The Beginning of the End
Don’t worry this isn’t a post about how we’re giving up. It is in fact the complete opposite of that!
Drifter has been in development for quite some time, almost going on 4 years now! It’s been somewhat slow going at times mainly because it’s a fairly big game and we’re a pretty small team. That said we definitely wouldn’t be here and Drifter wouldn’t exist as it does if it weren’t for the support of amazing people like you who believe in us and have been supporting us along the way.
Trying to juggle development and promotion over such a protracted development cycle has caused a lot of slip ups and it feels like its been hard at times to keep the momentum going. Thankfully we have been fortunate enough to have a game that suits itself well to Early Access and that people have been playing and enjoying it for quite some time now but it is about time we thought about pushing it towards version 1.0 and a proper release.
While there is still quite a lot of work to be done it feels like the end is in sight and if we can maintain a steady pace of development and enthusiasm throughout the rest of the year we’ll be very close to if not at 1.0 before the year is out!
That’s the idea behind The Year of Drifter: we’re going to try and turn the final push towards 1.0 throughout the rest of the year into a celebration of the development of the game. It’s my feeling that this will not only help us keep our pace up but it’ll be pretty interesting to you so you can stay tuned and watch as things come together. We’ll be trying some new stuff as well like live streaming and feature polls and, despite it being a single player only game, I have some ideas of some in-game events that we’re going to be running later on in the summer and going into the fall.
It should be an exciting time and I’ll hope you’ll join us!
Posters
As part of The Year of Drifter, and considering that folks have occasionally complained about the cost of shipping, I’ve managed to figure out how to offer FREE SHIPPING on the remaining posters and I’m offering a special deal where you can buy a poster and a copy of the game together as well.
Not only is it a sweet poster but buying one helps support the development of the game!
http://driftergame.com/posters.php
0.6.2 Is Incoming
I’m just putting the finishing touches on 0.6.2 and that’ll be released by this weekend most likely!
I’ll reserve a full post to go into the gory details but in 0.6.2 I’ve finally fixed the last of the docking queue bugs so you should never again get stuck waiting to launch your ship!
Also you’ll be able to buy special containers that you can permanently place in space as extra storage that you can use while mining (or being an evil pirate) so you don’t need to go back to base as often.
Finally I’m introducing a new mechanic where you can override the hyperspace jump cooldown if you need or want to jump more quickly. Obviously there will be a risk to doing this but I think it should add an interesting dynamic to the game.
0.7.0 And Beyond
After 0.6.2 I’m going to get back to working on the exploration related feature I keep teasing* as the next major milestone but do keep an eye on the Development Roadmap to see a broad list of what I have planned for the coming weeks and months.
*And no, it’s not wormholes (precisely).