Hello everyone! There hasn't been any news regarding the game for a while. Today I want to tell you what happened to the game, why I stopped the development, and what will happen next.
The game is being retired
I have made an official request to Steam to retire the game.
It means that the game won't be publicly listed on Steam, yet those who have it in their library will still have access to it (you will still be able to download it, uninstall it, and play it). All your progress (runes, skills, stats, etc.) will be saved. The Steam community page still should be available, but I am not going to monitor it anymore and I have deleted all the content that I posted there, including guides. Achievements and Leaderboards still should be available, but there won't be new leaderboard seasons, the current season 2 will be the last one.
Regarding DLCs, you will still be able to use all the DLCs that you purchased before and there will be the final sale with a huge discount for all of them for 7 days starting from tomorrow (October 10), so people who want to have them will have the opportunity to get them. Since some DLCs (premium heroes) are required to complete all the achievements, this might be the last opportunity to buy them and complete the game. After 30 days there is a big chance that all DLCs will be retired too and you won't be able to buy them anymore (but again, those DLCs that you already own will stay with you).
You can learn more about the process of retirement here:
https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/store/retire_app
See the last question in the FAQ section.
According to Steam rules, it's impossible to delete the game completely. Plus, deleting the game completely wouldn't be fair to people who had a lot of progress in it and/or purchased DLCs.
Why am I closing the game?
This game was made in a very dark period of my life. I felt like I have to express certain feelings and emotions in the form of art. I did enjoy working on the game and it took me more than a year of hard work to bring it to its current stage, but this process wasn't always enjoyable. Sometimes it felt like a hard fight with myself for no apparent reason. I don't think that a person who has never worked on an indie game for more than a year can relate to it, but I just wanted to say that making a game is not easy, despite the fact that the end product might look simple. The most difficult thing is not even the technical side of it, but the motivational and emotional one. I learned a lot from it and improved a number of my skills (programming, drawing, testing, design, marketing, and even some sound-production :-)) and I am forever grateful for the opportunity to create a game like that, but unfortunately, I can't just keep the game as is.
A lot of things happened in the real life that made me grow, mature, reevaluate things, and change, yet this game stays the same as the reminder of old dark times that I would like to leave behind. In order for me to move on with my life, I have to have closure and the way to do it is to retire the game, so I can focus on things that are actually important in life: health (both mental and physical), family, the actual job, helping the community, learning and just living my life in the reality, and not in an imaginary world full of random dangerous events, fictional heroes, weapons, and demons.
I also wanted to say that I am not quite sure what kind of message this game sends to the world. I was just making it and expressing my deep personal feelings, my past experience, etc. That is why the game is hard, it is very random, and it looks like many other older games, yet it's still something else. I didn't have an exact plan of what kind of game I was making, I was just adding things there that felt like they fit and just to fully use all my skills and the engine. I did try to make the game educational at some point because I was involved with some educational projects before and I am a strong believer in the value of education (yet, I wasn't the best student myself...). I wanted this game to be a place where a bad student could learn certain things about life (like the fact that life could be hard and unforgiving, etc.), a student that would play my game instead of going to classes, but I realized that it's not a proper way of educating people and it's not the main feature of the game. Plus, I am not a teacher myself, so teaching shouldn't be my job.
Another reason to close the game was purely technical. I have never studied programming or design officially (my real field of study is completely unrelated to all that), I learned it all as a hobby because I loved the process of making games (playing games is fun, but making your own games is FAR more fun). I made games from the age of 17 using GameMaker studio, a program with which I have a very strong love/hate relationship. I know only GameMaker, this is my only tool to make games and some time ago they (the company, YoYo games) went through a lot of changes. Most of those changes were positive and necessary, but some changed the way games are made and work, which just broke my spirit. To be specific, they changed the way Steam extension is working, and I just couldn't figure out the way to comply with these new changes. I am not that old, but learning another programming language is not easy, so I couldn't just go and re-write everything in Unity or something like that. And you know, you, as a little guy, can't really say much to big companies and affect the way they do business/work, you have to comply, and I couldn't. After all, I have to eat too and this game wasn't bringing me any serious money while taking 100% of my energy and time. I don't want to blame GameMaker for everything, they are still amazing people that help people like me to see their dreams become interactive reality, but this technical issue was, at the time, something that really stopped my work.
This has been a journey
The previous chapter sounds dark, but it's not all bad. Making this game has been an amazing experience for me. I learned a lot of things that I couldn't have learned otherwise. Sometimes you just have to try to do something like that, a serious project, and invest at least a year of life in it, in order to learn certain things and become wiser. I might never come back to programming, but my improved design and drawing skills are already in use. The way I organized my work on the game was great, so I took it for my future as well. I learned to read and respond to feedback, criticism, etc. After all, I am thankful for this learning opportunity.
Thank you all!
I am not sad to close the game, I feel like it's a necessary step forward in my life, but I am sad for people who will be badly affected by my decision. Let's be honest, it wasn't the best game ever. There were bugs, the graphic sucked, the balance wasn't perfect, etc. The game wasn't popular and successful. Yet, I think that some people really enjoyed it, got my message and my style just right, and they might miss the game.
As I said before, after the "retirement", those who have the game in their library still should be able to play it and have all their progress saved.
I wanted to say thank you to the people who helped me with the development, and especially to those who are mentioned in the game as testers. It might not mean a lot for a random player, to leave a like, or to write a short comment, but for a solo indie developer like me who put their sole into the project it really meant the world. And people who wrote long and detailed feedback on the game, those who really get it, I truly feel that you are like my real friends and that you might know me better than many of the real people that I know, despite the fact that we have never met in person. I don't have many friends, so making the game was a way of communicating with the world, and when I saw people play it a lot, do the achievements, like it, understand it, and comment on it, buy DLCs, leave good reviews, it made me really happy because I felt like I am not alone in this world and there are people who also going through something similar in life that I have been through and who are similar to me in some way.
Thank you all again! I am sad to retire the game, but it has to be done in order to move on. To be honest, those who liked the game a bit too much, in my opinion, should also consider distancing themselves from it because I believe that the game has some negative energy in it.
What happens next?
Very soon the game will be retired (see the beginning of this post to see what it means exactly), I will probably never come back to programming/coding because I realized that I have to move on from this part of me. Making games is actually not my thing, I can do much better things in the real life.
All the game's external resources were already deleted (Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, the website, etc.).
For at least 30 days, I will still keep this email address: [email protected]
So, if you just wanted to share something about the game, feel free to write me.
Thank you all for understanding.
Cheers!