Hi dear friends,
I am happy to announce that Melody of Seasons is ready for Early Access! I have created an Early Access trailer for the game which you can watch right now on the main store page!
I'm not sure on the exact release date just yet but probably within a couple weeks! So keep an eye out for an announcement in the next couple of days.
On another note, I've published a new demo build which cuts the allowed playtime down to 7 in-game days. I want the demo to exist so that people can get a feel for if they will enjoy the full game or not which I think 7 days is plenty for that. I don't want people playing the demo for too long and having to restart if they decide to get the full game!
Now about Early Access. I am releasing into Early Access because I feel the game could use some work in a few key areas. I still need to tweak the balancing quite a bit. Believe it or not I've not really played my game into the late-game stages because I am changing things so frequently and it would take a long time to manually play into the late-game. I have been relying on cheat codes to test everything out so I don't have a good idea of how the game feels to play through. That's where I hope to gather feedback and respond to players. Is the game too easy or too hard? What parts are annoying, etc.
Another area I will be working on is key-binding and controller support. I will have to transition to Unity's new input system for this which I have been working on but I don't have any experience with this so it will take some time. I've already started but there are a lot of menus and workflows in the game so to test everything out I anticipate it will take some time and I don't want to delay the game any more. I want my game to be playable with controllers as well as on the Steam Deck and it will be, but I want to make sure it's all working well.
Beyond that, the story could use some work. And the portraits as well. I want to get some nice portraits but it is quite expensive. I want to see how the release goes first.
In short, I want everyone to be happy who purchases my game. It has always been a dream of mine to release a game on Steam and I'm so close to making it happen now. When I watch the trailer I get emotional because I can see all the work I've put into this game over the years and I can't believe that I've come this far. I'm sure there will be many bugs and issues but I'm just going to do my best. I'm crossing a line where I'll be collecting money from people so I take that very seriously and hope I can live up to the expectations.
Take care and I'll see you in the next update shortly.