First off, thank you so much for playing!!
It's been SUCH a great few days since release. Reviews are still 100% positive (????!!!), press reception so far has been overwhelming (did you hear the Waypoint Radio snippet? So good!) and sales have been good enough that I'm confident about continuing to support this game. Thank you all so much for supporting us in this! It's been a long long (6 year) road to get here, and we're just feeling so proud of having pulled it off.
Okay so what I actually want to talk about in this update though, is where we're headed with our post-release support plans for Tenderfoot. I'm breaking this into a couple sections, and mostly I don't want to make any promises just yet! Making this game has turned me into a chaotic goblin creature and I simply cannot be expected to plan that far in the future. But here's where our heads are at:
CONTINUAL:
This stuff is essential to make sure everyone has a good experience with the game, and it'll likely keep me pretty busy for a few days, and then will take up some amount of my attention indefinitely.
- bugfixes, quality of life, and settings needs
- balance tweaks to playable breeds and enemy types
SOONISH:
Hoping to get in some things that feel near-essential, or at least have been on my to-do list for a long, long time, and were easy to put off pre-release, but now are feeling like they need to be in there for this to be a complete game. If bugs don't keep me too busy I think this stuff might be done in a week or two.
- keybind menu
- new game+ challenge modes
We have a few exciting ideas for challenge modes for Tenderfoot that go beyond just cranking up the difficulty slider (though we'll do that too probably). Through development we went through many different designs and some of those ended up being too challenging for the base game but also particularly interesting. One example is a seemingly minor change to the way 'Unnerve' works, where by default any unit being hit from the front is promoted in turn order, and an attack from behind only knocks them back one. When we tried this out the game felt suddenly so much more difficult, too much for the base game, but as a long term player (/developer) I was having a lot more fun with how aggressive it made everything feel. There are a few other changes like this that I'd like to include as options for new playthroughs once you've finished the game once.
LONGER TERM HOPES AND DREAMS:
These are things I'm definitely not promising because I'm not positive how long they'll take, or whether feedback from players will guide us in different directions by the time we get here. But these are the things I most want to do before moving on from this game, just speaking from the vantage of this crisp October morning:
- more variety in enemy types, especially in endgame play
- more variety in starter goblin stats: different goblins have unique traits and different skill options available in their default breed
- (maybe) one or two more advanced hidden playable breeds
- resting places / small homes update with interior battlefield shape variety, distinct architecture, residents when safe
- better synchronization between overworld and combat, especially with foliage placement, so you can 'line up' fights the way you want them by running to a good spot in the overworld
- fishing and/or other chill minigames
Okay that's all for now! Thanks again!
twitter.com/tenderfoot_tact
facebook.com/TenderfootTactics
instagram.com/icewatergames/
discord.gg/B82BDEv
P.S. I wanted nice screenshots but I'm busy so I looked through Steam and stole some faves. Shout out to Yagya/Unicorn who took all of these!