Development Roadmap: Vols 10-12

So - the August update was a big one. What's next?

We've updated our roadmap. A couple things ended up being added to August, and that meant a few things slipped to September... and that pushed a couple things from Sep to Oct... and so on. That's how development goes.  You adjust as you go to the situation you have. 

That being said, the next BIG thing getting added is the bar. We have a whole drink making subgame we've quietly been working on in the background for a couple months, and we're finally focusing down on that. It's a HUGE hunk of work - it could be a game all by itself. We're terrified of it, but we're gonna go ahead and build it. More frightening, still, we want to embed it much earlier in the game, so that new players get to it w/o having to get hours and hours into the game. This is not easy.

I'm spending the weekend plotting it out in detail, and finding all the ways in which it might be a problem to add earlier. Places that characters are unavailable, etc. that can break it... It's a pretty ugly task, but I think it's worth it. And here's why:

This game is barely breaking even. I know everyone is really happy to see these big huge updates every month - and we're excited about making them... But largely its the same audience playing/enjoying them... And our income pretty much covers development and that's it. 

Much as we love making games for the people who have been with us a while... if we're going to make this profitable (and we have to do this to keep the team off food stamps and government cheese) we need more people playing this game. Like... A LOT more people playing. And part of that is making sure that when we DO get new people into the game... there is something cool and exciting for them to play. And we think adding this big fun bar subgame earlier helps us sell that.

But wait. There's more.

The other way we are trying to "expand the funnel" of new users is by making a big, pretty, well tested WebGL build. This is a huge game, and the art assets are ginormous. This means the WebGL build will be... more like a big extended advertisement. than a full game. It'll be pretty much the first 30-40 minutes of the game (until you get to the resort) and then it will cut off and ask the players to grab a download, or buy on Steam if they want to go further. We have this build in early development now - it plays well and is pretty solid... but we're going to spend a bit more time making it perfect. 

Again, hopefully, this brings more people to the game. 

But there's something else you can do, if you're enjoying this game: Let people know.  Join our twitter and retweet our posts. If you see us on reddit, like/comment. Better yet, post screenshots/images from the game wherever you can think our users might be hiding, with a link back to our patreon. Word of mouth like this is HUGE powerful, and will help build our audience further. And this helps us stay in business, making more game for YOU. 

Thanks so much... Now back to work for me!

EDIT!

I have updated the roadmap here on this post with our new roadmap. We had some talks w/our publisher on how they can best support us, and we need to make a few changes to the schedule to match their marketing schedule - so... You can see updated roadmap now.