Long time no blog. I don't typically do updates as I'm definitely in that camp of "prefers to do more than talk." Thanks for being patient on development if you have been following all my updates. It's almost January which means this project is coming close to 3 years of development. The previous blog mentions that hopefully it wouldn't come to that (one year ago...). However three years is pretty common for games produced (but I would not like to make it a habit!).

I decided to commit to uploading a public demo for the Steam Next Fest on February 21-28. This is not really a big deadline as I already have more than enough content for a short demo, but this gives me some incentive to make the vertical slice features (controls, accessibility, general game loop stuff) as development draws to a close. It's hard to describe where I'm at with this game as it has gone on hiatus several times, but it has been gaining momentum and I'd like to seize on an event that isn't quite a launch but isn't another quiet milestone either. Also there's something actually tangible to play!

The game has gone through some transformation and a better realization of "what the game actually is" seeing people play the demo will be a good way to see how successful the direction pivot is. I will also need to redo some of the marketing to even relay what that actually is (the trailer really needs an update, good lord). Suffice to say the game will not go through any major changes past the demo festival as I'll just be focusing on content and nothing else. I'd like to do a post mortem one day on how I struggled with "game loop vs content" because that's the thing that's been on my mind a lot lately. In future projects I'd like to improve that workflow better since I do not want to spend 3 years of my life force on every major game release that I do! It is a one person project after all, yet I'd like some aspects to change.

So stay tuned for the demo. I'll provide more details as it comes closer (Made a game centric twitter account for this purpose). Have a good holiday!

Itch.io Note: I will also release an earlier private demo for those who pre-ordered on itch.io. Stay tuned for more details.