Dev Notes #1 - A Bit More About Our Roadmap
Hey everyone! 💛
After reading all the comments on our roadmap, we thought it'd be nice to occasionally share a bit more about what's going on behind the scenes and explain some of the decisions we're making.
So here's a little update from us.
🎙️ Why Voice Chat?
We've seen a lot of questions about voice chat recently, so we thought we'd talk a bit about why we've wanted it to be part of On-Together.
From the very beginning, we wanted On-Together to be a place where you could share the weight of a busy day with others. Whether you're working on a project, studying for an exam, drawing, writing, or simply hanging out, we imagined our game as a small, lively neighborhood park. A place you can pop into during the day, see who's around, chat with friends or strangers, then head back to work whenever you're ready.
screenshots shared by usuku, seibaa and paubiina
All of us on the team work remotely so we spend long hours by ourselves. We also know many of our players study alone, live far from friends, or just enjoy having a little company while getting things done.
Voice chat has felt like a natural part of that vision and we wanted to build it.
🎧 Keeping It Optional
One thing we really want to emphasize is that voice chat is completely optional. If you never want to use it, you don't have to.
You'll be able to enable or disable it whenever you want, create or join voice and non-voice lobbies separately, and filter them in the server browser.
Since it's spatial, conversations happen naturally. If you'd rather not join one, you can simply walk away.
We're also adding Silent Focus Mode, which completely mutes incoming voice chat while you're working or studying.
We've noticed that a lot of players already use voice calls while playing On-Together. Voice chat is our way of making that possible in-game too, while keeping it entirely optional for everyone.
🎒 What Do We Mean by "Back to School Update Series"?
We've seen a few people asking what "update series" means.
Instead of one huge update, we're planning to release several smaller updates over the season.
The focus won't just be on adding new content. A big part of it is improving what's already there.
Things like improvements to the To-Do List, Journal, chat, IDs, and lots of smaller quality-of-life requests are exactly the kinds of things we're focusing on during these updates.
We've been revisiting existing productivity tools, polishing older systems, and working on a brand new productivity feature alongside the Statistics feature that's actually been sitting in our design documents for some time. We kept refining it until we felt it was ready and we still are.
A blurry first look at Statistics. Early wip.
💛 Community Feedback Is Driving These Updates
If you've been around our Discord, you probably know we're just a team of four developers. We read the bug reports, suggestions, and discussions ourselves, alongside our amazing volunteer moderators.
A lot of the feedback you've shared, both on Discord and under the roadmap post, has already made its way onto our task board. We'll share more details as each update gets closer, but we wanted you to know that your feedback really is being heard.
✨ About the Mystery Update & DLC
We've also seen lots of guesses about the final item on the roadmap.
Just like the Summer Studies DLC, we don't plan to lock gameplay features behind paid content.
The DLC will mainly be cosmetic, while the free update alongside it will include one of the community's most requested features.
We'll keep this one a secret a little longer.
Until next time
We don't usually write these kinds of posts on Steam -we normally end up talking about this stuff on Discord- but we'd like to share more little development notes like this from time to time.
Thanks for all the discussions, suggestions, bug reports, and ideas. They genuinely help us decide what to work on next.
As always, feel free to ask us anything about the roadmap or share what's on your mind.
Talk soon! 💛
Team GigaPuff 💖