Hey Steam fans,
August is down, September is here, so it’s time for another update!
Target release date
I’ve had a few questions about this lately, so I thought it would be good to address this head-on. First of all, I want to apologize if I did not appear to be transparent about this: Truth is, developers, don’t know better sometimes themselves. What this means for Omno is that the end of 2020 I was targeting just isn’t going to be realistic anymore - as you have guessed already, I’d assume - and I’m now looking at around March/April 2021 for launch, which having done all of the revised planning I believe will be achievable.
gamescom!
As I’m sure a few of you might have noticed, gamescom just happened this past weekend! Obviously it wasn’t quite the same as the usual craziness of hundreds of thousands of people piling into a convention center in Cologne, but the organisers still managed to put on a good show digitally! As I mentioned before, I’m planning to make the demo available right up until launch on its own standalone page -
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1375540/Omno_Prologue/
What have I been working on this month?
- Creating lots new creatures, to make the world busy, vibrant and surprising!
- Lots of creature animation work to make all those creatures interesting to discover and watch
- New interactions between the player character and creatures
- Environment additions - lots of new trees, bushes and vegetation throughout, as well as smaller critters, to really bring the world to life and help signpost points of interest in the world
- Dynamic camera improvements to make key moments feel “epic” - I noticed some people don’t enjoy forced sequences necessarily, so I decided to go for a middle path here in some occasions and make the camera do it’s thing to show what it’s supposed to, but still remain the player in control
What’s next?
In terms of development, September will see me working on the puzzles some more (they do make a lot of work! Wow!), generally making the world prettier and more alive (this is a BIG task as well, as it is a main aspect of the game), making some additional performance and optimisation improvements, introducing “Explorer Stones” to the world (a little more on that next month!), doing some extra work on new creatures, and maybe even starting work on a new trailer if I can fit it in, since it’s been a LOOOOONG time since the last one!
Big love as always, and as ever let me know in the comments if you have any questions.
[You can read the full, more detailed Kickstarter update here]