http://store.steampowered.com/app/428860
Red Haze is in active crunch right now, and will be releasing February 6th - 8th. 6th is the goal, 8th is the deadline to allow two days if something comes up last minute. This is finalized, It's basically going to be non-stop work for me, except to break on the 24th & 25th as I'll be playing Resident Evil 7.
Red Haze will be releasing for $1.99 USD, and have a 5% discount on release for the first week, so will be $1.89 for the first week. It won't go on sale for a while after that, until the Summer Sale, which will be discounted the exact same amount, 5% off, $1.89. I also promise it won't be bundled. I like to reward early buyers, its a big policy for me whenever I do releases. I think there is value both to myself and to fans and early adopters to allow a wide window of time before going deeper into discounting. And to be frank, it's not very hard to come by a couple dollars.
Game will also have Steam achievements on Windows PC, cloud saves, & Steam Trading Cards. Unfortunately there will be no achievements on Mac for the time being due to a technical limitation, there is by chance a work around but my efforts thus far have caused issues with the Mac version. Playability over achievements is what I decided.
So, some thoughts here before I send the game out as a product. In some ways Red Haze has turned out to be a much better game than I thought it'd be, and in others it hasn't quite lived up to what I wanted it to be. It has been a fantastic learning experience for myself, and I think my future endeavors will benefit from having made Red Haze. I've in earnest learned far more about game design, RPG Maker, myself, spriting, music making, and more during its process I think will help me with future projects.
I don't know how Red Haze will do. I don't think I can know. Before I released Close Your Eyes, for example, I thought people weren't going to like it. I knew all of its flaws, I knew how it could've been better, and I was thinking its purposely cryptic story was going to frustrate people. It turned out doing a lot better than I anticipated, turns out the things I liked about it shined above the flaws for most. Even Take the Dream IX did better than I anticipated, I think it's the shittiest game I've ever made and I finished it out of sheer will to show I could finish it.
So when it comes to Red Haze, it's hard for me to place how people may receive it. I'm expecting some "ow the edge," and some people to find elements of it cringey, and that's fine. The subject matter kind of naturally aligns itself to that, and I don't think all will like my voice acting choices I made for Red Haze. And if I'll be honest, I think the element of Red Haze that most didn't live up to what I wanted it to be was its narrative. There's a story, and in some ways I think I managed to make some interesting story scenes and developments, but it didn't quite come together like I wanted it to in its earlier stages. Characters were cut, scenes were as well, and thus entire plot elements dropped.
On the other hand, I'm anticipating how people receive the game. I sent out some keys to random people who don't know me, I don't know them, and I think it's telling I got the same feedback from everyone: A bit of a slow start, but they slowly get more and more into it and start getting more engrossed in its strange world. Which is good, that was my singular biggest goal with Red Haze, to make a branching game that's not to be experienced in but a single playthrough, but several, with lots of secrets to uncover, endings to obtain, deeper areas to discover, and oddities to figure out. It uses a very unorthodox gameplay design I won't go fully into detail to here, but I think while some things didn't come together how I would've hoped, I think (and hope) it'll be a game that will be very much worth people's $2.
I think it won't be my magnum opus, but I hope you all enjoy it. It's taken a lot longer than I would've liked due to life, motivation, one hell of a year in 2016, working on other things at the same time, breaks, and adding more and taking away at the same time at Red Haze as time has gone on.
I'm kind of expecting some initial negative reviews by people who only experience the tip of the iceberg and never get to see what lurks deeper in the game, and the voice actress for Rockette is worried because she voiced in another RPG Maker Horror game in the past (Uri's Boogie Man, as it were), and has trolls who stalk her and she predicts they'll try trolling the review page for this game when it releases since they resurfaced again for her recently getting word she was voicing in this game. She tried apologizing to me about it, but to be honest I'm not too worried. Even if people not trolling dislike the game, I think there's a lot I can learn from that.
2017 is a big year for me since I either make or break this game making thing for me, but I have a lot of things slated for this year. My plans have changed since my last update on 2017 plans, which I'll try to share in the future. I decided to not go for as strict deadlines, for one, and re-arranged projects a bit more. That'll be for another day, however.
For those helping with testing, there will be a pretty huge update hitting tomorrow, and a second big update hitting at the end of January. I appreciate everyone who's been helping test the game and spotting things I may have otherwise missed.
A late welcome to 2017, and I look forward to seeing y'all play Red Haze. I hope it lives up to your guy's anticipation & expectations, and surprise you in some ways. I will say this though, it by design is a very different game than Close Your Eyes. It was highly experimental for me, and while I learned a lot from it, it's to be seen what y'all think of it. I hope it's enjoyable.