Greetings, NIMRODS community!
This is it. Dawn of the final day: 24 hours remain.
At times like this, it's natural to get introspective and look back at where we came from and forward into the future.
This project was never meant to be as big as it is now. Back when we first started, we had a shoe-string budget, and we decided to prototype a Bullet Heaven because the genre was popping off. We figured the premise was simple enough that we could crank out a game in six months and use it as a springboard to make a bigger, more epic game.
In retrospect, that's almost funny.
An early prototype with art from an asset pack
We had a working Demo four months into the project that we posted on Itch.io. We all thought it was pretty fun, and players did too. But then, one feature at a time, we said "This game would be so much better if..." It started when we went through and overhauled all the augments to get rid of the old "defense only" augments. It continued when we expanded the map from a small square arena to a giant world the players could explore. People liked their drone, so we expanded the drone's role to be a constant companion instead of a high-powered "summon".
Early Arena-style map in the prototype
When we released the Demo back in March, it looked like we were almost done. Then, we flipped a table. You see, we wanted to really let the players make incredible guns, but the game just couldn’t handle some of the more impressible builds without slowing to a crawl. The problem was that we had already optimized about everything we could optimize, and it still wasn’t enough. In the end, we decided to sink months into refactoring our underlying engine to use Unity’s new lightning-fast data-oriented technology stack (DOTS) featuring ECS and the Burst compiler. We had to recode over half the game, but the time spent was worth it; now the craziest guns you build can run at a respectable framerate instead of degrading the game’s performance into a slideshow. The game wouldn't be complete without some way to gain power in the metagame, so we added the genetic system, the drop pod system, and the drone customization system. Trying to balance this all took a lot of math and a lot of educated guesswork, and we spent hours pouring over spreadsheets and fiddling with numbers.
Meanwhile, we decided that having minibosses that were simply scaled up versions of already existing enemies wasn't enough. Our artists went on an rampage, designing some of the coolest enemies I've ever seen him make to replace the old minibosses, and our programmers coded all the new behaviors in the new engine to bring them all to life.
And then came the bug hunting. Oh, the bug hunting...
Turns out, when you reprogram half your engine, you pick up a few bugs along the way. Our QA pulled very long hours to make sure that all the new content was at least as bug-free as the old content, and did so in a legendarily short amount of time. We also have to give a huge shoutout to our alpha testers who brought up hundreds of more issues! Without them, who knows how many more bugs would have snuck through to the early access release!
And now, after two and a half years of stretching that shoe-string budget further than any of us thought possible, with a development time five times longer than the six months we thought this project would take, we stand at the precipice of the NIMRODS release at last. Everything's locked in at this point. We can't change the game without the risk of introducing some last minute bugs. We can't change our store listing because there's no time to go through Steam's approval process again. We're just holding our breath and waiting in the quiet of the early morning before a new day dawns for our beloved game.
So what comes next? If you've looked at the "Why Early Access?" portion of our store page, you probably already know:
The jury's still out!
It's at this point that a lot of companies would post a Roadmap, saying which new features they plan to add in each upcoming patch during the Early Access process. We're specifically not doing that. We want to give it a week to let you all play the game so you can really absorb where NIMRODS is at now. After that, we'll let you all tell us what you think would be most fun to add. We want this game to be as fun for you as possible, so when we think of what should come next, who could possibly be better to ask than you!
Oh, sure, we've got some small little polish things we'll do as we wait for your feedback to come in - a few minibosses that didn't quite make it into the game in time, some bug fixes that were too risky to patch mere days before release, polishing up the UI to make sure you've got all the information you need - but mostly, NIMRODS is venturing into uncharted territory, and we're as excited to see which direction it goes as you are!
But enough about the future. What about now?
If you want to help, here's what you can do:
- Buy the game - Obviously. We really appreciate it, because it keeps our lights on and feeds our families! We can't make this game without you!
- Leave a review - Steam determines what games it should promote based in large part on how many reviews a game gets. If you leave a review for us, it'll help increase our reach in a surprisingly powerful way.
- Play the crap out of NIMRODS! - Steam also determines what games it should promote, in small part, based on a game's peak concurrent player count, so even playing our game will help get NIMRODS in front of more eyes!
- Leave feedback! - When the game is released, we'll re-open the bugs and feedback portion of our Discord server! We will monitor the Steam comments and forums as well, but the discord server is the fastest way to catch our eyes.
- Tell us what you want to see in NIMRODS - More Biomes? Augments? Chassis? Or is there some additional polish you want to see in what we've already got, like a new information screen of some kind?
- Spread the word - Tell your friends, or maybe even buy them a copy!
- Encourage your favorite Creators or Streamers to look into playing NIMRODS - Streamers and Content Creators have a huge impact on the success of a game, and if you can talk a streamer into playing NIMRODS, that would be awesome for us and our community!
Who knows where this journey will take us! We hope that when the full version 1.0 is released, the game will have grown tremendously, we'll look back on this week with the same fondness that we're looking back on our ancient little itch demo today.
Here's to a new day!
From all of us at Fiveamp, Thank YOU so much for your continued support! 💖
Join our official Discord server for more news and updates!
https://discord.com/invite/mdbCsgnsS7