Hi again, thanks for your patience in this *checks notes* 1 YEAR of relative silence from me.
I say relative, because I have been posting some development sneak peaks on bsky, but no announcements or anything like that (and I didn't think to promote it here on steam, my bad), so... whats the status? Wasn't it supposed to release last year? Or this year?
Yes, that's right, it was supposed to be out by now, but it isn't, and it probably won't be for a while yet, HOWEVER:
There has been made a huge amount of progress on the development of the game and it is now at a point where I almost have a fully playable demo ready for you - which currently has no music... yet.
And since it doesn't have music, or quite final sound effects, I don't feel comfortable sharing that demo with you just yet, since it doesn't reflect the full game where there WILL be music to enjoy while solving puzzles.
Also, while I was posting to bsky for all of november last year, to test the waters of marketing, I ended up proving to myself that I can only really focus on one thing at a time in terms of working on the game vs. communicating / marketing it. Case in point: I roughly spent 3 hours making this update (writing the post, formatting the post, taking screenshots for the header, editing the screenshot/header to look nice, proofreading the post, etc...)
So all that is to say, it will probably be another while until the next update and even later until release, since I would rather have something substantial to show for it, or something important to communicate, like this breakdown of the status of development on the game:
As of 12th of april 2025, here's a breakdown of the development status of Starshapes, all of which are rough estimates:
Development Progress Estimates:
Backend Systems: 100%
Bonus Puzzles: 95%
Main Puzzles: 60%
Gameplay systems / animation: 90%
UI: 85%
Sounds: 50%
Environment Art / Graphics: 40%
Music: 20%
Total (540%) / 8 = ~67.5% Complete.
So... if it took 3 years since the start of development to get to 67.5%, does that mean it'll take another year to get 22,5 more percent done? And then another half-ish year for the remaining 10% to get to 100%?
The answer is:
- I don't know.
This is my first commercial game and as a solo developer, I have had to learn a ton of different things throughout this project to get this far, all while studying and taking care of myself physically and mentally, while also trying to avoid burnout...
All of these things have made it super difficult for me to estimate when the game will be finished, and even though at this point, I just have a few major things left to finish up before I can say that the game is ready, each of those things could be wayy easier or wayyy harder to do, than I think - which I can confidently say from experience through this project...
So essentially, the game is for sure more than halfway done, and I can now see fairly clearly what the final game will be like overall, since all of the essential stuff is already mostly final.
Anyway, here's also a quick sidenote: Over the years, I've done a lot of playtesting and gathered tons of feedback (from playtesters, in person), and one thing that always comes up is "this game would be perfect on mobile". So that's it, I've decided that there will be a mobile port, but only after the game is finished and released on Steam/PC.
In the end, you might be wondering:
"What's your next goal?"
Actually, I have three:
- Music for the game
- Final Trailer / Steam page content
- Demo
...after that, I'll focus on finishing the game and getting it ready for release, which includes marketing work...
So yeah. That's where I'm currently at, and as I mentioned, real life keeps throwing me off - I'm currently still studying until summer next year and how much that will affect development, is hard to say...
But I will say this:
I am fully committed to finishing this game and releasing it in a state that is more than acceptable (which is apparently a high bar these days!), so I hope you can wait a little longer for the game to become the best version of itself, that it can possibly be!
Once again, thanks for your continued patience!
-Peter