Dear Friends,
You've been more than 1800 playing the Idle Colony playtest over the last week. I never had that many people playing one of my game. This makes me feel very grateful.
I received over 400 feedbacks, that are critical to me for improving the game in the right direction.
For that, thanks you!
Your general reception has been incredibly positive for a game that's just a rough bugged soundless prototype.
Speaking of bugs, we managed to fix major crash issues and glitchy visuals, that were impacting AMD GPU users, thanks to your help and patience.
And finally, you've made the wishlist count accelerate to a never-seen-before pace, for a total of
900, meaning that half of you who played are interested in purchasing the game.
Now let's have the real talk.
I initially planned the game as a minimalistic idle experience, with just the epic twist of the thousands of ant-like entities on screen, and nothing more.
Idle Colony is supposed to be a very small game. A last game at the end of my failed game dev journey, so I can go on and do something else with my life.
But now for the first time in my epic-game-dev-adventure, I see a glimpse of hope. Now there's some people caring, and maybe it could make a difference. The strong enthusiasm that many of you showed, went straight to my heart and started seeding in my mind that maybe together, we might be scaling things up...
So just keep making the game right ? Well...
Game dev has become very hard on my mental health over the years. And for the last couple of months I was picturing the 18th of June (initially planned released) as the ultimate summit before flying down to sanity. At 30 years old, I'm still living at mom's place. My home is a trailer in the garden, which becomes unlivable in summer, and last night I found a new leak that's letting rain in.
I don't know yet where I'm gonna live this summer, and I have no idea of when I'll be able to work on Idle Colony past the Steam Fest of June.
But enough with the violins. Here's what's certain:
There will be a demo the 10th of June, and here's the (non-exhaustive) road map for the next month:
I know this is far from the features you're requesting, and I'm already working on a full rework of the techology tree, including many more gameplay mechanics, allowing for strategic choices, and a feel of really unlocking new content as you progress in prestige rather than linearly upgrading what's already existing.
For these reasons, I'm post-poning the release date of Idle Colony to later this year.
Thanks for your time,
Cheers !