It’s that time of the year again!
The short interval between getting stuffed with Christmas specialties and popping the champagne for the New Year. The in-between-parties limbo, where one sits on a comfy chair with a hot coffee cup and gazes out the window thinking about buying a boat… And the plans we made that didn’t work out. The unexpected awesome things that happened. The friends we made. The places we visited. The XP gained!
With all that has happened, I feel I won’t be exaggerating when I say that 2024 was one bumpy ride of a year. And that goes double for a game like Stunt Xpress.
So grab yourself a warm beverage of your choice and join me, as in the paragraphs below, I recall and reflect upon this year’s highlights in the development of our air-flipping & box-delivering indie game.
NEW TEAM
About this time, exactly one year ago, I was still jumping on my couch like a little kid. Not because Santa had brought me some awesome Lego set (although he also actually did - thx santa!), but because just a few weeks earlier, I had signed my first video game publishing deal with none other than the Godot wizards and hippest gamedev crew down at Pineapple Works.
Although the ink had not yet dried, we were already in the heat of laying the groundwork for the months ahead. And let me tell you, the task was nothing short of colossal.
Almost everything in the game needed to be either revamped or binned and restarted from scratch!
Yes, up until 2023 I had no experience in making video games. Imagine the horror in their faces when they first delved into my code (some of it dating back to 2022). It was more like the indecipherable scribbles of a 6 year old still learning how to write. So hats off to them. They had the courage to go through all of it. Explaining to me what could be salvaged and improved and what auto parts had to be scrapped and fully replaced for the van to hit max speed.
Without getting too much into details, let me just tell you, this was the time we ported the game from Godot 3 to Godot 4 and started using Jolt as the physics engine. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A BOOTH IN SAN FRANCISCO
Work was progressing at cruise speed when one day, I received the very generous invitation by the Godot Foundation to showcase Stunt Xpress at their booth in the upcoming Game Developers Conference in San Francisco in March. We scrambled to push the demo as far as we could. Some critical work was still being finalized as I was taking the plane there. On the eve of the opening day, I was holed up in the hotel until the late hours on a long call with the Pineapple Works team back in Poland, working with them on the very last fixes (I’ll let you run the numbers on the time difference between the West Coast and Poland, plus my jetlag haha!).
The day had dawned! It was finally time to show our baby to the ferocious masses of both experienced and aspiring industry folks attending the show! Would they love it? Would they hate it? Would this finally be the moment my cover would be blown? Would someone point at me and yell: “Guards! Over here! He’s not a real game dev!”
It so happens that my worst fears were unfounded. Everyone was super friendly and encouraging. The booth was very often packed and there was always someone wanting to try our game. It was a golden opportunity to gather feedback. To watch how folks approached the game. How they used the controls. To glance at their faces while they played in search of a frown or a smile and quickly look at the screen to know what had provoked it.
Very few dismissed the game after a few seconds.
The majority played at least one full round.
A few had to be forcibly removed by security.
Just kidding. A few played several rounds and stayed to chat and discuss specific aspects of the game. It was amazing!
There are very few more rewarding experiences than seeing someone having genuine fun while playing a game you made with your own hands. It’s exhilarating. This will definitely be one of the recurring stories I will annoy my grandchildren with when I'm old and sitting by the fireplace: - “Come here you brats! Let me tell you about that one time grandpa was at the GDC!”
(Shoutout to PW for making it happen and supporting me all the way through. Also big up at all the Godot folks that I’ve met over there, contributors and fellow devs. It was a blast!)
Notable changes in the game: A brand new, fully custom vehicle and camera control system.
JUNE, NEXTFEST, 1ST PUBLIC DEMO
With the GDC in the rearview mirror, it was time to gather all the feedback and work towards the next big milestone: June’s Nextfest and first public demo.
It’s a huge difference when you have folks playing your game and you’re standing next to them, versus releasing a demo into the wild wastes of the internets, where your game will certainly be played by cats, chewed by coyotes, pecked by vultures and tossed into the abyss.
The NextFest is a big opportunity for increased visibility and for gathering feedback. We worked extremely hard up until the very last minute to deliver a demo that would be fun to play. We were also under the spell of the positive feedback we had gotten at the GDC and were perhaps too ambitious in terms of scope.
As the deadline drew closer and anticipating the fact that we might have overstretched, we settled for showing what we had and trying to get as much feedback as possible, without pushing it too much into the limelight.
It was exciting to see so many people playing our game and even folks making videos about it.
We did get a fair volume of feedback. And in this game, feedback is currency.
Notable changes in the game: Each van has its own attributes. Unlockable and equippable gear that grants perks. Tournament generation and career progression. New map type: Minigolf. Tutorial.
WORKING WITH FEEDBACK
We had been, as someone once said: “Driving with our faces too close to the steering wheel”. We had become too comfortable with the systems we had implemented. And although we had internal testing rounds, we had lost track of the bigger picture.
Once the NextFest dust had settled, we carefully assembled any and every bit of feedback we could find, both online and in real life. We sorted, consolidated and prioritized them. From vehicle control, to camera attitude, from progression issues to user interface difficulties. The list is long and requires us to rethink some fundamental aspects of the game. We worked on a several pages long redesign and improvement plan and have been implementing it ever since. Many of these updates are already implemented on our production branch (not the online demo), but we have known for some time that our plan to launch the game into early access in 2024 was too optimistic.
THE FUTURE
Like always, there is some good news and some not-so-good news.
Let’s start with the downers:
Firstly: As you may have guessed by now, the game’s early access launch is delayed into 2025.
Secondly: We’ve taken the difficult decision to take the demo offline for now.
This is because we feel that this demo, which dates back to June, no longer represents the game we are making.
On the brighter side: The changes and improvements we’ve been making behind the scenes, some of them already implemented, others soon to be so, are very promising and we can’t wait to share them with you in the near future!
Thank you for all of your support so far.
We wish you a very happy New Year!
May your stunts land safely and your parcels be delivered on time!
- Rafael & the Stunt Xpress Team
