It's been over an year since I last said anything publicly about the game, but I want to write this post to clarify that the game is still in active development more than ever.
The Last Year of Development
A bit over one year ago the game had enemies and some environments, but honestly it wasn't good, it didn't really make sense from the perspective of game progression and narrative, it was a mess in terms of both gameplay and project management (code, assets).
I realized that it will take more time until I have something for people to play. So in June 2024 I took a decision: to make a demo for the game called The Facility Project: Prologue. As the title suggests it was supposed to be a prologue, a teaser for the full game, nothing much, about 15-25 min of gameplay. Well this "demo" gave me the opportunity to remake some of the codebase and make a new level from scratch. As I worked more on the prologue, polishing everything, it was all coming together, the narrative, gameplay and progression, but it still took a lot of playtesting and listening to feedback to make it work.
One year later this prologue turned into a game of its own. It already had over 40 minutes of gameplay, way more than I anticipated, but I did not want to remove parts of it to shorten it. I really had only 2 options: release the prologue and then work on the full game which should have at least double the duration of it OR keep the prologue as a part of the full game and build on top of it.
Well, my decision is to NOT release the prologue as a free demo because releasing it will double or even triple the development time. I never realized what it meant to make a game with over 2 hours of gameplay, it took me almost a year to make 40 min of GOOD gameplay, so I know that the best option is to lower down the scope.
The Future of Development
I can confidently say that I am in a much better spot than last year.
First of all, since I polished the heck out of this prologue, I don't have to return to it. I can fully focus on making the missing part of the game (that technically has a similar structure to what I had in the previous version), unlike in the previous version where nothing was polished and I was juggling between parts of the game. Now I am developing the game chronologically, which makes much more sense.
Secondly, the narrative and game progression is much clearer, especially thanks to Cosmin, a great game designer which helped me for almost 2 years to shape this experience.
Third, I learned a lot, as I did from the beginning of this project. The problem was that in the previous version I used to ignore some of the issues because I had other more important things (like making the actual game work). For example, lighting and optimization, which gave me a lot of headaches and still do sometimes, but now I learned how to effectively manage both.
Finally, I have a more active team than ever. I am still the only developer, but I collab with people on sound design, writing, voice acting, 3D art and 2D art. This just proves to me that the fact that TFP takes this long to make is a good thing in the end. How else would I form a team like this?
Screenshots
These are some screenshots from the prologue part:
Final Notes
In the last post I said that I can see "the light at the end of the tunnel" or something like that, anyway I kinda lied, I was just making myself feel good about the project but in reality I had only a rough idea of where it was headed. Well, whether you trust me or not, right now I confidently say that there is a plan and a finish line in sight. If we keep up the pace, we will get there, I won't say soon, but not too late either.
Thanks to everyone who wishlisted the game! Right now we have ~1500 wishlists which is great! (I didn't really do any kind of marketing so I'm good with this number). Next announcement will probably come in the form of a trailer, but not just any trailer, a release date trailer (Yes an actual release date I promise).
To keep up with updates Join the discord server and make sure to Wishlist the game