Greetings all good players out there.
Im sitting here with the pouring rain and streetlamps as a backdrop, throwing everything I have at fixing bugs in the game client. This weekend was supposed to be all about playtesting, but the schedule got hijacked by bug upon bug, that we admittedly should have caught sooner.
And tomorrow we were supposed to unveil episode 2, which is almost done, but woefully untested and balanced for difficulty.
I know people have been waiting eagerly for episode 2, but since the game client really needs some work, I have decided to push the episode launch plan four days ahead, giving us more time to playtest and getting stability to both the geometry glitches, the corruption on savefiles, the controlscheme and the multiplayer weirdness of the client.
It stings, but adding some time on the clock also have these benefits :
- The obvious extra polishing of the client, and thereby a better experience overall.
- Better experience for people joining the projekt now, since we can serve up a better small thing, than two unstable medium sized things.
- With the new release schedule, steam has promised to give each episode a small promotional umph, bringing players in once each episode is done.
- We will be able to spend the money we earned on presales on more voice recording and awesome artwork from our two resident artists.
- You will have the fine weekend to sink your teeth into the second episode.
- Any "spare time" will be spend improving on both Episode 1 and 2.
Now I know stalling in a game development project always makes thing sound shaky, and if anyone wants to just bail and claim a refund, I have no bad vibes coming their way.
But I do hope people will stick around, curious on learning more about the life of the professor, about the treasure that the mansion will hold, and wether they will crush the coming challenges with ease, or spend hours pondering over gears, rope, light beams, playing cards, typewriters, scrolls and fine wine (just to mention a few of the upcoming puzzle components)
So, the updated release schedule will look like this:
Episode schedule:
Episode 2 - The Path to Ruin
Release date : 8th of September
Episode 3 - The Man the World Forgot
Release date : 22nd of September
Episode 4 - Thy Kingdom Come
Release date : 6th of October
Also, we have decided to keep the rhytm going with a small little addition:
Bonus Episode/Patch - The Architecture of Madness
Release date : 20th of October
Containing extra riddles, puzzles and maybe a couple of extra rooms to the existing episodes.
In conclusion
Delaying is never fun, but I hope that on the whole, this will be for the best. It doesn't mean that we are just dazing in the sun, we are working hard and all workdays this coming week will contain at least one major patch a day.
So I will return to the coding cauldron, and I hope to present some good patches in the near future.
See you all soon.