Development on Hold, Servers will keep Running
Hello Lil' Souls, This is going to be bad news, and I'll try to be as forthright as possible. Let me cue the music I wrote this post to. Lil' Arena's development is on hold - but I'll keep the servers running so we can keep playing the current version as long as we want. It's bee
Hello Lil' Souls,
This is going to be bad news, and I'll try to be as forthright as possible. Let me cue the music I wrote this post to.
Lil' Arena's development is on hold - but I'll keep the servers running so we can keep playing the current version as long as we want.
It's been three months since the last update (v0.27, part 2 of 3 of the combat overhaul) and every day since then I've felt guilty that I couldn't work on this game.
I felt guilty because I thought I could pull it off by myself, but quite frankly, I can't. I wanted to announce something sooner, but I felt I could turn things around. Turns out I couldn't.
The main problem is that Lil' Arena is not my only gig, because I also need to sustain myself. Seeing as it doesn't pay yet (I've felt I can't charge for a MOBA that doesn't have enough players), I develop / design games for other companies as a freelancer to make ends meet.
The problem with that is that my head is filled to the brim with all kinds of different projects :: an academic game, a mobile pvp game, a board game about empathy and a tarot about the future of labor. Yes. A freaking tarot :)
As a result, I find it impossible to focus, and I can't drop the other projects because they pay my bills. So I have to put this one on hold for a while.
The good news is that this isn't the first time Lil' Arena has gone to sleep to wake up stronger and better.
Bit of context ::
- Lil' Arena started as a passion project in 2013.
- Two years later, I froze development as I couldn't sustain it solo
- In 2016, I received funding and got a team together to resume.
- We managed to released the game in Early Access by late 2018.
- January 2019, funds ended but the game didn't have enough players yet.
- I've been working on it solo since then, improving what I can.
I love this game, the lore behind it and I think my team did a fantastic job on many areas. I also think the game needs a lot more work before it can be released, work that I can't hope to pull off alone.
So until I manage to find either a committed team willing to work for revenue sharing, or some funds to pay them, development is on hold. I've considered a kickstarter and as soon as I wrap some of the freelance projects up, I may give it a shot!
Any updates, I will post here and on our Discord
In the meantime, I'll keep making games, writing about them and exploring what this medium can do, so hopefully we'll "meet" again :)
If you want to follow my journey through games, join this mailing list.
Thank you for the feedback throughout these months. I feel the game has become a much more solid experience than it used to be when it launched back in September because of it.
Cheers from the Afterlife,
Your Lil' Developer
Konstantinos "Tall Guy" Vasileiadis