HEYO FRIENDS! 💜
It's been a while, hasn't it? It feels like ages since I last wrote a devlog.
And man did I miss writing Nova's Diary.
For those out of the loop, I intented to release this devlog much sooner, but due to illness (that I'm still recovering from) I had to postpone it by a week, which I honestly am a little sad about, considering that we've been silent for a whole week, and the release week at that! But hey, it is what it is.
[ THE DRONE'S OUT OF THE BAG ]
Soo yeah, we did it. We actually released our first title ever.
Boy do I remember being all anxious on Discord (we couldn't organize a release party in-person, sadly), running all kinds of thoughts in my head to see if we did everything correctly and didn't miss anything.
And as much as I would have loved to be the guy that pressed the big green button that released the game, that honour went to one of our Programmers, Roberto, who is also the third person who got to adventure in this intricate and anxiety-inducing wonderful and inspiring journey that is Steamworks (Just kidding, Steam actually has a very nice system, we just needed to get used to it :P )
But even so, it felt great. It felt great to see the little pop-up image saying that our game, a game where we spent 3 years of our life, was finally out there. And WE felt great knowing that were people who were going to purchase our game and play it out.
I personally hope to feel this same feeling again and again, for the rest of my journey as a gamedev.
And I'm sure I'm not the only one here at Safe Place Studio who shares the same hope.
[ LOOKING BACK ]
Little bit of a history lesson for the new friends around here: Venice started off as a school project back in November 2019, back when we were still studying at a place named Event Horizon School. The first prototype didn't have much, it was just this young-looking character zooming around Venice with an hoverboard (and a yo-yo that could function as a grappling hook - rest in peace, gone but not forgotten o7), picking up the very very first iteration of vibes along the way.
It didn't lean that much into climate change either, it was something that we added after hearing about the news of a record high-tide in Venice that happened that same year.
Anyway, August 2020: we finish up our studies and the first demo releases on itch.io. And damn did it went viral! Not only we were featured on the homepage, but we were also featured on freaking GXCorner of OperaGX!
The hype was real, and only strenghtened our will to continue working on Venice 2089.
You can actually still visit the itch.io page, I just did and went down memory lane hard. Now that I'm thinking about it, maybe I should update it, y'know, considering we released the full title. 🤔
With spirits high, we decided soon after to develop an updated version of the demo to put up on Steam, that released on January 25 2021. And yes, it's the same that it's still available today.
Man, 2021 was a wild year. Despite not having much luck in terms of publishers we were going full sails on promoting the game. We took parts in A LOT of events, like LudoNarraCon (Still the best event we have attended hands down - my opinion ofc), and thanks to our friends at Wholesome Direct we managed to attend to the Guerrilla Collective, where we announced our Kickstarter campaign!
...Except we had to wait like, 5 months for it to actually start? And it failed too???
Yeah, our spin at Kickstarter didn't turn out so great as we've believed, but guess what? To this day I still believe it helped us. Sure, call me a die-hard optimist, but thanks to our tank we now know A WHOLE LOT more about the ins-and-outs of Kickstarter, and the crowdfunding industry as a whole.
Besides, it's not like we didn't find new fans along the way. For a team that was at their first ever title, without any prior direct experience in most fields, it was something!
So we started 2022 with a renewed willpower: to publish the game, no matter what, in that year.
AND JUST THAT WE DID. In the meantime we managed to score at new events, talks, podcasts and even an internationally known event in Pisa back in July (I wrote a whole devlog about that if you're interested 👀). We still weren't finding any publisher for Venice, but at least we were starting to get recognized around.
At last, we found a release date. October 14th, 2022.
And I kid you not saying that we RACED for that date.
Not everyone was working on Venice, because we already were in post-production, so our focus was 110% on fixing what was broken, and polishing what was already in; but let me tell you this:
THOSE WHO STILL WERE, DELIVERED NOT ONLY THEIR 110%, BUT WENT THE EXTRA MILE!
And that brings us back to the start of this devlog, at October 14th, on Discord, waiting to press that big green button.
What a journey it has been.
[ LOOKING FORWARD ]
Venice 2089 is finally out, that's great and all... But what's next? Do we plan on continuing to work on it?
Yeah... Kinda?
A better explanation: I saw someone using the term "roadmap" in the discussions a couple days ago, and I fear that I may have been rightfully misunderstood when I said "Post-launch support", so I'd like to clear things up a little:
WE CURRENTLY DO NOT HAVE PLANS TO ADD NEW CONTENT INTO THE GAME.
I'm sorry if you feel disappointed, I probably should have chosen my words more carefully in the note.
However, while we may not have plans to further expand the world of Venice in 2089, what we do have plans for is to improve the experience that people will have with the game, which can be done through bugfixing and further optimization.
...AND HOW EXACTLY DO WE PLAN TO DO THAT?
Well, for starters... We are going to pull out the demo.
Reason is, and I'm suuure you can understand, that it's a little... Outdated.
As I've written above, it basically is the same demo from January 2021, without anything new and prior to all the changes that we applied to the game.
"But can't you just make a new demo based on the final game?" I hear you ask, and while it is indeed a great idea, we don't feel it being our best course of action. (translated: we don't have the resources to create a new demo right now, and honestly told, we kinda want to start working on something else, at least for a while)
Secondly, is increasing our presence in the discussion tab. As of now, I've been the only one running the place, replying to threads and conveying bug reports and stuff to the rest of the team. And considering that we've received a generous number of reports since our release, I think it's better for everyone to have more people out there giving assistance. So you might see a couple of more people with the [developer] tag around the discussions.
(spoiler: they are all better than me at helping people)
Last but not least, is managing patches and bugfixes. We plan to catalog all current and future bugs in order of priority, depending on the impact they have on the game and their complexity, and to fix them accordingly, while releasing patches in cycles (we're still working on that).
For example, since release we've been busy trying to fix a big that caused infinite loading screens after closing and opening the game again. Bugs like this take the highest priority due to them being game-breaking (and in this case, save-corrupting too). Due to the gravity of bugs like these, as soon as they're fixed they are immediately pushed in the live stage (duh, what's why they are called hotfixes).
Right now we are working on fixing a couple more bugs (like the drone not working on some occasions and quest items staying in the inventory after its related quest is done) that have a slightly lower priority, and will probably release in our very first big Patch.
So, as I said in the previous note, KEEP THOSE BUG REPORTS COMING!
Another (kinda secret) reason I like this system is that I can, if I want, tinker again with the dialogues. Thank the stars I haven't seen any typo so far (but I fear there might be some out there), but I feel like some dialogues could be improved over time, made easier to read.
Because I know that I'm not an English native speaker, and there have been occasions throughout the development of Venice where I said to myself "Hold on, this is slang/not standard English", mainly because I associated a character with a particular set of habits (like Nova referring to their Grandfather as 'Pa) or because the english that I found in media I consume (be it books, video or games or whatnot) influence the way I write. So yeah, not a huge thing to think about, but it'd be a nice plus for me.
Oh, and as I said I'm probably going to create a new pinned thread on the discussion tab where I'll write the currently Known Bugs that aren't yet fixed.
OH YEAH AND I'M PROBABLY GOING TO RELEASE THE FIRST HOTFIX AFTER THIS DEVLOG!
[ LOOKING FORWARD ...AGAIN]
We're nearing the end of this devlog.
To be honest, I doubt that I'll write anything else for a long while, so I'm stalling as long as I can just to write something else lol.
...
Soooooo, I may have already spoiled the surprise a couple of paragraphs ago but yeah, we want to make a new game.
If you wanna stay up-to-date, follow our socials. For now they are all branded as Venice 2089, but I believe that I'll soon change that to our studio's name.
Venice has been a great journey, I already said that, but it's just the first title, the tip of the iceberg.
We want to keep working together, doing things that we enjoy, and making impactful games.
And I'm sure Safe Place Studio is up to the task.
(too cheesy right? I can't help it)
I guess that's all then. Thanks for reading these devlogs. I look forward to write them again, in the future.
TrustAlpha, signing off.
(OK that was defo cheesy, borderline cringe. BUT IT SOUNDED SO COOL WHEN I READ THAT IN MY MIND)