Happy New Year everyone!
As we begin a new year, I thought it would be good to discuss my thoughts on how 2024 was for Baldi's Basics development and how I plan on tackling things in 2025!
2024
In 2024, I managed to release five major game updates, starting with 0.4 and ending with 0.8. Though there were a few delays, I managed to stick pretty close to the plan on releasing a new major update every two months, and I'm very happy with how that worked out!
That said, going into 2024 I explained that my plan was to essentially just work on stuff and then release whatever was finished when it came time to release a new major version. Despite my intentions however, I often didn't end up developing things that way. Instead I often found myself trying to cram certain features into the game in time for updates or working on new features that were so time consuming they were all I had been able to work on between updates and so they had to be completed within that time frame or else I'd have nothing to push whenever the next update was due to release (This mainly happened with 0.7's field trips). For better and for worse this led to occasional crunching.
Near the end of the year I did experience a bit of burnout, but now that I've had some time to reflect on things I feel that burnout stemmed more from lost development time (Largely due to some IRL issues such as mice and carpet beetles showing up in my house around November which I, admittedly, allowed to distract me from my work way more than I should have) and the stress I felt as a result of falling behind.
2025
With those lessons learned I'm making some lifestyle tweaks going into 2025 to help me work more a bit more consistently than in 2024, put less unnecessary pressure on myself, and make better use of my spare time so I can better recharge my batteries for work hours. I'm pretty happy with my work/life balance, but I think it will be even better in 2025!
To get more specific about Baldi's Basics Plus plans though, I want to outline my plans for the next couple of major updates and then discuss some changes I'll be making to my approach to updates afterwards.
0.9
As I took off work for most of December, I'm just now getting back into the regular development cycle. Instead of pushing 0.9 into the beginning of March to give it a full two-month development cycle however, I still plan on releasing it in about a month from now to maintain a two month gap from the release of 0.8. With that in mind, 0.9 will be mostly, if not entirely, focused on bug fixes. The list of known issues has gotten quite large and I don't want my desire to add new content to overshadow the need to fix bugs, and now seems like a good time to squash them. So, while 0.9 will not be very exciting, it will still be a very important update.
0.10
Version 0.10 however... Well, I'm not going to get into specifics, but my hope is to make this a relatively large update! There's some new content I have planned that I've been very excited about for a while, and I think things are likely to line up to allow me to finish it all in time for 0.10. All I'll say about the update right now is that, if all goes according to plan, conveyor belts will return, but as part of something that will totally change the game. Make of that what you will!
0.11 and Beyond
Once I finish 0.10, my plan is to change up the way I develop updates. As I mentioned above, I ended up falling into some needlessly stressful development habits in 2024. In 2025, after version 0.10 is released, I'm going to more closely stick to my plan of just releasing what is finished when it's time to release new major updates, without worrying about the size of updates. I will still plan on releasing a major update every two months, but to better achieve this goal I will be breaking up the time between updates into two types of development: Immediate and future.
Immediate development time will be focused on developing smaller, self-contained pieces of content that, once finished, can immediately be queued for the next update. Future development time, on the other hand, will be spent developing stuff that is not planned to be released any time soon, or stuff that may take longer than a single update period to finish.
So, once version 0.10 releases, I'll spend about a month working on relatively simple, new content for version 0.11, while the next month will be spent working on stuff such as new/reworked game systems, end-game stuff, secret levels, etc., much of which will not appear in the game until the 1.0 release. This pattern will continue as long as I keep releasing early access updates.
With this development pattern, I believe I'll be able to more consistently provide cool new stuff for each major update, while also getting a chance to work on stuff that will allow me to get closer to wrapping up the game. I still have no idea what version 1.0's release date will be, but for the first time since I started this project I feel like I can see a tiny bit of light at the end of the tunnel... In fact, if all goes well I hope to have an internal build that closely represents the structure of the finished game by the end of the year. This does NOT necessarily mean that I will be close to finishing the game, just that I hope to have reached a point where I can start a new run, play through all the planned levels, and reach something of a real ending. This build would still be crammed full of placeholders and be missing a ton of content, but I'm reaching the point where I think having a complete structure to build off of and refine is important. To be clear, this goal is entirely an internal one. This hypothetical build would not be released publicly or as part of the early access, it's just a development milestone.
I also plan on making some real attempts to get some other folks involved in the project this year. There are certain aspects of the game I know I'll need help with and I'm also still interested in seeking out a publisher. I've already got some concrete plans regarding this this year, so here's hoping I can find some help and speed things up even more!
Conclusion
Just as last year, I think 2025 will be a super exciting year for Baldi's Basics Plus! I hope you all will look forward to what's coming. Thank you all for the support and patience, without which I'd never be able to do this.