Hey all! 2024 has come and gone, so I wanted to take a look back and do an informal retrospective kind of update. Crystal Horizons is now entering it's third year of development, and it hasn't all been smooth sailing, but we're still proud of how far we've come and excited to keep going!
Early in 2024, we revealed the Berserker and Occultist classes. With these two additions, the number of revealed classes rose to nine, with Templar also being introduced late in 2024 to round that number up to ten. We talked about a wide variety of game systems, showed off a ton of redesigns and improvements to our UI, and even got some of our important named systems up and running (the Deployment Phase and Glossary come to mind).
We got to show off our amazing key art in the middle of the year, and take it alongside a build of the game to AVCon for more feedback and marketing. Thanks to that experience, we were able to hone in on what was and wasn't working about our class design and make adjustments. Reception to Crystal Horizons has been almost universally positive so far, which has been a big relief to us, as we believe our gameplay and class design are the most important pillars of the game.
Not everything went according to plan, though. We've missed dates we wanted to hit on multiple occasions now, especially in regards to holding the closed beta test we've been planning. As a new team working on their first real professional project, we've made some mistakes when it comes to time estimation and development throughput. A project like this is a massive undertaking, one which would be beyond the scope of most new teams. Still, we truly believe in our vision for Crystal Horizons and know that even if development isn't as fast or easy as we would like, we have no regrets and are ready to see it through.
Late 2024 was difficult for us. Problems with the project were adding up, and the closed beta we were so excited to hold had to keep being pushed back. Systems and game mechanics we had talked about were in various stages of implementation (and still are), often in a state where we're not quite able to show them off in updates. Add on the fact that we had been working on the project for 2 years without a real break, and we had a recipe for disaster. So, we made the decision to pause the weekly updates and take a break over the holiday season, hoping to come back with clear minds and renewed vigor.
I'm confident this was the right call; we've already managed to make some big progress on things we were stuck on last year after only two days back. Development is back on at full speed, hopefully with some awesome things to share soon! We have big plans for getting the project back on track and touching up all the things we left half-done, so look forward to new updates coming soon! Thanks for your continued support of Team Whirlwind and Crystal Horizons!