Hello Recruits!
People frequently ask if there will be future updates for GUARDS! and we're really happy that the game has found enough of an audience that there is demand for more medieval justice!
The short answer is: "We don't know!" but read on for more info!
First, some context:
GUARDS! was our first project as a team, and early on in development we decided to launch as a full release as opposed to early access. The reason being we had no idea how well the game would perform, and put simply, we didn't want to make promises for future improvements that we couldn't keep! If the game didn't sell we wouldn't be able to support it longer-term and it would have persisted in early access as yet another dreaded "dead game".
With that in mind we committed to releasing a version of the game we would feel comfortable calling feature complete and carry out any bug fixes and major improvements in the window immediately after launch. (I think we did about 9 or 10 updates in the month following release!)
Shortly afterwards, we had the opportunity to work on a console version. This is obviously great news as it brings GUARDS! to an even larger audience, although it does mean there are a few other considerations that need to be taken into account. These being:
1) Adding new features essentially increases the amount of work required and extending how long it takes to complete the port.
2) We're obligated to keep parity between the PC and console versions (i.e. if we make something for PC it also has to be on console). Whilst this is possible, it does mean we need to be a bit more considered in how we release content. Pushing an update on steam is relatively quick and simple, but on console... not so much.
Hindsight is 20:20 and if we'd have known how popular the game would be, we'd probably have done things a little differently. We have definitely learnt from the experience of launching GUARDS! and any future games we make will definitely launch into early access first!
Once again, we're really grateful for the interest in the game, and we definitely consider this a "good problem to have". We have so many cool ideas for things we want to add to the game and ways to expand the GUARDS! universe. Once the console version is complete we'll be in a much better position to see what that looks like.
So the tl;dr is:
- We are really happy that GUARDS! found a much bigger audience than any of us expected
- We made some decisions early on that mean we skipped the traditional EA > Full release route
- Our current priority is finishing the console version
- We want to make more GUARDS! stuff
If you made it this far - thanks! One of the great things about being a smaller indie team is we can be way more transparent about the development of the game. If you want to chat more about GUARDS! and what the future has in store, we have a pretty active community over on our Discord channel!
Thanks!
-- The GUARDS! Team --