So the demo is over! We’ve had a great time getting the game out to people, and we've had a lot of new wishlists and some great feedback. It's also fair to say some of the feedback has been mixed, and we've still got lots of development to do!
Expectations
Given the pure amount of demo downloads, and the amount of feedback we’ve had in general, it feels like there’s been a lot of interest in the game and loads of people adding us to their wishlists. We've also had positive comments on the visuals and atmosphere of the game, which is great as this is a part we've both spent the longest on in terms of creating content, and probably was our biggest worry as we have only a single artist to make a fairly complex game.
However, in terms of the games mechanics, It’s clear people were expecting something more complete and polished, and we didn’t have time to provide that experience. This demo was the first time the game had ever been installed on a computer not owned by one of us, so we knew there would be plenty of technical and gameplay issues, but the feedback has been a massive eye opener, too.
We’ve found at normal conventions, people don’t expect to be playing some close to finished game. With the Steam festival, people were expecting a proper slice of the full experience and we were being displayed next to more complete, and polished games.
That’s our fault: we weren't really expecting to go to any shows this year, for obvious reasons, so we haven’t really been developing the game with a demo in mind.
That meant that rather than having 100% of our systems and mechanics done for a small section of the game, we actually have a large section of the games levels complete but none of our systems where we want them. Some of our systems is working at 50% or less, and some are completely missing.
I would say to those of you who played or who are reading the feedback from others: don’t give up on us yet! We were web developers before becoming game developers, and interaction and improvement is in our nature.
Photographic evidence that at least one of three of us are working
Improvements
Rather than vanish for another six months and finish the game and hope for the best, we’re going to try and make major but incremental improvements to all our systems and get them out in front of anyone who is interested in helping us shape Summerford. We may or may not go as far as Early Access, but for the time being consider our plan to be a free early access for anyone who wants in.
The first of these improvements will be finished just before Halloween in a demo that will be available to anyone who gets in touch via Steam, Discord or Twitter.
It’s a bit early to say exactly what will get into the Halloween demo, but our plan is to release an upgraded version of the demo that is much closer to the final Summerford experience.
The changes will be partly based on what we simply didn’t have time to add or polish, and partly based on all the excellent feedback we’ve had on the demo. If someone has written something about the game, you can be assured we’ve taken it to heart and on board.
That means we’ll be looking at the following at a minimum, and perhaps even more if we get a chance:
- Control enhancements to both tank and alternative controls, including remapping
- Closer and more numerous cameras that should feel both more intimate and easier to navigate through
- A larger focus on combat
- A general increase in our horror and atmosphere through both additional elements and a more complete sound mix
- Improved cinematic cameras for cut-scenes
- Big UI and QOL improvements and polish in how you interact with the world
We already started working on these during the demo and patched the game ten times with fairly large updates during the last week, so we’re starting from a good place, and we’d more than welcome your opinion as we develop either here on the Steam forums, on Twitter, or over on our Discord.
We can’t promise the Halloween update is going to fix everything and be as good as the finished version, but we think it will be much closer.
After that, it’s likely we’ll start working towards applying everything to the first half of the game, get that in a great place and come back to the community for more feedback, and continue doing that until we have a game we are proud of.
This may mean the game takes a few more months to release, but if it means we release something worth playing, then we think it'll be time well spent.