What's planned for 2025?
When is the Abyss update coming out?
I want the first beta updates to come in 2 to 3 months from now.
From there I want to spend 2 to 3 more months in the beta. (Heaven and Hell taught me this.)
So we are looking at October or November 2025.
Wow, that's a bummer, why are you so slow at developing the game?
Taking care of physical health.
Enjoying the freedom you guys earned me by spending money on this game. (Thanks btw. <3)
In Austria we say "Gut Ding braucht Weile!" which means "Good things take time!".
Why don't you hire people to speed up development?
Multiple reasons, most of them personal and highly subjective judgement calls by myself.
I don't want to spend time onboarding people. (e.g.: on the code base)
I don't want to spend time managing a team. (maybe next game)
I don't want to spend time in meetings discussing things and trying to convey my ideas to a team.
I like to work very sporadically, sometimes I wake up at 11 and then I go to bed at 3. This is not compatible with being a boss of a business that takes care of employees.
I don't want to spend time on legal things, hiring, taxes, discussing the implications of hiring people with my tax advisor and all that stuff.
All that being said, I make sure to work with freelancers any time it makes sense. (Thank you to all the freelancers who helped me so far. <3)
Okay, I disagree on all those points, but it's your project. That's a long time to wait. What are you even adding to your game? It has like 3 pixels, things can't take that long.
Let's explore that in the following questions!
Will you add localization?
Yes and No. I want to make it possible to translate the game in the next patch. That way the community can work on translations. Official translations will follow when the game exits EA.
Will you add mid-run saving?
Yes.
Will you add a target dummy?
No. You won't need it. I have a solution. Let me cook.
Will you add a modding API?
Yes and No. I am currently working on a system that should technically, eventually, somehow, enable a sort of "data pack"-type modding.
That system will most likely not be in the next update.
Will you add an ingame wiki?
Yes. I don't want anybody ever to have to go to an external site to learn about the game ever again. I plan to make all information, all enemies, stages, items, traits, even RNG manipulation odds, rarity weightings and more available ingame.
Will you add a bestiary to the game?
Yes.
Will you add lots more content to the game?
Yes. Classes, floors, bosses, enemies, items, traits, companions and everything else. That's the easy part.
The game already has so much stuff, I think by adding random stuff you will just dilute the pool and make it more random?
I have a plan. Let me cook. Things will serve a purpose.
Will you expand the lore and characters of the game?
Yes.
Will you make it so 3 doors can spawn instead of just 2?
Maybe.
Sometimes I just die and I don't know what killed me, can you fix that?
Yes. I have some ideas.
Will you add more achievements?
Yes.
Will skills not suck?
Yes. I still have some tricks up my sleeve. Let me cook.
Other than some fundamental changes to skills, you'll also be able to find skills during the run (similar to weapons) and make them part of your build.
Will you fix visual clarity? I want to change the opacity of my own attacks.
Yes, that and more is coming.
Will you explain what all the funky options do in the options menu?
Yes. I want options to explain what they do.
Will you add multiplayer?
No. (Maybe next game.)
Will you make the game harder?
Yes.
I don't want it to be harder, I already struggle!
I'll make sure the game teaches you how to be a pro gamer.
You underestimate me! I'm really bad at bullet hell games!
You'll be fine.
What are you tryin' to tell me? That I can dodge bullets?
I'm trying to tell you that when you're ready... You won't have to.
Will you add looping or an endless mode? I want to continue my characters.
Yes, the next update will add an endless mode. I came up with a very cool concept to make it work in Tiny Rogues.
Runs are already too long, will you fix that? With endless mode, runs will take hours, no?
Well, mid-run saving is finally coming.
Other than that, I have some things planned. For example, you can finish e.g.: 5 runs back to back and after that go and continue all 5 runs in Endless. This way you can e.g.: if you have time in the evening, play a run in the evening and then on the next day on your lunch break, when you only have 10 minutes to game, hop into an endless floor and continue that run there. Then, whenever you find another 10 minutes after that, you can push another floor, and so on.
I hate endless modes. Don't make me play that!
I'll only "force" achievement hunters to engage with it. "Those people" are masochists anyways. (self proclaimed)
Endless mode will unlock no features or progress in the main game. If you just want to keep gaming you can do that and ignore it completely.
Are you still planning on making 3 more big updates?
No. I've noticed the original plan of splitting the content into 3 updates makes no sense. For example, as you maybe could have guessed from the name "On the Edge of Infinity" an endless mode was not planned for the "Into the Abyss" update. Player desires and my ambitions started to bleed into each other.
Let me cook.
Does that mean the next update will be 1.0?
I am not 100% sure yet. I probably will launch it as something like 0.8 or 0.9 and then we take our time polishing the game to the maximum before slapping that 1.0 version number on it.
Will you make DLCs after the game is done?
I have no idea. That's so far in the future I really cannot tell.
Will the game get more expensive?
Hmmmmm, maybe a tiny bit. I feel like people pay for visual fidelity these days, not for content or game quality. I'm quite fine with the price right now. Maybe I'll make it like 10% more expensive.
Hello can you please add random salami in the corner? Like you enter room, see salami corner, and interact with salami, maybe it say, "HELLO". Friendly salami, but you cannot obtain or receive buff. Only greetings from salami. Thank you.
Let me know in the comments below if you'd like me to add the friendly salami.
Where did you learn to be such a good game designer?
I was already pretty enlightened after spending 37 years of my life meditating in a cave in the Himalayas. I only went out to hunt Alaskan bull worms, armed with nothing but a Smith & Wesson Model 500 — chambered in my .500 S&W Magnum, forged from the collective ego of every action hero since 1980.
Other than that, I got lucky and some guy named Esty8Nine streamed Tiny Rogues and it turned out he has a business giving valuable advice to devs. From that point onwards it was very easy. (But don't tell other developers, I'd like to keep my advantage.)
Will you ever be done with yapping in posts? You should spend time making the game not making empty promises.
Chill out brother, some people ask me for more communication, others like you ask me to focus. I am focusing but let's be honest, a post like this takes me like 30 minutes of my evening to write. I am sitting here in my bathrobe casually yapping on. It's not that big of a deal.
(PS: My promises are not empty. You can use that argument on other devs but not on me.)
Those were some answers to some of the questions I see quite often.
Sorry for the long wait on the next update, but as you can see I have decided to tackle a lot of things that I didn't account for originally.
Things like localization, mid-run saving and endless mode.
Funnily enough, the deeper I get into making Tiny Rogues, simple design steps also take a lot longer to figure out. Early on it was so easy, I just slap things into the game, why not, see what sticks. Now it takes a lot more thought and consideration because my vision for the game is clearer and I am more aware of what it really needs.
Any more questions? Drop them below and let me know about the salami thing.
