I've got a developers-only build of For One Year up and running in Steam now, to do the very final rounds of testing, and get Valve's final "yep, looks good!" seal of approval. Once I have that, I'll feel comfortable announcing a REAL, ACTUAL RELEASE DATE.
Until then, I'm going to continue to test and clean up little things I'm not quiiiiite happy with.
SO: what can you expect from the first release?
- A complete game you can win... and lose!
- Two pre-set difficulty settings, and a difficulty setting customizer.
- 4 mini-games: fishing, hunting, cave-exploring, and a tavern card game.
- 6 characters to meet and date through visual novel-style encounters. Each date features unique full-screen images~♥
- 60+ MORE full-screen images across 18 villager NPCs that you'll encounter in procedurally-generated mini-VN "hookups".
- 1 faefolk or*y in the woods with several of its own full-screen images.
- Customize your character's anatomy and appearance - the game's writing and graphics adapt accordingly!
- 21 Steam achievements. (No Steam trading cards for this release.)
- 11 songs + a few ambient background tracks (creepy cave noises, running rivers, etc)
- Support for dozens of fun-time peripherals, thanks to Intiface Central! (That dev deserves your support on Patreon, too!)
- Windows-only, BUT: if the game is profitable enough to warrant buying a Mac to test with, I will definitely publish for Mac and Linux as well! (The game should be very cross-platform already; the only incompatibility I'm aware of is with the library that plays music - NAudio - but the open-source community has stepped up to fill in some gaps there.)
The game will be releasing in "early access"... so what might we expect for the future? I can't make any hard promises about what or when, but some ideas that feel plausible include:
- More hand-written stories. (I've already got rough-drafts for a couple more.)
- Expanding on the stories the game already has! (All the stories in game have satisfying conclusions, but there's certainly room for some of these characters to show up again!)
- More villager NPCs & proc-gen content for their mini stories.
- Steam trading cards, if people are clamoring for them.
- More music (lookin' at you, Udio!)
- Mac & Linux builds.
- Another mini-game or two???
- More achievements, almost certainly.
That's about it - I'll keep y'all posted! :)