Hello everyone, this is Santeri Relander here. I'm the main coder and CEO of Still Running, among other things.
Some of you may have already noticed that I've been replying to the reviews, and forum post's actively. This is what I've always done, ever since I released my first game on Android back in 2013. I feel that engaging with the community is very important, and to make yourself available for any questions and issues that may rise. (I actually very much enjoy talking about a game I've worked on with other people!)
Right now however, I feel overwhelmed. I didn't expect so much attention for the game, and I think I'm going to need to take a couple of days just to focus on the game itself.
A bit of backstory
We've been working on Morbid for almost two years now. We currently have three very talented artist's at Still Running, one of which is also our level designer. We also have our amazing composer here, who's doubling up as our writer. We've all worked long days with the game. Pretty much your basic indie studio. Sweat, tears, blood and all that. They've all done an amazing job with the game, and I couldn't be more proud of the people I work with every day.
However, as for the coding. That's a bit of a different story. The project was originally supposed to be done within 12 months, and it was planned for atleast two full-time coders. Unfortunately, I ended up writing about 90% of the code there is in Morbid.
I was responsible for porting the game to Switch/PS4/Xbox, the player, most enemies, creating the pathfinding to the enemies, shadow system, lighting engine, menu's, blessings screen, UI, EditMode (a tool which others used to place all items and enemies etc), audio engine, collision system, system for breakable assets, blood (which there is a-lot of), menagerie, end credits, profile handling, gamepad handling, loading screens (there's a surprising amount of work on making a loading screen to a game, and to make it load as fast as possible)... You get the point.
Near the end of those 12 months, I realized I wouldn’t be able to make it. I explained the situation to our publisher, and asked for more time. They understood the situation, and wanted to make the game the best it can be. We got more time.
2019 and 2020 have been the most stressful years of my entire life, as there was quite a-lot happening in my personal life as well. So, I was hoping that once the game was out, I would've had the time to relax a little. (We actually never even had a launch party, as we got an alert for possible Corona contamination at the office)
Sounds like an excuse to me...
Right, sorry. I got side tracked...
I wanted to apologize, as only now I understand the expectations for a game like this and I'm sorry I wasn't able to quite meet them. Working on something for so long got me blind for my own work. I can now see quite a few things I want to improve on, such as the stamina, player speed, combat, and parrying. I’ll start working on these, among other things, and you guys should be getting a patch by the end of this week.
As for rebindable keys, ultra-wide support, storage box and such, I hear you. These I’ll work on as soon as possible.
Thank you for understanding, and thank you for reading through my wall of text,
Santeri