Greetings all. Now that Salt Mines 2.0 has been released into the wild, here’s the latest on our future plans.
Much earlier in the year as I was first joining the team, I made a prediction that we’d be reaching 1.0 by the end of Summer. Well... that’s in two days. Suffice to say, looks like my estimate was inaccurate (unless I meant the southern hemisphere’s Summer, ho ho).
Level 3 supers and Story Mode are the only two remaining hard requirements for us to consider the game a full release. They aren’t ready yet, but we’re in the final stretch. It looks like we’ll still be able to make it to 1.0 by the end of this year.
So… what happened?
Long story short, Salt Mines 2.0 blew out its time budget about threefold. Online multiplayer is probably the most difficult, complex area of game development there is, and we’d advise other indie developers out there to approach it with caution. It took maximum effort and ten weeks to complete this feature (and there’s still more we wish we could’ve done), but it’s out, we’re satisfied with the result, and it’s about time we brought the rest of the game home.
Many of you have been asking: why we did we choose to focus on Salt Mines over Story Mode? That’s an absolutely fair question. We know there are a lot of players more interested in single-player content, but we believed this was the right move to make. Here’s our reasoning.
Salt Mines is our attempt to solve three large problems that today’s fighting games don’t seem to have answers for: (fun) alternative modes, thriving online lobbies, and engaging ways of unlocking cosmetics that don’t involve microtransactions. We see an opportunity for TFH to stand out among the giants and have a better chance of making it long-term if we can succeed in these spaces.
This issue has been on the dev’s minds since the beginning of the project. The original Salt Mines (available when the game first launched) was only a shadow of the intended design. It was fun in its own way, but didn’t really accomplish its goals. We felt it was necessary to update the Salt Mines to its final form, and that it needed to go out as soon as possible. It’s a very experimental feature by industry standards, so the more time we have to observe play, gather feebdack, and fix bugs, the stronger it will be (and the more likely it will make an impact on fighting game history), by the time we’re ready to leave Early Access.
We admit it seems a little crazy, but it was a calculated risk. Hopefully that provides some clarity on our thought process behind this whole thing.
Now, let’s talk about what’s next!
Level 3 supers are pretty far along. We’ve been working on them in secret along with Salt Mines 2.0. They’re very close to done: completely functional, but still in need of final animation, effects, and sound. We’d hoped to include them in the last patch, but during the final weeks of development it became clear we needed to pull everyone in to help with the mines.
Level 3s for all six characters will go out in October. Included with (or close to) this release, we’ll also be updating the structure of our menus.
After all that’s in the bag, we finish up Arizona’s chapter of Story Mode. Though content-rich, it won’t be nearly as complex from a developer perspective as Salt Mines, so development should go much more smoothly. Then, at long last, TFH will be ready for 1.0.
Alright. That’s all I got for ya’ll this time. Thanks for the read. If you’re interested in the long-form explanation, I first made this announcement during yesterday’s ManeCast stream. Starts at 6:52.
Enjoy the rest of your weekend. We’ll be in touch.
Aaron
Production Manager, Mane6