Hey there, welcome to this little devlog!
I'm Doot, and today, we'll take a step back and look at all we've done and all that's left to do.
Before we begin, there is something cool that I want to share.
Half a million games sold 🥳
It's a BIG number: 500,000!!!
3 years ago, I quit my job and started a new life as an indie dev, thinking I would need to find another job after my savings run out. 3 years later, the little games we made sold more than half a million copies combined. Blibloop and I don't need to find a job anymore, and that's thanks to you all! Thank you so much 💌
An exciting journey 🛣️🌲
To get a better idea of where we are today, we need to look at the path we've traveled. Here is a wrap up of the first months of development:
It all started in September, when Blibloop and I decided to make a new game together. We shared ideas, had long discussions about the kind of game that we wanted to create and how we wanted to do it, and ended up on a pitch that would later became Milki Delivery.
Even back then, we knew this was the hardest game we'd made yet, but we mostly felt the difficulty would be on the technical and artistic sides. Would we be able to make a good looking side scrolling world? We spent October trying to answer that question, and found out that it was indeed doable! Hard, but doable.
Time to make a prototype then! We had one pretty quickly in November, and it showed us that we weren't clear enough on what we were aiming for. Is it a game about exploration? Facing difficulties and choices that matter? A deep story? It can't be everything, we need to focus. On top of that, back then the game needed to be played with keyboard arrows, and that just felt bad.
We went back to the drawing board, centered our focus on discovery, cute encounters and light management, and made another prototype in December. The results were much better! It started to feel like the game knew what it wanted to be.
Finding our way on an untrodden path 🗺️🧐
Knowing where you want to go is nice, but it doesn't always mean you know exactly how to get there. Our game had some core gameplay issues that we needed to resolve. Here is what happened since the beginning of 2026:
Our main issue was quite simple: the game just wasn't fun. The main loop of delivering and going back home everyday quickly felt repetitive and punitive. Time, energy, items, and other systems weren't creating the interesting decisions that we hoped for, and progress wasn't clear enough. January was a tough month: we knew that our game had all these issues, but we needed to invest time and energy into marketing and getting the Steam page and trailer ready. It's also the time where I finally had to accept that no, we won't be able to make this game in 5~7 months like we did for Minami Lane and Kabuto Park. While this might not be a longer game as a player, it will definitely be a longer one to make.
We dedicated February to iterating on the core gameplay, and after trying out different things, we set on the following: a rework of the time / energy system to make it clearer, new ways to collect ressources at locations to make exploration satisfying, little activities and events on the path to make them less repetitive, and a clearer progression system through quests and an upgrade tree that makes getting back home every day rewarding. Another playtest (the third already!) confirmed that we were on the right track!
March was a whole month off for us, and it really felt necessary. I crashed hard during the first week of our vacation from all the stress that accumulated since the beginning of our adventure. Don't worry though, the rest was absolutely awesome, we traveled to Australia and discovered that this country is packed with the cutest creatures on earth. Wombat is Blibloop's new favorite animal, and we saw mines several times: seals and penguins!
Also there were a ton of landscapes that made us think of Milki Delivery? While everyone thought Blibloop was drawing the Japanese countryside, she was actually recreating south Australia without even knowing it?!
We came back fully rested, and ready to tackle the next challenges. The first one was to make the day / night cycle clearer because lots of playtesters found it too confusing or frustrating. That's quite normal since it was only shown through UI, so we made it better by changing the whole sky and colors of the game during sunset and night time. We think that this makes the game both better and prettier!
That's it, we reached today. So, what's happening right now? We are focusing on adding new content. While there would still be a ton of things that we could polish in what we already have, we don't want to fall into the classic game dev trap of locking everything and doing all the content afterwards. We believe that making a good game requires lots of iterations and that content and gameplay always impact one another. We hope that implementing the second region of the game, along with all the new characters, quests and mechanics associated will show us what else needs to be changed before we invest too much time into polishing it. Here is one of the new characters by the way! Isn't she cute? Her name is Brinelle, she loves plants and mushrooms, like every good human being does.
The road ahead is tough, but the weather is clear 🚵🌻
You heard it, and we know it, making a game is daunting. It's my fourth game now (or 24th if you count game jams and free games), and yet it feels like it doesn't get easier! You take small steps forward and big steps backward, but in the end, everything you do helps making the path clearer. While a lot of things can still happen and shake our plans, and while the time needed at the end for completing the game, polishing and bug fixing is still uncertain, the road ahead should look something like this:
As you can see, our next big milestone is in June, where we plan to release a public demo, focusing on the beginning of the game. We still have tons of things to do to get there, but we are on the right track, with the right mindset and lots of positive energy.
When will the full game come out exactly? It's too early to know! 2026 for sure, but the month is still hard to predict. I hope you'll stay with us until then. 🥰
Take care and see you later 💌