Hi testers and players,
It’s officially been just over one year since ShapeVS burst into Early Access on Steam and we have been going through this journey together. From launching with four games to now having doubled the number of games and added a bunch of quality of life fixes, it has been great to see the overall response to ShapeVS.
From an amazing appearance at Gamescom in 2022 and PAX Aus 2022 at the Tasmanian creators booth, it has been great to see the reactions of players and onlookers as they enjoyed the game. We are so grateful for the response to ShapeVS and the opportunity to develop this game for you all.
The story of ShapeVS has been a success in many ways but also a failure in others. It achieved the goal of setting up individuals in the team to move forward in their game development career but also failed to live up to the sales expectations we set.
We had a fantastic first couple of months but then things really just slowed down. We understand we were never gonna be a huge success in the sales department but we are very happy with the opportunities that people like Dean have gotten with Broken Roads. We also know that with these other opportunities expanding, we have to look at the future of ShapeVS.
And it’s with this we announce that we are sunsetting development on ShapeVS. We had so many plans for ShapeVS but with where we are going individually it’s just not something we as a team can maintain. Between Broken Roads for Dean, birth of their first child for Woj, and changes in careers for other members of the team, it is becoming more and more apparent that we can’t achieve everything we wanted for ShapeVS.
We will be committing to making it a complete package, though just a bit slower than thought. So over the next few months we will commit to completing the two current games in development which are Shape Blast and Shape Race. We know we may be disappointing those who are eager to get more content but game development is hard and we all have lives that need to be managed as well.
We will commit to small changes around UI/UX, audio quality, and general quality of life. The roadmap below is updated to reflect on what is coming and what we would like to achieve but essentially 1.0 of ShapeVS will be content-complete and anything else will be updates to the systems.
We are aiming for the completion of ShapeVS to begin post November 14th when Broken Roads launches; as Dean is the main programmer, we are just awaiting availability on when he can jump back into the project.
We thank you all for your support and the continued support in other projects. For those who have followed Dean’s journey on Broken Roads, we thank you. For those who have expressed their love for Woj’s audio, we thank you. For those who have enjoyed ShapeVS, we thank you and know that Smash Attack Studios will be back. Smaller projects, more simple/unique experiences, and overall just making games that are more inline with what we are capable of as a studio.
It’s been a long read but thank you for taking the time to go through it, and for those of you who want the tl;dr…
ShapeVS development coming to a close. We will make the game content complete as of our current status. Will take longer than expected. Smash Attack will be back with new games down the line.
P.S Wishlist Broken Roads