PRICING:
This price increase will take place close to the next patch, which is probably a week away. The price, to be more precise, will increase from 7.99$ to 9:99$ (This will be the change of the base value, the prices will be adjusted for different currencies and regions).
Full disclosure: As a solo gamedev I always feel bad asking for money for my games at all, but I really think this game is worth 10$* and I have to muster the courage to ask for it.
With that said: To all of you whom have played the gamed: Does this seem fair? You surley have bought, played and compared many games, similar or not, and have some thoughts about the worth of Grim Nights 2. Honestly, let me know in the comments - I find these things horribly difficult.
ROUGH ROADMAP:
(All patches will of course include improvements, bug fixes and be responsive to feedback in general.)
- Next patch will mainly make your cultures and starting villagers customizable.
- The next three patches will all add one of the three biomes currently not available: Desert, Savanna and Rainforest. Each of them will also have some main focus other than the biome, like making necromancy playable, adding crypts and more dangers underground, more weapons and perhaps technology, other factions, new enemies, new scenarios or such.
- The last of these, or the one after that, will add world travel and will probably be the biggest patch so far. It might even mark the end of Early Access. You will be able to visit other factions, even ones you have created yourself (or their ruins if that gameplay ended up that way).
- After this there will be some patches adding more locations to visits, perhaps dungeons, old ruins, abandonded villages etc, which will be related to quests/scenarios or just for looting or exploring. I also want to add world events like massive hordes travelling along the map, maybe destroying factions you have relations with, or being defeated by them. Maybe you will be glad that you picked a remote island as entire continents gets swallowed by undead?
- After this I want to create tools for modding the game. The first thing will probably be a prefab-editor, which allows you to create buildings or caves or ruins to be randomly spawned in the world.
- Other stuff I really want in the game and might be added in some of the patches: vampires, statues, historical figures, legendary/cursed items, disease, curses, betrayal, more indepth relations like villagers falling in love, and stat changes due to aging and eventually dying (currently your villagers will age, their hair turn gray and they get more wrinkles, but never die due to old age).
Well, I think that is it for this very-rough-and-subject-to-change-roadmap. This would be my dream game, which I am trying my best to make and I hope it sounds like something you would enjoy to. The time this will take is veeeeery hard to estimate, but I think have a good pace and the internal structure of the game was designed from the start to include all this so a lot of the ground work is actually already done. But it should not take longer than 12 months I think.
Best wishes and lots of love!
//Mattias
* Depending on the reception of the game, the final-final price may go higher. When leaving Early Access (maybe in 3-5 months?) till price may increase to 12$, and after that I plan to create and include modding tools. If the game becomes as stable, replayable and enjoyable as I hope, the final price will probably end at 15$. This is not set in stone, but it is the best estimation I can give at the moment.