State of the Game - September 2022

Project Gaia has now accomplished some goals that I didn't think was possible when I first started the actual game. Meanwhile, it has come a long way from that starting point, which was not that long ago. I started with the concept in about February of this year. The game now has multiple expansion themes in the game, fully illustrated, and with nearly complete stories. The artist for the pregnancy illustrations finished the artwork, and I worked to handle the bugs that came up from having a second gameplay open for play.

I've already explained most of this with the v0.8.3 patch notes and message. Bugs came up because there was now a switchboard on each event, pulling up the dialog or events that would happen at that moment for the currently selected gameplay. There was a lot of them, and it was getting difficult to see what else was needed. Plus, with that many fixes needed I was getting bogged down in hunting for them as well as fixing every single one. That was mainly for the delay in the release cycles for general and for supporter releases.

That was why I created a new 8.3 and pushed the thing out for general release. Not that any of my supporters were complaining. You all have been patient, helpful with feedback, great with support, and just otherwise awesome. I just felt the need to explain this because it was different than what the process has been up to this point, and I was looking to get back to that norm. v0.8.3 allowed me to get all of these bug fixes out, get a good point for a new backup for myself in case anything happened, and also got it into the hands of players that have always been great helping me to find and track bugs and missing features. Most importantly, it also gave me a point where I can get back to actual feature work, which at this point is more filling in the gaps.

It has helped me to get working on v0.9 and make that release feel more like a real supporter release. I'm trying to get that out this week, preferably in the next day or two. Already I had some great feedback on some of the bugs I've missed, so there will be more enhancements with it as well.

So going forward I've been able to start thinking more about a final release. Still haven't setup a developer steam account for release, but I think I have a studio name picked out, and I've been starting to research getting keys in advance. What I really want to do is to send keys to supporters. Not that I plan on putting a huge final price on the game when it comes out, but I see it as you all have kinda pre-purchased the game, and even helped with feedback and encouragement.

That also means that I need to start thinking about a point in the development cycle where I stop releasing a free version to general release. As it is it's pretty much in a good place to be a demo version of a completed product, and once that I'm still thinking is reasonable to get ready for final release by or hopefully before the end of the year. v0.9 will eventually make it to general release when supporters get v0.10, but I'm now trying to plan out if that might be the last one for general, and supporters will only get other versions up to final release. Or go Steam early access, and try to get keys for supporters for that.

So much logistics in addition to coding. As always, I'll keep you updated.