Thank you everyone for an amazing launch! (and for 250 reviews)!
So, Black Hole Fishing is my first game ever. I feel like the launch week was a bit rough (lots of bugs and issues right away), but in general, I am still happy with how things went! We managed to hit 1,500 concurrent players (which is a bit crazy to me), and we are now past 250 Very Positive reviews. ːsteamhappyː
I am continuing to work on the game full-time right now, so expect more updates in the coming weeks. I’m focusing on smaller updates at first, but I do have my first major post-launch update planned as well, which should dramatically extend the end-game. I have been dealing with a fair bit of burn-out (working nights and weekends with a newborn will do that to you), but I've been resting a bit more and am starting to recover. In general, I want to finish critical patches quickly (responding to critical feedback), and then I hope to slow down and set a more comfortable update cadence going forwards.
With that said, I wanted to talk through the short and mid-term road-map a bit today. Overall, the game doesn’t offer enough onboarding, so a major focus for the few weeks will be on the tutorial system and tool-tips, along with the Codex itself.
I have been working on a proper conclusion to the game (the "you win" end screen was rushed and is disappointing), but I want to ensure that the changes are good before releasing them, and I didn't want to delay a roadmap announcement any further. Expect another game update in the next few days with these changes.
Also, there are now compatibility modes when you launch the game. If you can launch the game without issues, then you can safely ignore this. I added the option to address the "I am stuck on the boot screen" issue that some players were seeing.
What's next:
I won't put any concrete dates on the calendar quite yet since scope is hard to estimate, but in general expect the following soon (ideally within the next week):
Updated game story and better ending (I have it done, but not fully tested)
More Steam achievements (especially for the confusing Bleach trait)
Updated soundtrack (again, this is mostly done, just needs to be vetted) A composer reached out a couple of weeks before launch and offered to make an OST. So we're getting that in soon. The old music will remain as a second option in the settings menu.
I'll make each of these updates in a patch (so they can get out quicker), but will make a large announcement when all of these changes are live. After that, expect the following (ideally within the next month):
Balance updates (especially in the mid and late game). This will take time to do right, but I'll try to update things incrementally so the game keeps improving as I work.
Continued improvements to art (our artist gave me a list of about 40 things to fix...)
More tool-tips and tutorial text where needed.
More codex details (how fish traits interact with the more advanced systems)
Possible prestige screen re-work (depending on how the other updates go)
I'll be working on most of these changes at the same time while playing through the game myself and comparing my notes to existing feedback. Again, I'll make a big announcement when everything is done.
After this all, we can finally get to the really fun part: new content. I can easily add 100 new fish to the game, but right now, it doesn't feel like we'd get much benefit from more stuff - the meta is dominated by just a couple of fish. I have the first major update planned already (dramatically expanding the LHC to make the late game a bit more interesting). After that, I'd like to look at future content updates or possible DLC.