Approaching Playtest / Demo Release

Hello everyone!

I am getting some attention here lately and this gives me strength to keep posting updates. If at least one person is going to read it, then it is good enough for me to keep posting. Beware though, I can get carried away very easily.

Let me start with an eye candy:

This is the Requisition screen. You will visit this screen after clicking on an Assembly Plant. Through there, you will be able to order your Arcade Systems.

This is one of the UIs that I have built and I like. It is perhaps the second UI where I invested more time than I should have. Developing solo is very harsh in terms of time management. I really do not have much time to pay attention to detail, something that I always LIKE to do but I do daily sacrifice in order to ship.. eventually.

This is actually cruel, because you want to create something without any discount. Then the years pass and you are still building. Then you realize that you MUST discount and this is what is cruel. It only gets worse when you DO discount because you eventually fight with your thoughts. Thoughts like, "What if", "I can afford some more time with this" , "I could delay the launch", "Early Access is not a shield", etc.

Back to development updates, it has been a very very busy period. It's around 2 weeks since the last update and it really feels like a steal that I am posting again, so soon. A steal againt my own roadmap and timeline which I am striving to meet. Here is what we got so far:

-Limited Public Playtest around first week of May.
-Demo rollout at late May
-Participation at Steam Fest in June
-Game Release at August 3rd

To be sincere, I am not yet ready. I am still polishing things, hunting for bugs and I have a whole secion (Stock Market) untouched. This will not make it in the Demo but will probably make it in the Early Access release as planned. I have not deserted the efford but I prefer a stable demo over yet another feature packed in a limited time demo.


I got some more eye candy:


These are the Game Charts. Every released game enters them. In general, I have created MANY new interfaces. You might notice a new HUD in comparison to previous screenshots: the one at the top left.

These are your studio fans. You gain fans with your Street Influence and Games performance. Fans are very valuable and can be affected by events.

Here is a more fresh screenshot of the city traffic. You will be spending lot of the game time in screens like this one:



I am doing my best in order to prevent micromanaging. This has an added cost in game development as I need to provide centralized tools where players can track and command from a top tier perspective.

Closed playtests have already started. They have unveiled the necessity of adding more guidance in the game, something that is planned to complete before the release of the public playtest and perfected till the Demo release.

Speaking of the demo, the boundaries are already set. The Early Access game will launch with the following game modes (All single player, multiplayer and co-op will need to wait for full release):
-Campaign
-Sandbox
-Scenarios

For the demo, I will have a special SCENARIO for everyone to try the game. It will be of medium difficulty and hopefully will provide more than enough hours of gameplay to persuade people that this game deserves a chance.

At the demo scenario, you will be assigned as a crisis Manager of a falling Titan, named Ubibros Mapworks! Yeah.. a big big company, a TITAN, is falling. And who else to save it but you? That's the demo scenario... stay tuned!

If you liked this, you could give it a thumbs up, in this way, I get strength to post more frequently here.

Thank you for reading!