I've made the decision to delay ENCHAIN Early Access to 2022. I'm really sorry about this. I would like to explain my reasoning and talk about what it means for the game in a bit of detail.
Since announcing Early Access, I planned to spend most of my time making new stuff for ENCHAIN. However, I have fallen into a bit of a rabbit hole of fixing what's already there. Many of you have given great feedback about the grapple hook, the movement, and the stamina system. I felt it was important to address those issues before launching. Unfortunately, they have proved to be complicated problems for me to solve, slowing my progress on actual new things for the release (i.e. new bosses, areas, weapons, and so on). This only caused me to get more anxious about the deadline.
A few weeks ago, I seriously considered delaying, and plans started to make sense again. I feel like I know better than to crunch out the release. If that were to happen, I know the end result would be pretty sloppy, just leaving me more clean-up work later. That's why I feel a delay is the best decision I can make right now.
Still, I don't think it's accurate to say that the quality of the game is the only reason for the delay. Personally, I just don't have enough time to both stay healthy and release a game before the end of the year. My life responsibilities have grown more than I expected, having moved a couple of months ago. My university is in-person again, and I have needed to commute frequently. This new lifestyle is not something I'm used to and it makes it really hard for me to find the time to develop games. In other words, I'm just super busy lately. I wish I could work on games full time, but I have to finish my degree first I suppose.
I really should have anticipated these problems earlier and not announced a December release. It bums me out to have to change plans like this. I'm sorry!
I do feel like I owe it to you all to describe what I have gotten to add to ENCHAIN, and my thoughts about it recently. As explained above, I've been stuck doing little other than quality improvements, but I am really happy with the progress I've made there. Some of the changes include reworking the entire enemy physics system, simplifying the enemy stamina system, redesigning the grapple hook, adding a dedicated kick-jump key, and a bunch of minor things. It does feel like these fixes took way more effort than they should have, and I wish they didn't take so much time.
On the bright side, I've felt really good about the game lately, better than I have in the past. I feel more excited about it the more time I have to let my ideas mature, if that makes sense. By taking it slow, I've already thought of a few interesting concepts I want to experiment with. I am sure the final game will be better this way.
Here's a peek at a revised Early Access roadmap, including what I have worked on:
- Better tutorials for core mechanics (WIP)
- Improvements to stamina system and clarity (Mostly done)
- More variety in enemy behaviors (WIP)
- Dynamic difficulty mechanic (WIP)
- Improvements to boss battle design and gameplay (WIP)
- A few NPCs to meet
- More weapons/enemies/bosses/areas
- Improvements to movement feel (Mostly done)
- Player moveset/grapple improvements (WIP)
- Special stuff/upgrades you can buy with the "lantern juice"
- Bug fixes, polish, better options, assist mode, etc. (WIP)
Given some of the the core changes I made are pretty major, I want to update the demo again to gather feedback. Expect a new demo soon if all goes well.
Plus, this was one of the few new things I have made and tweeted about recently: a new enemy! Calling it "Ribble" for now.
That's all I can say so far though, sit tight a bit longer for the release and in the meantime there should be a little demo update!
Thank you for reading, and for supporting the game.