Hello, Fossil Hunters!
It’s time to give you an update on development progress!
Before we do that, though, we’d like to apologize for not publishing anything in December – due to Christmas time and New Year’s Eve it was difficult to squeeze in a devlog during that time. We know some of you have been used to a monthly pace and the delay made you confused. We’d like to make it clear that the game is constantly being worked on. It’s a bit late now, but we’d also like to wish you a Happy New Year! 🙂
Now, let’s move to the part you’re all interested in.
What is the game’s current state?
We are happy to let you know that the majority of mechanics and content has been included in the game. We are intensively working on wrapping up development and preparing for the game’s launch.
We have now moved to the testing phase – many of our testers are involved along with the QA team of our publisher. They play the game and give us their feedback while we provide them with new builds and polish the game according to their suggestions. It’s a very intense time as we hand over at least one new build each day.
Main mechanics and gameplay loop have been completed and all 3D content has been included in the game. Locations have been finished as well. Prologue’s content has been successfully merged with the full game’s content and the story has been expanded. Most of the less important mechanics work well, although they require a bit more testing and polishing. We’re also adding remaining 2D graphics.
Fortunately, new workflow related to excavating big fossils received positive feedback from the entire publisher’s testing team, which means we can focus on improvements and adding missing elements to the game.
To be specific, other than obligatory fixes, we’re working on:
- 2D graphics, such as icons, screenshots and Achievements graphics
- Music
- Improving some of the game’s interface
- Translating new text content
- Gameplay balance
- Analyzing and improving optimization
- Completing remaining minor mechanics
As the end note, we’d like to show you one of the most advanced systems we have developed for Dinosaur Fossil Hunter – rocks excavation system. It was a great challenge to get it right, but we’re very happy with the results.
This system evaluates whether it is possible or not to dig out the rock based on the terrains’ shape.
That would be it for this devlog! We can’t say how long testing will take as it’s a constant loop of creating a build, gathering feedback, improving, creating another build and so on. It takes time, but thanks to the efforts of our testers, we can eliminate a lot of bugs and possible issues you could face. Once this phase is over, we can start preparing for the launch.
Just a bit longer – stay tuned!
Best Regards,
Dinosaur Fossil Hunter Team