Dev Here -

Wow - Two and half months have passed since the initial release and the biggest lesson to be learned was: Quality of Life is important!

The good things first; The game got released in a playable state and the feedback was generally positive. That's already a huge success for a first ever released game of that complexity. It is really nice to hear that you enjoy the game.

Some people also made Youtube videos about the game and it was so good to see them. The videos showed where the game direly needed improvements. The biggest offenders were tutorials, tooltips, the level info screen, tooltips, a few really embarrassing bugs and tooltips. Or in short - Quality of Life to make sure your game experience is a game and not a riddle. There are still QoL-tasks on the checklist but all of them can be dealt with over time during the coming Troubleshoot Thursdays.

The next point on the Roadmap will be The Drag - the most dreaded part of the development plan. The Drag will be about building a unified system to create all the content in the game. Right now I have to juggle various tiny systems and it is really annoying. It is not possible to build one level without touching more than 5 systems and all of them have to be maintained. The Drag will be a boring part and will slow down the overall development. But when this is sufficiently done, all production will go much faster and I have a system I can use for future projects.

But don't be afraid that you won't see any updates. That's why I have the Troubleshoot Thursdays. With them I can make tiny updates every now and then and you still see a steady progress. When I run out of Troubleshoot Thursdays I will begin with Technology Thursdays. During these days I will hop forward the road map and begin to work on future points or I will do a few adjustments to existing systems to make production easier, but may not be very noticeable gameplay wise.

A last thing about PR-Stuff. Originally I planned to write a weekly update. The result of that plan is - I didn't do it. I post my commit messages in Discord but that's all. I prefer to work on the game instead of writing a blog. Let me know if that's okay for you.

Dev Out