Hi everyone,
Now that a week has passed since the Early Access launch of Swarmcade, I wanted to do a quick, informal post just to have a bit of talk about the future plans for the game and a few other things.
Thanks!
First off, I want to thank everyone who has purchased the game so far. I've already received some very useful feedback and, as you'll soon see, a lot of it is being implemented. I also want to thank the Youtubers that have featured the game so far.
Sales haven't set the world on fire, but considering the game launched during such a busy time in what is now a very saturated genre, I'm pretty happy. Things can always be better, though, and I hope that over time the game's profile will grow.
One thing that will really help with that...
Reviews
Steam gives your game bigger visibility once you hit 10+ reviews. Swarmcade is at 8 right now. It would be really great to get a few more! Hint, hint!
Another thing that will really help is, if you like the game, to recommend it to friends, people on Reddit, social media, your favourite Youtuber etc.
Update schedule
The goal moving forward is quite simple: I aim to release one new content patch every 1-2 weeks until we're at version 1.0. If there are any game breaking bugs of course that will get a patch much sooner.
The content patches will either contain new heroes, weapons (and ultimates), items, balance changes etc. There are also some other things I will be adding. I'm a big fan of game secrets to give a hint!
New Stages
As for new stages, these will be their own separate patch. First, I want to set the correct expectations on these. I'm not a fan of the "infinite" large scrolling stages seen in a lot of Survivor style games. Nothing against them, but I just personally prefer smaller, more contained environments. Having said that, Stage 2 is roughly 5 or 6 times larger than Stage 1, but it is still pretty small compared to some games.
Stage 2 When?
Stages take the longest to work on as they have a lot more moving parts, new elements, enemies and things to work on. I hope it won't be too long before Stage 2 is far enough to be released, but it's best to be realistic about the pace that I can get these added. It will be a little while yet. But to give a little tease: Stage 2 is even more of a love letter to retro gaming!
Patch coming this week!
There will be another content patch coming later this week. There's some cool new things to look forward to, a lot of tweaks and QOL, and the usual bug fixes.
Until then!
Artemus