Hello Villagers!
Next Wednesday was supposed to be the release of Village Monsters v1.0. Unfortunately, I still have too many things left to do, and not enough time to do them.
This means I need to delay the release one more time.
Village Monsters v1.0 will now release March 16th, 2022.
I'm really sorry, everyone. This was not an easy decision.
A number of new problems were found during the final rounds of testing. Some can be ignored or fixed later, but many are "Must Fix".
This additional month will give me the extra time needed to ensure v1.0 is a finished and polished release worthy of its version number.
Read on to learn more.
So, what happened?
This really sucks.
For the last month I've been performing final "audits" on all the features and content in the game. And just like real life tax audit, it's been a painful process.
(An example of an audit. In this case, a bunch of fish. And they're all going to jail for tax fraud.)
These audits revealed lots of very silly bugs, features I thought were finished but aren't, and even a save corruption issue.
This is normal for every release, and I thought I had planned for it. But as the list grew and multiplied like a hydra, I realized I'd need to start crunching hard - even 18+ hours a day might not have been enough.
I think short term crunch is a necessary evil. But I've been crunching for awhile, and I just can't do that much more work in that short amount of time.
The other option was to do as much as I could, release the game as-is, and fix the rest in a post-launch update. However, I'm very much against that. You've already had to wait a year+ for this release. The idea of releasing something called "v1.0" that's unfinished is frankly unacceptable. I'd rather take the reputation hit of a delay and release a finished product I'm proud of.
I'm certainly no stranger to delays and schedule shifts - so much so that I made fun of myself in the announcement trailer - and I thought I was past making those mistakes. It's really disappointing to be making another post like this.
But I know it's the right decision for the game, for you guys, and for me. So bear with me one last time, and look forward to Village Monsters v1.0 on March 16th!