Hello everyone, I hope all who celebrate had a great Thanksgiving!
For this status update, I've decided to combine my 0.14 plans with a look back on 2025 and my plans moving forward into 2026, so there will be a lot to cover!
Firstly, my plan is for version 0.14 to be an update focused on bug fixes, balancing and QOL improvements. For real this time! This is something I had initially planned to do about a year ago, but that update ended up focused on the tutorial, which I think was the right move at the time. Now more than ever though I feel the game is in need of a polish focused update. This timing works out quite well too, as stickers were the last major new feature I planned on adding during the early access period. This means that, once most existing issues are taken care of, there shouldn't be many major new issues popping up in future updates. So 0.14 will hopefully be the only polish focused update needed for the remainder of the early access period.Timeline wise, 0.14 can be expected sometime in February. Similar to the last holiday season, this means the time between 0.13 and 0.14 will be longer than usual. In the meantime though I still plan on pushing out an update to address some of the bigger issues introduced in 0.13. I will, for example, add stacking when the player has multiple of the same sticker, which will display a number next to a sticker you have multiple of instead of just displaying all duplicates individually. Not sure how I didn't think of that solution earlier!
2025, all things considered, has been an incredible year for Baldi's Basics Plus. Possibly the best one yet!Major updates were mostly able to continue regularly as in 2024, with some huge new additions such as levels 4 and 5 and their associated new level types, and stickers. The game also got a much needed new gameplay trailer which seems to have brought quite a few new players to the game. With that in mind I want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who purchased Baldi's Basics Plus this year, and of course to everyone else who continues to play and follow the game!2025 also saw my trip to GDC, which led to me bringing Nayan Ramachandran onto the project as the project manager. Nayan has been a big help behind the scenes, and working with him is the most important thing that has changed this year. With his help the road to version 1.0 has been getting clearer than ever, and once we find a publisher and bring on more team members his work will become even more important.
As the year has been nearing its end and as I've been working on the horizontal slice, I've been considering how best to go about finishing the game. There is still a lot of work to be done, and as well as the early access updates have been going, I've realized I've been neglecting to make meaningful progress on future development; the stuff intended exclusively for version 1.0.Notably, I've been trying to complete the horizontal slice by the end of the year, and that was going quite well until I shifted gears to get stickers ready for release in version 0.13. I initially figured this would work well as I was already planning on adding sticker functionality as part of the horizontal slice, but ultimately it ended up slowing down progress a lot due to the fact I had to ensure stickers were release ready (And in some ways, they still didn't quite reach that point).So with that in mind, I think we're nearing that time foretold in the development roadmap many years ago: The second update hiatus.
Recently I've started envisioning a pretty solid timeline for how I'd like the rest of development to go, and in order for that timeline to work out I'm going to have to stop doing the regularly scheduled major updates. I certainly don't want to take the steady flow of new content away from you all, but for the sake of finishing the game well I think this is a necessary change.
This means that 0.14 will be the last scheduled major early access update. Beyond that, major early access updates will become much more sparse and sporadic. I may still occasionally release major early access updates during the early access development period when it makes sense (For example, if new content that makes sense for early access happens to be finished it may get pushed out into an early access update), but it will no longer be something I plan around.That said, I will still continue to post status updates approximately every two months. These updates will not delve too deep into dev progress, since I don't want to spoil things, but I will be sure not to leave you all in the dark during the update hiatus. With that in mind, I will be making some changes to Patreon memberships after 0.14 releases since pre-releases and podcasts will become much less common. I appreciate the additional support I receive through Patreon, but please do not feel obligated to stay subscribed for any reason! Only do so if you really want to.For an example of what you can expect from these future status updates, here's an out-of-context screenshot (The first second ever!) of the horizontal slice!
Have fun trying to figure out what the heck is going on here!
Teasers like this and general updates letting you all know things are continuing to move along is the most I'll be able to guarantee from these status updates. Between spoilers and business stuff that may need to stay under wraps it could be hard to find things to share, but I will at the very least be sure to not go silent for an extended period of time.
I hope this news isn't too disappointing to anyone. The past couple of years have been a blast, but I think I'm ready to buckle down on wrapping up the project. This does not mean that it's close to being finished, there is still a ton of work to do. However, not only can I now see the light at the end of the tunnel, but I now also think I have a decent idea of how long it will take to get there.As always, thank you all for the support and your patience! I'm so blessed to have a you all playing and supporting the game. Even if things won't be quite as exciting for the foreseeable future, I think 1.0 will be worth the wait.