made friends that I care about so deeply and hope remain in my life for years and years to come.

It was a game that changed my life.

I feel bad for each and every person only ever got to know it as "Shroud's Game." They were never given the chance to see what I got to see.

The most painful part of this whole process is knowing that our game will soon be gone.

When a movie studio or music label close down, preserving that art isn't that complicated. I can watch or listen to all kinds of art from companies that failed to reach financial profitability. I can still emulate my favorite GameCube games or play the campaign for Battlefield 3.

The brutal reality of modern-day live service games is that if I have kids, I will never be able to teach them how to line up a Bloom smoke like I did. I'll never be able to see their eyes light up after hitting a lucky headshot to clutch a win. They'll never discover my easter egg on Metro.

I'll be able to pause a Staycation video and get excited about my favorite parts of the game, but they won't ever experience it.

Don't take anything you love for granted.

I really thought we had a shot at making it and a part of me is still in shock at how quickly it has to come to an end. I have a laundry list of things I wish I had been able to do for our community and our creators, but it is what it is.

I don't know what I'll be doing next or if I'll be able to find work in the current market of the games industry. I'll likely make a separate post about the job search in a couple days when things don't feel as raw. My DMs are open with any leads or opportunities.

From the bottom of my heart, it's been an honor to be able to share this project with all of you. I never could have imagined three years ago that I'd be part of something like this. I wouldn't trade it for anything.

See you in Breakwater

[Drysdalia @Drysdalia]

@dxstiee appreciate you and everyone else who played in them they were a blast 🫡 wish you luck in whatever you pursue next