I am so happy I finally have time to write to you! Last week kept me pretty busy, but was super special! The team finally got together for our very first real company trip in Cologne! We rented this charming old house for all of us for a whole week to spend time with each other and of course go to Gamescom. But the reason it was so special was that it was the very first time most of us met in real life! Ive been looking forward to this for months!
Oh, I forgot, I need to give you some background! (Note to myself, I should write more about work in my diary...) Oh, I forgot, I need to give you some background! (Note to myself, I should write more about work in my diary...) So, moi rai games was started by Sersch some years ago, when he was working on Monster Sanctuary. He was working mostly alone but later with help from his brother and his wife and at some point our first Community Manager from the US. Most of the team gradually joined after Monster Sanctuarys release (you are my diary, so you should remember, I joined around April 2021) from all over Germany, US, the Netherlands and Brazil! As we are all spread around the world, we never had an actual office. Working together remotely works great. We can choose our hours, don't have to commute somewhere and we still manage to spend quality time as a team playing stuff together online or having virtual coffee dates. But still meeting in real life is different and thats why this trip was so so so sooo exciting for all of us!!! And maaaaan it was so cool to meet everyone! We taught each other our native languages (I can say so much cool stuff in BR Portuguese now huehuehue), had a huge snack pile and one of us (no name dropping) did a ranking of who seemed the most different from their online-version.
One of the first things we did was a hike! I guess thats what you do at teambuilding events. We went up Drachenfels and Drachenburg (Dragon Fort). I felt like that was a bit dangerous since there were dragons living in that forest, but well, the others are badasses, what can I do
The view we got was pretty nice! All the way down and into all the little castle windows... Ooooooh... so many d e t a i l s I would have missed, if I didn't look c l o s e e n o u g h.
The next day, we mostly enjoyed spending time together! We played a lot of cool boardgames (cant believe I forgot to take a pic of our boardgame pile!), for example Dune. Even though its a game of betrayal, our programmer Manoah never betrayed me in our alliance. Team building works! Yeahi! We also tried some [strike]black magic potion[/strike] cachaa that our pixel artist Jorge brought from Brazil with a fruit named Jambu, that makes your tongue numb for a couple of minutes. Crazy! And I got a new game idea! Monster charades with Monster Sanctuary and Aethermancer monsters! Man, diary, try doing an Ooze, that was hard... Oh!!! And I forgot to mention the great food we had in Cologne! Yummyyyyy ~
Wednesday was Gamescom day, woohoo! As expected, most of the time was spent in the Indie arena (since indie games are way cooler than AAA anyway, duh) playing all sorts of cool demos.
We actually also met a new colleague who will join us very soon! Gamescom was a really cool experience and I also took a lot of notes in case we ever get to have a booth there for Aethermancer...
We didnt do that much work on Aethermancer this week (except capturing videos for social media! Are you proud of me diary?), but you know what? It was the right thing to do. All the great moments we had together made us only stronger as a team and I really believe that this will make Aethermancer an even better game!
Our trip came to an end at some point, which left a bittersweet taste and I do feel a little sad, but then again I am sure well meet again and until then, I will just have to destroy the others online playing Overcooked! Talk to you later, Diary. Galina

Hope you enjoyed this page of our Community Manager's diary (and maybe found what's hidden in this devlog)! Now it's time to head back to work on Aethermancer! This fall will definitely be exciting...