Hello friend, it's been a while, hasn't it?
We're writing a short update to let you know what has been going on in our lives, the game, and what we plan to do in 2022 and beyond. It will start a tad bleak, but it gets better, we promise.
The bad.
Things haven't been the best for us, for years now. When we booted up the project, we intended to get funding via Kickstarter, to remain independent, and, you know, fed.
That didn't happen.
The backup plan was to find a publisher that believes in us, wants to grow and be successful together and reap the rewards together.
That didn't happen either, but we were smart enough to do research beforehand and avoid effectively selling the game, the IP, and becoming mere employees to our own dream.
More than 4 years of fulltime / overtime working on the game drained us mentally, emotionally, and financially. Effectively alone, we only had each other to rely on and as time went on, mutual support became hard to provide. We were both running on empty.
Eventually, the bank accounts went into the red and we could not continue at the desired pace. We decided to pause development and recharge our batteries. It took a year, but we are now more stable.
The good.
The Underground King isn't just a game we want to make / play / sell. It represents us and our chosen profession. One with programming, the other with art, we put pieces of ourselves into the game to create something that has the best of both, which becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Give up on development? That's saying to give up being developers, which is so ludicrous, it's funny.
Circumstances have been against us but it's nowhere near enough to break us, oh no.
When we launched the game in Early Access (perhaps, too early), we started gathering players. Some supportive, others, well, let's say critical. But it was AMAZING to connect to complete strangers through the medium of games! Something we experience, as players, with other video games. At no point does making games feel like a wrong choice, despite the hurdles we had to push through.
The future.
Inbetween day jobs, we have been working on T.U.K. The plan is to switch from 2D racing to a fully 3D environment. The procedural generation will also be elevated since we are dropping a lot of constraints that the 2D tools forced upon us. Ironically, going 3D is also more performant as the industry has invested a lot of technology in this regard.
It's too raw in order to show anything RIGHT NOW, but from January 2022 and beyond, we will return to regular updates. For the first three months or so, we will be limited to screenshots of in-game renders, but we want to have a beta branch on Steam asap, where people can beta test the new gameplay.
Since the game's art style is consistent throughout, we will apply the new 3D tech to the map as well, having a city you can navigate and explore.
The break in development has done us good from a game design perspective as well. We realized issues in design we could not see before and alongside the visual refactoring, we will fix them with very little effort. It's quite funny to experience the "can't see the forest for the trees" happening to you.
That's about it! Not quite a SHORT update but we can hardly contain our excitement.
We leave you with an old render of the 3D racing environment. Today's version is way juicier, but you will have to be patient till we are ready ;)
Best wishes,
Alex & Alex
