It has now been 18 months since we formed the core of our development team back in August of 2018. We have been so busy building this game that sometimes we forget to keep everyone updated, so with that in mind please continue reading. This will serve as a recap and a look forward as well.
Everything we did before January 1st, 2020 culminated in the playable demo that we completed back in December. The demo included our Homebase player hub and one playable level. Within the level we had 7 patrols for the player to overcome. Each patrol represented a party of critters that would engage the player in turn-based combat featuring our “Battle Trivia” system. If the player made it through all battles in one piece, a boss fight was spawned.
With this playable demo we were able to test our “Amelia” Battle Engine with our Focus Group of testers for the first time. Feedback was outstanding which meant that our first 16 months of effort was well worth the time and effort!
From there we agreed that January and February would be spent refactoring our code to be compliant with the newest build of the Unity video game engine. This means we can soon take advantage of tons of developmental goodies that we were previously unable to access! And that brings us to today. For the next two weeks we will be refactoring the Battle Trivia code itself, updating our versioning systems and reimporting tons of assets. These tasks should bring us to March 4th where our immediate next steps will be to update our 3rd Person Controller, reimport our Battle Mobs and Reimplement and update our existing UI.
Then the real fun will begin! In order to hit our August target for Early Access we will have to work 7 days a week from now until then with no breaks. Our list of items to complete is ambitious but we know we have the dedication and determination to get it done.
Our plan going forward is to provide an update to our community twice per month. We plan to bring everyone behind the scenes so we can show kids what it looks like to develop a video game while it’s being made! Our hope is that kids and their parents will sit down together and read these updates so that they can better understand the many aspects of video game design and hopefully try to make their own games as well! There are tons of YouTube tutorials and the Unity game engine is completely free for personal use, so what are you waiting for!! It’s never too early or late to start!
Thank you so very much for taking time to read this update and for all of the amazing social media support and emails that have been sent our way… the inspiration that we have gained from our community has kept us energized and helps us stay focused on making the coolest educational video game that the world has ever seen!
See you in two weeks!