Hey everyone! Other than the title of this post may suggest, development of The Sapling is going incredibly well at the moment: I feel like I'm working faster than ever before, sometimes squashing up to 5 bugs a day. It's super motivating to see the game grow into something stable and trustworthy under my hands. This efficiency I largely owe to the many helpful bug reports I receive every day from players adventurous enough to try the experimental beta branch, so thanks!
Having said that, I feel the game will not be ready for the 'main' branch on September 13. This is partly because I would like to fix some more bugs, but most of all because I did not get to (1) optimization (= acceptable FPS) and (2) balancing (= interesting simulations) at all so far. While the overall response to the Sea & Sandbox update is super positive (again, thanks!) I'm seeing multiple beta players report that this lack of optimization and balancing really affects the current gameplay negatively, and I can totally see why.
This means the 'Sea & Sandbox' update is not yet ready for everyone, so I have decided to continue pushing my patches to the beta branch for a few more weeks: my current plan is to move over to the main branch on October 11. While I don't expect to have a 100% bug free, smooth and balanced game by then (this is still an Early Access game after all), things should be significantly better than they are today.
But I really wanted to play this Tuesday!
Well, you can; I will continue to release patches to the beta branch, which everyone who bought the game has access to. Every devlog of video of season 2 ends with a visual instruction on how to switch to this beta branch. The fact that I upload builds of the game on this branch instead of to everyone the only thing that is different from the original plan.
By the way, the version of the game that is available on the beta branch right now is already a lot more stable than the version that what I released on August 16, and will be even more so with the upcoming patch, which I aim to release in the coming week.
What about the price increase?
I feel it would be fairest to only increase the price when the 'Sea & Sandbox' update is available for everyone, so the price increase is postponed as well; it will go live together with the update.