Greetings, Agents.
I'll get straight to the point: Heist.exe is not going to be released in Q1 - Q2 like I estimated. It’ll take way longer to fully release the game than just a few months, maybe not even until the end of the year. While I would have liked to release sooner, the game is just not that close to being finished.
The fact of the matter is that there’s still a lot I feel needs to be done before considering the game ready for release. Don't worry, I'm not getting lost in an ever-expanding scope for the game. The content and features I’ve planned for the game haven't been added to all that much (although some aspects like exact level count are now up in the air). There are just a lot of factors limiting development, and I would like to provide more transparency on the reasons why I’m delaying Heist.exe’s full release.
This post is going to be longer than usual, so buckle up.
Limiting Factors
Pretty much all factors limiting the time I can put towards development are the other things going on in my life. These include the following:
My afternoon job, separate from making Heist.exe, which puts a strain on my mental energy and takes time out of my day. That puts a limit on how much time I can spend developing Heist.
My other personal project; Heist isn't the only game I'm working on. There's another project in the works which has taken and still does take lots of time to develop as well. Working on it may not seem important to the development of this game, but it’s a necessary step to building my development skills so I can make great games, all while stimulating creativity.
Maintaining a social life; this one kind of goes without saying.
Self-care; I’m still a young adult, so I’m very much on the journey of learning how to take care of myself. If I’m not healthy or in the right state of mind, completing the game will be even harder than it needs to be.
And by far the biggest factor: Professional aspirations; I’m trying to get a job in the game industry, and like with most professional fields, applying to game dev jobs requires:
Writing/tailoring resumes
Building portfolios
Curating professional receipts of your work and value you’ve delivered
Responding to application questions
Professional Networking; going to networking events, meeting people online, building relationships with people, etc.
Then there’s doing multiple rounds of interviews, technical tests, and otherwise navigating the broken and competitive game industry, all of which takes lots of time. To avoid dumping too many details onto you all, just know this will be a years-long process that I will have to balance with developing Heist. This does not, however, mean I intend to keep developing the game for years on end. I intend to give Heist the time it deserves even with my other life responsibilities. No more, no less.
Around November, which was my last most active development period, I actually started ramping up efforts to apply to jobs again. I spent roughly a month and a half building a portfolio to help me get past the screening process for a job I was applying to. I have recently sent in the application for said job, so I intend to put a bit more time towards developing Heist.exe in the coming months.
Speaking of development, let’s look at what remains to be done for the game at a high level...
My Vision for Heist.exe’s Release
As stated before, there’s much I’d like to have ready for the game’s full release. I can’t go into too much detail, because I’d like to keep some things a surprise, but the major deliverables I’m trying to hit for Heist’s full release are:
Give gameplay a bit more depth beyond the core loop
Give meaning to the experience of playing Heist.exe, or the short way of saying: giving the game a narrative so it’s not just a series of challenges; games are art, and I like to give my art meaning so you, the player, can engage with the game on a deeper level (if you so choose, of course)
Make enemy functionality more robust
Give Level-Altering Machines more unique functionality to keep gameplay fresh
Ship more levels (again, final amount is now up in the air)
And further polish Heist.exe’s gameplay and visuals to the greatest extent I can
That’s all going to take time, playtesting, and polishing to complete. It's an amount of work you can never accurately anticipate when developing a game. The resources needed to finish a game can easily get extended due to aspects of the project needing iteration; the direction of content or the game itself changing; stuff getting cut; unexpected technical problems cropping up; playtests yielding new discoveries about players, mechanics, and bugs; and more. I must account for and execute upon that when considering where I want to take Heist.exe in order to deliver the game in a complete, enjoyable state. And I think you’ll enjoy the game more because of it.
Building the Community and Interfacing with You
To those of you who have played Heist.exe for any amount of time, this is where I want to say thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for giving the game a chance. We’re a pretty small community at the moment, which leads me to the next part of developing the game: building and interfacing with the community.
Over the course of Heist’s development, I would like to do more to build our community and involve you all in development. First and foremost, I will still keep listening to your feedback on the game; that's not going to change. Besides that, I’m not entirely sure how I should go about building the community. However, I would like to start by doing the following in the future:
Directly responding to player reviews (Edit, March 20th: Okay, I've learned this actually isn't the best idea as it may limit discussions and hinder honest feedback/critique. I don't want anyone to feel like they can't say what they feel about Heist.exe or any of my work, positive, negative, or neutral. In the end, that feeling benefits nobody.)
Posting more frequent updates on development or community initiatives, perhaps once a month—No firm promises, though
Making a community Discord server
I will find out what other options I can leverage and act on them to make your stay worth its while. Please stay tuned for related announcements.
Marketing
One way I know I can reach more players is by marketing. I want to do way more research into how I can market Heist.exe and execute on that marketing. This isn’t just about making the game more successful. It’s about building the community and fostering shared enjoyment of the game. Games have the potential to bring people together in many different ways, and if I can do that through Heist.exe, perhaps it can make someone’s day just a little bit brighter or their life a little bit happier.
That is every reason I have chosen to delay Heist.exe. I want to reassure you all that everything I am doing is in an effort to make your play experience as enjoyable as possible. I definitely would not have delayed again if I could maintain a faster development velocity with everything going on, but I couldn’t. So this time, I’m giving myself more time to finish the game than just a few months. I said before that Heist may not be done until the end of the year. Honestly, I don’t even know if that’s enough time. But as usual, I will let you know as soon as possible if I need more time again. I hope you understand.
Development Progress
Now, onto something more uplifting: a small progress update!
So, I have been developing Heist.exe between the hotfix patch and now, just kind of slowly. Here is a snippet of that development progress: Action-Based Dialogue.
I’ve said before that I want to give Heist more of a narrative. Action-Based Dialogue is my main strategy for doing so. Figuring out the implementation was quite a headscratcher, but on the surface it’s pretty simple: when the player does something in the game, one of the NETBots, Agent Tehsi, or another character will start speaking in certain cases.
Here’s an example of dialogue triggering when Tehsi escapes from a guard:
(Please note that everything shown is subject to change.)
What kinds of things do you think Agent Tehsi will learn about on her missions? I hope you look forward to finding out. You'll be able to experience this feature in version 0.3.0, the next major Early Access update for Heist.exe! I have not finalized a release date for this update as of yet. Please stay tuned for more information.
For most of Heist.exe’s development up to this point, I’ve focused on game design, the implementation of major gameplay systems, and visual overhauls. This means that, while I have some basic ideas of where to take the narrative’s direction, I don’t know what exactly Tehsi will learn either! Which leads me to the final point of this announcement...
What’s Next for Development?
My next major focus for development will be on narrative design. For the current state of Heist.exe, that means figuring out what the story is like (though this game will not have an incredibly involved story), developing the world and the context for things that exist in the game, properly sequencing gameplay scenarios, and ensuring the player understands the context behind their actions and other aspects of gameplay.
For the work outside the game, I intend to do more marketing and community-building research to give you all more value beyond Heist.exe itself. Please stay tuned for the next development update.
What are your thoughts on everything presented today? Please share them in the comments. For more direct inquiries, feel free to reach out at [email protected].
That’s all for today’s announcement, Agents. Let’s move out!