Weekly Recap

Let's talk about what happened since last Sunday. Contrary to the previous week we're making good progress on the performance front. I have reworked large parts of the conveyor belt system and the first results look very promising. We yet lack a large benchmark test because the changes made all savegames incompatible. A new round of testing needs to be done for the final evaluation. We will do those tests during the upcoming week, in case you're interested in pre-alpha testing, you can join our discord and get in touch there. The changes introduced a new set of bugs but so far we have fixed all known bugs but one. The last one is really rare and could not be reproduced by now, but we'll work on it. It is in general the last known bug the game has at the moment, but I'm fairly confident that you'll find more when the game is finally released.

‍Early Access Launch

As you might have guessed: Again no release date, but I really think it's close now. I already talked about that in dev blog #1: I don't want a fixed release date as I don't think it's worth rushing it to a certain date while we already put so much work in. I'll release it when it's ready. I understand that this might be a bit frustrating for interested players, but I think the game will overall benefit from that strategy. And as said last week: "This summer" still looks realistic. (Maybe depending on the definition of "summer".)

As promised I will give you some information about the general launch plan: We will bring the game to itch.io! The itch.io store seems like the logical start for a new indie game. Over the last couple of years itch.io has grown from a more niche site to a pretty big platform for upcoming indie games. From the business perspective it provides a very fair pricing model and offers all the features we need for the start. Compared to f.i. steam I think it's a good idea to start with a smaller audience to really get the game quality where we want it to be before we hit a larger store. And before you ask: We have not yet decided when to launch the game on other stores. By "other stores" I'm mostly talking about Steam and Epic Games Store, we'll look into GOG and others, but the first two are the big ones. We are going to create a steam page without a release date soon to start building up some community awareness and allow people to wishlist, but I don't know when the game comes to steam yet. The focus is on making a good game first.

-mrmcd