It's finally here, the update you've all been waiting for!
It's been quite a while since the last update, sorry about that! I've been busy making the game at least a little bit better. In this post i'll go over what's changed, where i've been, and what the future of Alnico holds!
What's new?
Quite a lot! So much in-fact that my changelog is entirely too long for any kind of public post, but i'll give you the main points right now.
- Crafting has undergone a complete overhaul! The Machine TM is gone, in its place is an anvil and some tools, complete with a new crafting minigame.
- Crafts are rehauled too! New crafts, old crafts, and some are in the garbage. There's now 40 planned items to craft, all with unique sprites (planned) and properties.
- The merchant is here, and he's selling stuff! Your workshop might look a little more empty on start now, you'll have to buy those tools you took for granted from the merchant at the right of the smithery.
- Fossils! What do they do? They're fuel of course! Use them to power your mining equipment automatically!
- Upgrades are gone! In their place are special order scrolls that improve the look and ability of your ore processor and furnace. Speaking of the furnace...
- New textures all around! Almost everything from the furnace to the levers to the very walls have been re-textured. It all look very nice if I do say so myself.
And a ton of other minor changes you'll have to find by yourself! There's new spiders, molten metal heats stuff up, etc etc.
Where have I been?
Working! Both on Alnico and on my real life job that pays my bills. It's been busy the past year, but i'm finally in a place where I can happily and healthily work on my game again.
I never stopped working on Alnico entirely, but there certainly were long periods where I barely coded at all. I've been chipping away at it the whole time, though. Lots of the code was old, poorly written, and most of it needed rewriting. It's a lot of work making a game when you barely know how to code!
But for the forseeable future, I am back working on the game in full force! Thank you everyone for your constant support over the past many months.
So, what now? Release date?
The number one question I keep getting asked is when Alnico is going to release to the public, and the real and truthful answer is: I don't know!
Every time I think I have a good grasp on the timeline and make an release date estimate, it ends up taking way longer than I think! So I won't be giving any ETAs! I will say, however, that we're most certainly closer than ever before, and I'm itching to let everyone play.
Right now I am letting existing testers test some more, and I plan of giving out some more closed beta testing keys soon. The game is steadily getting finished, I thank you for your patience!
Want to keep up with the game's development?
While I'm not very active here on Steam, I post regular updates in the official Ganske Danske discord server, and I often stream as I add heaps of code and art to Alnico. If you wanna keep your finger on the game's pulse, I highly recommend joining the community on Discord and/or following me on Twitch! Those links are right below this text blob.
Discord
Twitch
That's about it from me for now!
In the future you can expect to see regular updates on the game, and slowly but surely we will get closer to release, and maybe even a public beta build? We'll see.
Until next update, bye bye!