Hi Everyone,
As you have noticed, the last update, 0.9.0 was a little while ago. This is just a short update to let you know that development is still progressing with Startup Freak, alas a little slow at the moment. My purpose here is not to make excuses but I just want to give you a bit of background and context as to why this is:
- Startup Freak, as you might know, has been a passion project and something I have worked on tirelessly in addition to my day job for the past 2.5 years. A huge amount of my personal time, including nights and weekends have gone into it. The past couple of months I have let myself reclaim some of that time and focus on other things. Keep in mind I'm still working on the game; just not as much.
- I have done a good bit of brain-storming around larger system / feature changes. One of the areas, for example, is the concept of a "super feature" which requires you to do all sorts of research and information gathering to work out the optimal shape, size and make-up of the feature (filled a few butcher-papers worth of ideas). However I have not been able to settle on a good / meaningful / interesting concept here. This kind of goes back to one of the primary difficulties I have had with the design of this game: because a "Startup", even a software one, is such a broad and all-encompassing subject, it's really hard to design something that puts you in the shoes of an entrepreneur, allowing you to make meaningful decisions. Either I have to add an incredible amount of content to the game (something that is beyond a 1-person studio), or I have to settle for more generic / abstract features, which is something that I have already had negative feedback about. In short, I'm parking some of these ideas until and unless I can come up with something really enjoyable and meaningful, and can be at least somewhat concrete.
- For now my focus instead is going to be enhancing, improving, and increasing the depth of existing features. I'm currently actively working on a "patenting" concept whereby your features are at risk of being copied by other companies unless you protect them with a patent. This will build right into the backlog / feature UI and should add another interesting element to balance.
- Beyond what I have said above, I'll be adding some more informational UI, for example to the Data Centers, to give the player more understanding of what is happening. That and a few more improvements will be coming in the next release which at this point will likely be in August.
Thanks again for all your support and understanding, and making it this far in a text-heavy post! I'll be aiming to put out update posts more regularly to let you know of the progress.
- Poya