Editing this post to clear up any confusion.
We are now in the final throws of a Release Candidate to implement the rest of the levels/bosses and are tightening up the story line to make SKIPCHASER a complete experience after a little over a year in Early Access.
We still want to play with these characters in a turned-based world, but we will leave that for another day--and another post.
Thank you for your support!
Michael Wilson,
Founder, Ponywolf
Let’s be clear, SKIPCHASER isn’t what anyone would consider a success story. It started as a Ludum Dare game jam entry in April of 2016, went into Steam Early Access March of 2017, and one year later hasn’t really hit its stride as anything more than a colorful but simplistic rogue-like twin-stick shooter.
Despite being featured on Itch.io (thanks BTW) and getting some minor press and streaming play, purchases have been in the low hundreds and our team’s vision to build “Space Diablo” isn’t in the cards--mainly the financial cards.
Don’t get me wrong, our team at Ponywolf clearly isn’t profit focused--a vast majority of our games are free with no ads. We also have released thousands of lines of code to help the gaming community on the whole. Simply put, we build games that we want to play, but at some point a game needs to be sustainable.
Up to now, this statement reads like a studio that’s planning on canceling their flagship title--but this is not the case. During the concepting phase of SKIPCHASER we experimented with many different kinds of game play options, from side scrolling, to click mashing, to what you see today. One of those experiments was a turn-based, drag-to-move control scheme that worked well in both mouse based and touch screen environments.
That said, I’m happy to announce our intent to overhaul SKIPCHASER into a more unique turn based action game and deliver more content updates in 2018. Those of you who supported us in Early Access, this branch of the game will remain available indefinitely, and you will hopefully get another great experience set in the SKIPCHASER universe.