Things are finally starting to come together!
Will drop this up front in case folks don't want to read the whole thing:
Currently planning for mid-September Early Access release.
This is subject to change based on internal testing/issues, but things are progressing quickly. Release is planned for Steam, iOS and Android.
Over the past few weeks, a lot of my time has been spent in the less glamorous side of game development: fixing bugs, chasing down weird edge cases, tweaking numbers, breaking things, fixing them again, and trying to figure out why something that worked perfectly yesterday suddenly doesn't today.
But with all of that work, the game is starting to feel much more like the game I've had in my head for so long. The foundation is there. The major systems are coming together. And I'm now spending more and more time on that last (and probably never-ending) step of making everything actually feel good.
Getting Ready for Early Access The biggest thing I'm working toward right now is getting the game into a state where I can finally put it in players' hands through Early Access. That is incredibly exciting — and honestly, a little terrifying. This game started as a passion project born from my love of cultivation stories, the endless progression of idle games, and the idea of combining those two things into something that feels like its own little cultivation world. There are a lot of ideas that have made their way into the game along the way. Some have worked better than others. Some have been completely reworked. And I'm sure there are plenty of things that I'll look back on after launch and wonder what I was thinking. That's part of why I'm so excited about Early Access. I don't want to build this game in a vacuum.
Balance, Balance, Balance... Right now, one of my biggest focuses is getting the initial balance into a good place. With a game built around cultivation and progression, there are a lot of numbers involved. Experience requirements, progression speed, rewards, resources, equipment, combat, breakthroughs, and all of the little systems that feed into one another. It's very easy to make something feel great for the first few hours and then realize you've accidentally created a progression wall 20 hours later.
Or the opposite — you make progression too generous and suddenly all of the things that were supposed to feel like major accomplishments don't feel particularly meaningful anymore.
As a potentially novel issue, the focus isn't on individual character balance as much as it is on balance of opportunity and individual progression balance. I have integrated randomness into the game in many place (or tried to) in such a way that inherently some characters will chance into better starting positions and increased power at certain realms. Part of what I love about cultivation stories is how a single opportunity can drastically change the MC's situation. I'm trying to capture that. I'm working through those problems now and trying to find that balance between "I can see myself getting stronger" and "I actually have something to work toward." I'm sure I'll get some of it wrong. And that's okay. I Want Your Feedback One of the biggest reasons I'm looking forward to Early Access is getting actual players to tell me what works and what doesn't. There are things that feel obvious to me because I've been staring at them for months that might be completely confusing to someone playing the game for the first time. So when Early Access arrives, I really want to hear about all of it. Especially: What will make you want to keep playing? The goal isn't just to get the game released. It's to use Early Access to figure out what this game can become.
The Exciting Part:
After spending so much time working on this project behind the scenes and thinking about it all the time, getting to the point where other people can finally play it is incredibly exciting. It's still a passion project. It's still being actively developed. And it's definitely not going to be perfect when it launches. But that's also what makes this stage so exciting. The game is becoming something real. I'm getting closer to the point where I can hand it over to other cultivators and say:
"Alright. Your journey begins here."
As this is my first attempt at game design (my day job is more traditional software engineering), it has been a fun and educational journey, but i'm aware and excited that i'm just getting started.
If you're curious to see how internal testing is going, see some screen shots of updates being made or get to know the small, bug growing community, join us on Discord!
https://discord.gg/5HEHX5UU4