Hey guys!
While I'm very exhausted... I'm happy to announce that the final story mission(s) are in. Man it's been a long road... Why do I keep making games with main stories that take over a year to design and script? I'm sure it would take a team of the top psychoanalysts to figure that out - or one guy to just say - because you do things the hard way and are way too optimistic.
Anyway - in regards to the end of the main story - I'm so unsure of it - it's so hard to be self critical. How do you end an open ended game where the player has quite a lot of freedom?
It's been a fairly big mental struggle because - on one hand I had a pretty clear picture of how the story would end, but on the other I felt it was ending too quick and too fast, but on the other (third!) hand I wanted to give the player a bit of freedom as well.
I hope you enjoy the end - I say this knowing that most players won't get there - so for those most die hard players - I truly hope you enjoy the end. It is very important to me, it gives me quite a bit of anxiety to think that you've played all the way to the end and didn't enjoy the ending. Again - quite a bit unsure! But I'll stop rambling now.
What else has been happening?
I've decided to not participate in the Steam Winter sale - to try to get more players to buy at launch versus spreading them out. This is such a crazy thing that I'd never think I'd do something like this as the Seasonal Steam Sales were always a big source of income, lately they've been so competitive that this crazy thought actually won.
What's next?
The end of the main story is quite a big step towards release, next up is me working on the final release trailer. Then doing a big round of memory leak hunting. Then working on marketing elements - and release! The end is in sight.. That's so scary,
What about after release?
While the post release future is quite uncertain - I do want to upgrade the game engine to 64 bit, this should improve performance and stability. I didn't want to do this pre-release as that would delay it and potentially add a ton of issues right at launch.
And post that?
That really depends on how well the game sells. Steam is a very competative market place, with amazing games being frequently on sale. There's also been a lot of confidence lost by players due to shoddy releases and broken promises. Steam has changed the way it handles releases making marketing incredibly important - which is fairly far out of reach for small devs like me.
So the future is very uncertain, but I do know that the past has blessed me with full filling several life long dreams - which wouldn't be possible without you guys. As hard as game dev is - you guys have been a constant stream of support, encouragement and help.
Thank you guys!
Paul