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I state quite often on my Twitter that I believe it's my duty to be transparent and direct, especially since I am the sole creator and director of everything around NYKRA. So I felt I would take an honest moment to sit down and explain some happenings that are around me.
The complex part about releasing a game you've obsessed and fixated on for endless years, is that you will absolutely lack the experience knowing how to do it professionally. I have never done this before, so I had to go into it knowing that there's a good chance I'll mess up. I can't state that I knew what to do, because I didn't.
In saying this though, I genuinely try to learn and listen as fast and as effective as possible. But in the end, it's still only me making all the decisions and doing all the work. I chose not to work towards hiring people, which (to be fair) isn't something I should need to do. But there were many moments during development where I was desperate for someone to just tell me what to do. I became so decision-fatigued that even the thought of releasing the game sent me into a panicking spiral.
NYKRA has been a thing for far too long, and it's pretty clear that it's a very messy game behind the scenes. The project file is more than 6 years old, it has systems, code, and objects that date all the way back to the start. During the release window for it, I cannot deny that I was hopeful most of the issues I couldn't fix in time wouldn't surface. Numerous people have directly questioned me to ask if I have even played through it myself - of which I have - but there's important details I need to state. The beta testers I had play the game helped a lot, but some of the issues they reported I had a bad feeling were caused by something larger. For those who don't know, I've been wanting and trying to release this game ever since the Kickstarter in 2016, so there was a lot of desperation to just get this off my chest. And when you don't have someone to keep you on track, things tend to steer in odd directions.
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In saying all this though, I'd like to reference some reviews and talk about some points that I haven't explained.
Regarding the completeness of NYKRA itself, I'd like to reference this well written review of the game:
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198018908619/recommended/867660/
The later parts of NYKRA's development have basically involved now-older me trying to fix and repair this game made by younger-me. To avoid any major future problems, I've been developing the game on 2 separate projects. The reason for this is because (as you may guess) the game breaks often, and more importantly the *.rmlvl files that contain all the map data become susceptible to corruption and incompatibilities. So it's interesting, and more importantly very fair, to see people in the data folders looking at what's going on - especially with all the bugs and crashes. The missing data files is because I didn't export the broken rooms, referencing my 2-project setup. Now looking at it (and reading the above review), I realised how this looks.
Along with the dialogue file, which was also examined, you can see that it doesn't have the dialogue for the last chapter. The final chapter actually doesn't have any dialogue at all (also, there's a lot of dialogue hardcoded into the game itself that I have yet to transition to the external file), so the combination of that and a few other little bits - I understand a lot of the worries people have been having.
Other parts of that review also contain valid criticism, which I appreciate the honesty for. I fully get that this pile of saturated colours and sounds isn't for everyone. But I hope people see that it truly is just a 14 year old's sci-fi obsessive day dream, and not much more. I failed English in school, but did great in architecture and graphic design - so surely that explains a lot of the broken dialogue and stupid shapes hahaha
But hey, this is the weird thing about big childhood dreams like this, you either fulfill it from the perspective of younger you, or force it to change to be more applicable to the normal modern game scene. I guess I chose the former, because I didn't want to disappoint younger me.
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There are numerous aspects of NYKRA's release that I'd also like to cover, with a few references to this other review (which is at the top of the Review List):
https://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561198110725954/recommended/867660/
As many know, I have tried numerous times over the years to settle on a release date. One of the biggest issues I brought up frequently with my therapist was how crippling having a release date was. I truly would have preferred to fiddle and pick at this game for another couple years in the background, but that very quickly became no longer viable. Despite all the seemingly-infinite hours I spent working on the game, it just never wanted to finish. Early Access never sat comfortably with me either, because again - younger me was adamant on a full release.
What's interesting to me, is that this whole release would have been many magnitudes times worse if I released it in July 2021 like I wanted to originally. So it's not that I feel like I could never win, it's more that I really just had to do it sooner rather than later. I really had no choice, because people started to genuinely question if it was ever going to be released or not.
And being solo, every decision I make is definitive - since I don't have a Director or Manager to help me through the last bits.
On twitter I very often talked about how mentally-cumbersome it was knowing I had to release NYKRA. In a sense I never really wanted to at all - it became too personal, and had too many deep-rooted issues that I couldn't bear to show people. 'September the 27th' was made the night before I went to have one of my final chats with my therapist - after more than a year of talking with him. In a way it was my last straw, and I was shattered in pieces trying to explain to him that I'm gonna try to make it work. I had to set it in diamond, otherwise I knew I'd let myself work on it for many more years with no end in sight.
Unfortunately this also felt rather hypocritical in ways, since I stated many times publicly that I don't enjoy release dates - amidst all the fuss around Cyberpunk 2077's delays. So of course I'm embarrassed this didn't go to plan.
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The future, though, is one I'd really like to quickly cover. Despite the issues this past month, I have made a large amount of progress to make the game stable. But there's also a lot more work for me to do in many different aspects.
One of the major topics I talked about in the PATCH_# updates was the save and load system. Many (if not most) of the reports I have gotten relate to the save system. During the beta testing phase, the testers never really opened or closed the game that often, and seemingly only reopened the game when I gave them an update. This meant that they never really encountered the most broken part of the game - the save and load system.
This meant I had to very abruptly drop the todo list to fix it, since you cannot deny that it's the most important part of a game. I knew that I would have to focus on it after the release, but I did not expect it to go down the way it did. As mentioned in the updates, I had to spend countless hours trying to fix a fundamental system made by a kid who didn't know what he was doing... Lots of fun.
But hey, in saying this, it's pretty reliable now. The only issue at the moment is saving EO's neural network data, which seems to break every time somehow.
PATCH_6 will be ready for the weekend, and it will fix most of the broken rooms - now that I'm able to finally work on them, making sure they're actually connected and exported properly. It was extremely hard to put it down the priority list, because I knew people were going to hit Chapter 6, and not be able to continue. The balance of 'fixing things for new players' and 'fixing things for current players' is something I have little to no experience on (or at least to this scale. The demo had a lot less attention haha)
NYKRA's gamepad system is also fixed, and will be in PATCH_6 too.
PATCH_7 will be the first stable release, which will accompany the game going on the itch store too. And it's something I'm going to work really hard towards in the coming week. I hope to release it early November.
I really appreciate that I was able to put this game on Steam, and receive a large amount of feedback. It's overwhelming, yes, but it's also very valid and important. I truly believe that I will not get better as a developer until I fully listen and unpack what/why/how people feel about the game, along with aspects that didn't work for them.
There are many parts I agree with too. It's just it would be unwise of me to remake the entire game... hahaha
Anyway, I also plan on releasing the game on Switch and Android (have a Switch Dev Kit coming soon hopefully, but y'know - covid)
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I know there may still be questions and complaints, but I hope this clears up some info regarding the release and how it just simply didn't go to plan.
But I'm working towards fixing everything, and making sure that the game can be playable for anyone.
Thank you so much for your understanding, and I hope you can stay by my side as I fix up this mess around me. I have many more things to show, and I can't wait to involve others.
Who knew making and releasing a game all by yourself was complex hahaha But hey, I've learnt so much these past months. And I'm very grateful for all the support, despite the chaos.
Much love from your small dodecahedron friend,
-EDG