Malevolent Planet 2D & Text Game Status Report & GaaS Experiment

Hey! As promised, I have finished developing an acceptable build for the text game and released it in early access to $5+ Patrons today. $1 Patrons will get access to it next Friday.

If the word acceptable scares you, it's related to what I want to talk about in this post. 

A summary of what I've talked about below if you don't have time to read all of it is that even though the focus will be on the 2D game for 3 releases, the text game will still stay alive through my idea from below because it will be able to get updates and filling content without needing me to spend time on many things that take away from development. The idea will apply to the 2D game as well, because it'll help with speeding up the development of that one as well.

So, considering the amount of tasks I have to do development-wise and otherwise, I've tried my best to do some QA and testing to make sure the new content is accessible and doesn't lead to dead ends. However, I have arrived to the conclusion that this type of work may not be the most optimal and this applies to the 2D Game as well.

Since I'm developing both projects by myself, it may be a good idea to improvise the release schedule in such a way that allows me more time to actually focus on content (text, art, animations, ideas) and less on "polish" (bugfixing, grammar checking, repeated debugging).

In the past, I've received plenty of help from players like DogDogDogDog with tracking bugs and grammar checks, but there might be a potential to make this more organized.

Therefore, I'm introducing my own version of GaaS, Games-as-a-Service. This concept is not very popular amongst players who don't like grinding for content and completing filler content to reach the actually interesting content.

However, this is what my version of it actually looks like:

• Community-Assisted Content Development. On this subject, we have a mind control sequence in the latest build of the text game that requires more content, specifically players who like the sequence would like to see. I've received a lot of suggestions from dedicated people in our Discord group like Angmar, MFW Safety always off and others. along the time regarding all sorts of content, but if there'd be a focus on something that's already partially implemented it feels like a lot of suggestions would be more likely to come to life.
• Community-Assisted QA. While I'm developing new content for a new version, I will intentionally release mostly untested builds in an official manner so that anyone who'd like to help me fix bugs, improve the player experience and others can do so in an organized way.
• Community-Assisted Game Mechanics Development. Similar to the first bulletpoint, this one would be focused more on mechanics we can implement in the game(s) and discuss them together. A poll I recently made asks Patrons if they'd like to see some time spent on developing the mind control/regain body control sequence I've developed and the answer was favorable. Maybe the next step is to discuss mechanics for future sequences we'll agree together on.
• Community-Assisted Art Development. Here, all the art will be made by me, but we can discuss details on how to make a scene better through the use of stylistic art. This will be easier in the 2D version because you can actually see the details around the world.

All of these come down to my idea of Community-Driven Development (CDD).

These changes and others will be more transparent after my upcoming vacation. Here's a summary of what I'll be doing after I'm back:

• More Social Media Presence. Exposure is very important and I've neglected platforms like Twitter and others, thinking that exposure is only worth having around release dates. Turns out, it's good to have exposure all the time for potential players to see you.
• Create Discord Channels for CDD. I'll organize each one and I'll dedicate some time towards maintaining an activity in these channels, so that even if there's not much activity anyone will be able to jump in at some point.
• Set up a Trello Board around the idea of CDD. Although I've been trying to make my development trello public, there's too much filler in there that makes it a partially useless idea to have it public. So, we can do a new channel where everything that's been suggested for a sprint will be visible for all.
• Set up Sprints. A term commonly found in Agile Development. It's a good way to organize future content and the development of future content, somewhat similar to an alive roadmap.

Sorry for the wall of text, but I'm pretty dedicated to doing this right. I've been developing this idea for a while and the recent polls that decide the popular content for the unity game have been part of the process I desire to build.

Thank you for your attention!