TLDR; No more demo work after March. No idea if I can sell the first Early Access build in 2026, but 2027 is for certain if I can’t do it in 2026.

Hello everyone, first time making a post like this on here, but to be fair, I am now far more active in regard to my game on Steam.

For those who don’t know, I am currently working on a huge demo (more like a shareware episode) update for the next Steam Next Fest in February 2026. It’s going to be the entirety of the Fungal Grove area. Development on that has been far smoother than initially planned, but there’s still quite a long way to go. I spend most of my holidays alone, so I suspect that I will finish the bosses for it before the year’s end.

I expect a first-time playthrough of this update to take around 3 hours to beat. Consider that your insurance policy that the Early Access build will be meaty.

Probably weird for many people to give so much for free, but I tried making a demo with just a single level and it never did the game any justice to its scope and what’s expected of it in the long term. By boomer shooter standards, it’s a slow burn. There was also this lingering feeling that since we’re in the post-mortem era of Realm Deep, I had far more to prove as a fresh new dev who missed the boat on the boomshoot craze. On the flip side, that allowed me to be far more experimental rather than following everyone else’s shoes, and I thrive much more from that, so that’s pretty swell.

All well and good. Now what about beyond the Steam Next Fest plans?

I am mainly a solo dev doing this part-time, so I fully expect certain things will fly under the radar. Naturally, I will monitor what’s going on in the demo for at least a month and fix things. During that period, I will also work on things that do not mess with game builds in tandem, like different models, a brand-new opening menu, writing, other NPCs, and the elusive intro cutscene to keep things moving forward.

Sometime in early April 2026, I will officially cease work on any demo-related stuff for good and dedicate myself to pushing the game into a beta state. That's right, I will feature-freeze the game to avoid feature creep and deliver the first Early Access build in a more timely manner. Once that’s done, I will be able to work on the game purely on content.

Post-beta state, I will be hosting public playtest events each time I complete a level. That way, it will lessen the wait while also gathering feedback.

I have no idea if I can release the Early Access build in 2026, but rest assured, it will certainly release in 2027, and that’s a promise. I could polish up whatever I have by the end of 2026, sell it, and call it a day but I’m not like that. I want the first Early Access build to end on a satisfying note.

Afterward, I will decide if I want to release each level as soon as it’s out of the polishing phase or save up a bunch to make each content update gargantuan. I have no real metrics yet on how much time a level takes, so that should be interesting to measure once the technical jargon is more or less dealt with. I cannot fucking wait for it to be dealt with.

So yeah, happy holidays. Hope the wait will be worth it.