Welcome to our first update in a month. We are going to start this update by talking about the behind-the-scenes work we have been doing. Most of you were not aware, but we were talking with a publisher for the past 8 months. The talks with them were going great and they had big plans for Akuto: Mad World. We liked the vision they had for the game and we started developing the game towards that. That was one of the reasons we started changing the gameplay over the past few months. However, last month the deal fell apart and now we are where we were 8 months ago, but with the game split into 2.
So what does that mean for the future of the game?
Well, it is still going to be developed by us, and most likely also published by us.
Our new plan is to combine the 2 versions of the game we have into one, final, polished version. The final version will be more in the direction of the game we have in the experimental branch. That means no minigames, level editor, or singleplayer mode. We are going to bring back Score and Score Hardcore versus mode.
The Stock, and the Score and Score Hardcore, modes will all be available for online play as well. With online, we will be using a server-based architecture instead of P2P. The reason we are going server-based for online play is that we found that the P2P was causing issues with 90% of people who tried to play online. We will have more information about online in the near future.
For the art style, we are going to have new levels made in a similar style to the Acme City level. That means all the levels we currently have in the game are going to be removed, apart from Acme City and Finale. We will have minimum 10 levels in the game at launch, possibly more depending on time and budget constraints.
Specials have been removed from the game, as we found them too similar to power-ups. We also had to reduce the number of power-ups, melee weapons, and ranged weapons so that we can complete the game within our deadline.
We will also be implementing a progression system, where you will unlock new weapons and levels for offline play. The progression system will also unlock hats that you can wear during offline and online games.
We have also found issues with people who tried the experimental branch and then tried to go back to the default branch. This issue is caused by the save file. We recommend going with one branch and staying with it until we release a new build in the near-future.
To make sure that we stick to our deadlines, we are going to be releasing updates 1/2 times per month, instead of our weekly updates. This will allow us to focus more on the content and getting the game completed.
Our goal is to release a stable build that has most of the offline features implemented in mid-December. At that time, we will also remove the experimental branch.
And that should pretty much cover everything. Feel free to leave a message below if there is anything we have missed or you want to ask us something.
Oh yeah, one last thing. The game is coming out of Early Access in Summer ’19.
If you like the game, consider leaving us a review or recommending the game to your friends.
