Hey all,
yeah, long time since last update .. (have you heard that one before).
But lots of stuff has happened, We mentioned in a previous update that we had a first round of beta testing. We collected feedback, adjusted stuff, added more stuff, removed stuff, balanced stuff, and ran another round of beta testing - and the updated feedback hinted that we were probably moving in the right direction :)
We've been working on this game for a long time now, 2.5 years-something. That's crazy long :D ..We actually had something pretty nice, rather early on in the development - but we felt that .. yeah, it's OK.. But honestly, it wasn't that fun to play. Something was missing, and we couldn't release a game that not even we ourselves thought was fun - and expect others to appreciate it.
So, that's what we've been struggling with now, for a loooooong time. Make it fun to play! It's pretty hard to tell exactly what makes a game fun - it's some magic combination of bits and pieces matching up together that gives that nice feeling when playing it.
And now, we think that we've gotten it in place pretty good. Of course, every gamer out there probably won't think the same - but at least we ourselves think it's "actually" fun to play now! And that even after having played and tested it over and over and over and over again during development. We should be sick of it - but we're really not! That gives us a nice feeling :) (or, should we be worried...? :-P)
It's not perfect, it still has bugs, and will probably have bugs for all eternity - we're a tiny indie studio, remember? "Six sweaty developers" .. Or rather two, actually. The other four of us are just sweaty :-P.
And, we still have tons of features we think would be cool to add to it .. But we think that the known bugs are "manageable" and doesn't break the game play (ok yeah, that'll probably bite back later ^^). And we have lots of features now, making it a fun experience that can be enjoyed for quite some time.
So, we are confident enough to actually declare that the game will be released in late August! (yes, this August, 2022) Nice, huh?
Until then, we're going to continue polishing it, do some stuff that needs to be done in order to release a game, try to figure out something around marketing etc. Stuff like that. And - we're going to enjoy the summer.
We hope you will too! Thanks for sticking around :)
Some more gameplay videos will be posted soon also. Checkout these screenshots until then, where our hero enjoys some views and engages in various combat.
Glad Midsommar / Happy Solstice, all !