Hey Everyone,
We've been thinking a whole lot recently about where Stonehearth is going. (Well, actually, we think about this all the time. But recently we've been thinking even more than usual about this....)
It’s a bit hard to talk about where we’re going because Stonehearth’s strength as a game comes from our close, iterative development conversations and interaction with all of you. Our alphas are designed around delivering you either one significant, fun feature–like a new class, or around relieving a pain point, like fixing bad performance or incomplete buildings. We meet every Monday as a team to realign our plans for the week and to make sure we are always working on the most important thing. It’s very common for us to change our weekly tasks based on bugs you’ve reported and features you tell us would make your experience of the game better. The result is that you get consistent, regular builds that actually work. However, it makes it very hard to talk, with confidence, about a schedule–when you might all get the things you’re looking for. Details change every day, features change dramatically every month.
So, if we can’t talk about when we’re getting features, or what those features are in detail until we actually implement them and iterate on them with you, what IS a useful way to think about where we’re going? Well, one thing we know for sure is that we will continue to focus on finishing single player, PC Stonehearth before we look at multiplayer or Mac and Linux support. Multiplayer and Mac/Linux are definitely still planned, but multiplayer, in particular, is exponentially more difficult than single player, from a gameplay, technical AND social perspective. Therefore, it’s really important that we finish the foundational elements of the game first, and that means a completely satisfying single-player experience. That said, where ARE we going within the scope of single player, PC stonehearth? Well, one way to look at the future is to speak broadly about the three largest recurring challenges our team is currently facing, since meeting them head-on will be a recurring theme for the weeks and months to come.
You can read all about this process and where we're heading in our latest blog post:
http://stonehearth.net/dt-looking-forward/
Please add your comments to the post or in the forum here on Steam.
Thanks!