The time draws near....
TL;DR: Expect a release announcement by the end of July - early August...
Well, this is a really exciting post for me to make! After nearly 4 years of working on PARKSIDE, getting the game through various stages of development, there is now relatively very little left for me to work on!
The game is a very different beast from what it was probably even a couple years ago, when the first demo dropped on steam: placeholder particles, lag, a whole load of bugs. Hell, even the current demo is still busted (something I plan to rectify very soon).
Here's a brief summary of the mountain of work I've done since the start of beta testing in January:
-Fixed dozens of minor bugs
-Fixed major bugs such as player control/interaction breaking, graphics and resolution problems
-Optimized level geometry and improved overall performance across the whole game
-Added and finalized new equipment and player abilities
-Implemented persistent playthrough stats which will be presented at the end of each playthrough
-Finished writing all dialogue for NPCs, which totals (including player responses) thousands of lines of dialogue
-Written and added long form lore text pieces to most missions
-Added recurring vendor and quest NPCs as well as a number of new side objectives
-Finished more than a dozen new cutscenes and intermission sequences, all fully animated with original soundtracks
-Re-animated and removed pauses from existing cutscenes and revamped the dialogue UI
-Improved NPC face models and general anatomy
-Added new variants of NPC barks and quips
-And more!
And now I'm getting close to having the game done! As of writing this, There's only 1 mission left to be polished with new additions, and then I'll be doing a little more item balancing and lore text, then I'll be finishing off Steam achievements + player stats. But after that, I've got nothing left on my to-do list!
This all means that PARKSIDE is getting very close to being out of beta and at 1.0. If I remain on track with my current progress, I should be able to start ramping up for release. An announcement for this will come within the next month or so.
This also means I'll be updating the demo within that time as well, with all of the changes and improvements that have come over the last half year of intense progress.
I hope you enjoyed this update, get hyped, and as always watch out on social media and check out the discord server at your own peril...
-BananaH