I've now been working on Lootfest for 8 years! The complexity of the game has grown and is now far too big, specially for a single person project.
It is clear to me now that the game will never become what I initially planned.
What mistakes has been made:
- Early access doesn't work for me. I get almost no feedback, people don't report bugs/crashes. People expect a almost complete game and just get a negative experience. My end goal has always been to make people happy, and this is the opposite.
- I started planning a full 16 hour experience. Should have started much smaller.
- By streamlining the game, removing crafting and collecting, I killed what many enjoyed about the original game.
- I thought more persons would play with a controller. It is too much of a console game.
- The person I hired did not work out, had to throw away most of the code, mainly for the level layout and start over from scratch.
What will happen now:
I will continue working on the game, but not at full time, it will be a side project.
I am thinking about making some big changes. For one I want to make a big change to the art style, and try move away from "just another Minecraft clone" as much as possible.
I will not leave early access until I am happy with the result. I am thinking about hiding the store page until it is a full release, haven't decided yet.
I will at least change the game description to warn about these issues.
I will answer any questions you got in the comments below.