I'm in Austin, about to fly home to Amsterdam. Hidden Folks showed here at Fantastic Arcade, an event for a group of like-minded, artistic, and heartwarming people that all make beautiful video games. It was hugely inspiring, with games like 'Everything' by David O'Reilly, 'Loot Rascals' by Hollow Ponds, and 'TumbleSeed' by a group of friends in Chicago. I highly, highly recommend you to look up these and so many more games from Fantastic Arcade here!
If you're curious how Hidden Folks is made, I gave a talk you can watch on Twitch's archive! And oh man... Hidden Folks looks so good on a cinema screen!
Development timeline
Alright, so, I've decided to share with you a more elaborate plan on releasing Hidden Folks. Making and releasing multi-platform games is really hard, so I hope this gives you insight into the effort that goes into it.
The following is our current development timeline, based on everything we know about making the game at this point, for 15 hours of gameplay / 20 levels on release, for PC, Mac, Linux, iOS, and Apple TV:
- Oct. 23: base interactions, interface iteration
- Nov. 30: half of all levels done
- Mid-January: all levels done, QA focus / private beta
- Mid-February: release
- March: content update 1
- April: content update 2
- May: content update 3
You could say this timeline is a general timeline, and you have to be aware that there are various simultaneous timelines not even mentioned in there, like: sounds, various interface things, playtesting, creating promotional assets, merch, business things, marketing things like reaching out to people, platform-specific integrations, and many, many other tiny things. Woooof, there is a lot to do still, loads of timelines, and we are working around the clock to make all this happen as soon as possible - or at all.
The timeline above is a plan, which means this isn't set in stone, but it is what we strive for. Right now, we have about 5 levels which we feel confident about putting in the final build of the game, so there are still a lot of levels to build. The biggest push for content will happen in November and December. After that, we will need to playtest the game A LOT to make sure the levels work the way we intend to, savegames don't go corrupt, stuff like that. Quality Assurance (QA) helps a lot here, but we are also considering organising a private beta. More on that closer to the release of the game.
New interactions
The whole idea of Hidden Folks is based on interactions, and we continue to add and work on new interactions throughout the development process. Most recently, we've added a lot of interactions to our desert themed level. Without spoiling too much of the game, here's two of those:
Keep an eye out on both Sylvain's and my twitter account for more GIFs as we work on the game!