Hey Spinners, hope you're well,
An update!
We've been meaning to write, but Daverwob - who does these posts - was dragged away (kicking and screaming!) from XD level updates and onto mobile to help with UI, SFX and more. We're nearing the end of the road for iOS dev, but our publisher wants us to stay tight-lipped, which means we sadly don't have much to say even though we would like to.
They say game development usually takes twice as long as you estimate, and this is pretty much true no matter how you try to mitigate it. We have a habit of going "hey, let's just do this cool thing!" and our publisher is like "hey, let's hit this deadline, but also let's just do a bunch of other cool things and the deadline doesn't matter". A deadly combination for those who like to hit deadlines.
Largely we're just working on optimising iOS now and trying to hit 60fps on older devices. Next up they want to work on Android which should be simply a matter of optimisation as all of the design, UI and polish work has already been done on iOS.
What about XD?
We're all keen to get back to XD, although we won't likely have an update until some time in late January. We are going to have to split the team and have half on XD full-time and half on mobile at this stage, which means updates may be less frequent for XD, but at least they will start happening again. We've still got a bunch of things we want to deliver including:
- A main game mode (alternate to arcade)
- Better multiplayer
- Better background system (which has already been improved on mobile)
- More free tracks
- Better MIDI calibration
- Better tutorials
- Longer easy, normal levels
- Better XD level design
- Weekly challenge with mutators, endless challenge
- Some elements to improve score variation
- Improved editor (mouse control, vertical timescale, ability to shorten / cut tracks for other difficulties)
- More!
Once again, sorry to keep you in the dark, the game is still alive in our hearts, we just haven't had the resources to update XD. Hope everyone plays some awesome games over the break.
Merry Spinstmas! From all the SSD team.