We are Checkpoint Earth, an indie video games team in Toronto.
What are you doing?
We started out wanting to make video games. The reasonable thing to do in such cases would be to create a game in a popular genre, build an audience, find commercial success, and build on that success repeatedly. It is perhaps even the “correct” thing to do in a reality where one needs money to eat, pay the bills, and buy some toys.
We, too, wanted that success. But as we kept attempting with different prototypes and ideas, we learned something about ourselves. We did not have the psychological capacity to make incremental variants of successful games. There was this intense feeling that we would not be playing to our strengths, which also meant that we would be limiting the potential of anything we make. We also had resource constraints. For example, neither one of us are visual artists and it was unrealistic to think we could visually match existing successful games.
After much discussion and brain storming, we had our “aha!” moment with AGENCY. We knew we had a game here that we could build despite our limitations to communicate a message that we think is important. It is an unusual game, to the point where it is easy to misunderstand and underestimate it. But it is an original creation and it is built with so much of our strengths. One of our favourite moments of working on AGENCY is when Craven, who is making original music and sound for the game, fully understood the project.
We cannot wait to show you the full game. We hope you will like it, too! We will release the full game later this year, in 2026.
Who are you?
Checkpoint Earth mainly consists of us: Ana and Ali. However, we are not alone. We have Craven from Auralnauts making original music and sound for AGENCY. We also have some close friends testing our game. All of them are also providing very valuable feedback.
Do you have anything else to add?
AGENCY is made in Unreal Engine 5.7.
This website is made with Lume based on the Tufte theme developed by Ethan Marks. All custom modifications are made by us.
We are very thankful to everyone providing the basic tools used to create these things.
How do I contact you?
For general inquiries, please email [email protected]. If you have questions or comments about AGENCY, contact Ana or Ali directly at [email protected] or [email protected].