Hello shatanists,
Probably many of you are wondering why we are not just releasing a demo. I've already written a post about our Heavy Duty benchmark, which you rated extremely high, thank you. But what is this benchmark all about?
We are not going to beat around the bush, Booze Master was meant to be a primitive simulator where you would experience the moonshine production process. There were supposed to be several dozen recipes for moonshine, simple interactions with village sellers, well-known flipper mechanics, an uncomplicated competition system... And that's it. Booze Master was supposed to be a cheap game that we'd make in a year. Sure, we planned a few twists, like police raids, but they were planned to function as a delicate ornament.
So what happened? Appetite grew with eating. Ambitions grew as skills grew.
- Do you put an NPC on the map? You want to talk to them, not just buy ingredients.
- Talk to the NPC? Why not prepare a decent storyline?
- Plot? Let's make a voiceovered mocument.
- Buy ingredients? And why not produce them yourself?
- Produce in your own enterprise? Let's add an expansion system.
- Why only moonshine? Let's add a beer.
- And wine.
- And more customers, with more demand.
- The world is big? Let's add means of transport...
- And skills.
- And the experience system.
- And let's balance these features so that they fit together.
- And that the core loop consisting in the execution of generated orders does not suffer.
See? It's becoming a sandbox. Just like Priest. That's how we do things, we like to go fucking crazy with features. You can accuse us of not being able to stick to the original plan and we will expand the game endlessly. The first part of the sentence is true, we like to discover the game as we develop it. But when our intuition tells us that it's good enough, it's good enough, and we decide not to add more "must have" cards to our Trello list. New ideas will go to "nice to have". And we're almost there.
The process was long and hard, but we've finally found our dev identity. Dense, intense sandbox mockumentaries are our way of making video games. Now everything will be easier. Moonshining will be fun.
We still have a bit of "must have" such as toboggan runs, drinking competitions, gambling, pub running, but there is some room for suggestions. If you have any ideas on what to fill the world with, let us know. We want and we have the skills to fulfill your whims.
ːVolgarrChaliceː