Hi everyone,
I've worked on Nightmare Reaper for five years. Much of it was 10-12 hour days for 7 days a week. I was full of passion and had a singular focus for so long. I had to put many things in my life to the back-burner, sometimes, at the cost of family or health. That's why I decided to take a long break after the last patch. What did I do? I've spent a lot of time taking care of my kid before daycare started and we'd see her so much less. I've also tried playing new games for a change. I barely played anything new in 5 years! I also had a small family trip to Vancouver which was quite an ordeal with an 11 month old.
Was it a complete break though? Not by a long shot. Remember, I'm the only one working at Blazing Bit Games at the moment and I've been working on many things at the same time. I've incorporated Blazing Bit Games and the repercussions of this have been occupying me almost full time since. I've also never stopped doing NR support and interacting with the community. Now I'm dealing with publishers in order to bring NR to more people.
I'm sure many of you are eager to hear about what's next for Nighmare Reaper. Many things... First, the certain thing: we're going to continue making patches. I accumulated a pretty large list of bugs and improvements from all the support I've done these last few months. Expect bug fixes, quality of life fixes and performance fixes. I can't promise that all your wishes will come true though, because there's things I disagree with. It's impossible to please everyone and I have to stick to my vision as it's what brought us this far. Also, one of the biggest source of issues is that we're using an older version of Unreal 4. Upgrading that will be a big undertaking.
What about the future of NR? I'm looking at a lot of things right now, and can't promise anything. Here are the top things I'd like to do:
- Steam trading cards as well as NR-themed stuff.
- Console versions.
- Localizations in all major languages.
- Mods. New weapons, enemies, levels, game modes, etc. and even TCs(total conversions).
- Multiplayer. Coop, deathmatch, etc.
Tell me what you think of these or if you have some cool ideas.
As for myself, I'm going to start working on NR game stuff again very soon, but I'll try to have a better work/life balance this time.
Cool stuff that happened after release
- Nightmare Reaper got 82 and 81 on Metacritic and Opencritic respectively!
- We were 8th top seller in all of Steam for a week. https://twitter.com/NightmareReape4/status/1510277664908656640
- Moonmoon streamed the game!
- We managed to hit 2000 reviews with "overwhelmingly positive". https://twitter.com/NightmareReape4/status/1530918839088717833
- There are now a lot of really helpful guides in the Steam community, check them out!
- There's a Nightmare Reaper wiki! Check it out too: https://nightmare-reaper.fandom.com/wiki/Nightmare_Reaper_Wiki
- Nightmare Reaper is verified on the Steam Deck! (although, we don't own a Steam Deck and haven't tested the game on it...)
- There's a NR bundle with Postal Brain Damaged! Get an extra 15% off. https://store.steampowered.com/bundle/26549/Brain_Reaper/
- Pretty cool breakdown of the loot system in NR by Gimmie the Loot, long time friend of NR. (also check his other videos!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lUNdq1Hjtyk
- Awesome recent fan art: https://twitter.com/vanerchest1/status/1537032524450390020
- SO many reviews and youtube videos and smaller streamers. Thank you if you're one.
How to get more frequent updates
Follow @NightmareReape4 on Twitter for up-to-date news and previews.
Join the Discord channel for minute-to-minute updates and to chat directly with the devs.
- ItBurn