Hello Lil' Souls,
This is going to be bad news, and I'll try to be as forthright as possible. Let me cue the music I wrote this post to.
Lil' Arena's development is on hold - but I'll keep the servers running so we can keep playing the current version as long as we want.
It's been three months since the last update (v0.27, part 2 of 3 of the combat overhaul) and every day since then I've felt guilty that I couldn't work on this game.
I felt guilty because I thought I could pull it off by myself, but quite frankly, I can't. I wanted to announce something sooner, but I felt I could turn things around. Turns out I couldn't.
The main problem is that Lil' Arena is not my only gig, because I also need to sustain myself. Seeing as it doesn't pay yet (I've felt I can't charge for a MOBA that doesn't have enough players), I develop / design games for other companies as a freelancer to make ends meet.
The problem with that is that my head is filled to the brim with all kinds of different projects :: an academic game, a mobile pvp game, a board game about empathy and a tarot about the future of labor. Yes. A freaking tarot :)
As a result, I find it impossible to focus, and I can't drop the other projects because they pay my bills. So I have to put this one on hold for a while.
The good news is that this isn't the first time Lil' Arena has gone to sleep to wake up stronger and better.
Bit of context ::
- Lil' Arena started as a passion project in 2013.
- Two years later, I froze development as I couldn't sustain it solo
- In 2016, I received funding and got a team together to resume.
- We managed to released the game in Early Access by late 2018.
- January 2019, funds ended but the game didn't have enough players yet.
- I've been working on it solo since then, improving what I can.
I love this game, the lore behind it and I think my team did a fantastic job on many areas. I also think the game needs a lot more work before it can be released, work that I can't hope to pull off alone.
So until I manage to find either a committed team willing to work for revenue sharing, or some funds to pay them, development is on hold. I've considered a kickstarter and as soon as I wrap some of the freelance projects up, I may give it a shot!
Any updates, I will post here and on our Discord
In the meantime, I'll keep making games, writing about them and exploring what this medium can do, so hopefully we'll "meet" again :)
If you want to follow my journey through games, join this mailing list.
Thank you for the feedback throughout these months. I feel the game has become a much more solid experience than it used to be when it launched back in September because of it.
Cheers from the Afterlife,
Your Lil' Developer
Konstantinos "Tall Guy" Vasileiadis