On 1. Oct 2019 we started with the concept for "DLC2"; a 3 month mini project.
On 1. Oct 2021 we're releasing "Supraland Six Inches Under" into beta testing.
Testing
Today we start sending out beta keys to the crowdfunding backers from 2019.
We separated you into 2 groups. The first group will get the keys today; the 2nd group will get their keys in a few weeks, after the first group gave us a lot of feedback and we worked it into the game. This is to make sure we have fresh perspectives on a more polished state of the game lateron.
If you are a Tier2 backer and you don't have an email by tomorrow, check your spam folder.
Looking forward to your feedback and suggestions! The best way to stay up to date is being on the Supraland Discord
And no; you cannot become a backer anymore.
SIU Development
The making of Six Inches Under (SIU) has really been an odyssey because none of us were prepared for how big it became, but we ultimately ended up with something we're really confident about.
We did major changes multiple times because things just didn't feel good. I think the big changes were worth it and our early testers have been very positive and they had no preknowledge of the Supraland series.
Some of the big things we had to change:
We had this system with different kind of ores in the map and you could mine with your pickaxe. But it was simply not fun for anyone so we completely cut all of that and replaced it with a good old money system. It was bad because the mining process (or the inability to do so because of lacking pickaxe quality) was just annoying and it creates a big mess if you have 4 currencies. Now we're back to one currency.
The other big change was that halfway we noticed the no-enemies-approach of the game didn't feel right. So we designed a combat system with new enemy types from the ground up and integrated it for a long time. Without enemies you could not really reward the player with anything for finding the plenty secrets. Also the world felt pretty tension-less. The combat is far from perfect now, but it's taking a lot different direction from Supraland 1. I'm curious what you think.
The introduction of the abilities (which you mostly already know, but not all) were pretty short but since we swapped from DLC to Standalone we had to build new regions for these abilities with good introductions. Because now we can't expect all players to know them already. I guess most players of this game will never have played Supraland 1 before.
We also just weeks ago did a major change to core parts of the story because it was just too convoluted and weird. While you're making this stuff up everything seems obvious. But players never get that deep into it and won't really understand what's happening unless it's really simple and straight forward. I really like what we have now and it has a really bizarre twist that is so weird that I love it. And I don't think I'm spoiling much when I say: While Supraland solved racism and 'Crash' solved Flat Earthers, SIU solves capitalism :D
SL2
After those first two games will have solved three of the world's major problems, Supraworld (SL2) will probably not solve anything like that but it will be a gaming-satire most of all. A meta comment on generic gaming tropes, sort of.
Three of us having been working on Suprworld all year already creating assets and I've actually started building the world of the game recently.
When SIU is out of the door the rest of the team will join us on this project. I honestly love it so much already!
I can share some of the assets that we built. Three images are just asset tests, one image is actually from the game; in a very very early development stage.
https://imgur.com/a/HfECJ0d