Entry 31 - Progress Review 3

Lately I tried not to make plans on the game release date, because all my latest estimates were incorrect. 

However, I've already overcome many difficulties, and now I can make forecasts again. 

Let's look at the plan I made in early Autumn:

• finish production chains - done
• put all the content together - done
• walkthrough the game by myself from the beginning to the end and adjust the balance (this point was the longest and took the whole winter + March) - done!
• beta testing - already launched
• final preparation (making game trailer, Steam store page design, etc.) - in process

I already wrote that game balance setup was much more difficult than I thought, and took a very long time. In the process I discovered many tricks that made balance setup easier. If I knew these tricks initially, then, perhaps, this work would have taken much less time. 

At the very beginning of January I decided to launch alpha testing, although initially I didn't intend to conduct this stage of testing at all. At that time the game was set to only 20 percent, and testers had to wait for the next game level setup finished. However, the launch of alpha was justified - bugs were found and fixed, and there were also many ideas that I tried to implement.

At the moment game balance setup is finished. The game is completely ready and can be played from the beginning to the end. The level of readiness now corresponds to the level at which many indie developers usually put the game in early access. Now main tasks for me are: to identify obvious errors in game balance and make all the mechanics as clear as possible for the players. Instead of early access I decided to begin beta testing stage. This stage was launched a week ago. For testing I took players who speak my native language, Russian, as we have to communicate a lot with each other, discuss suggestions, vote for edits, etc. Testing is very productive - I get a lot of good and useful suggestions, most of them I implement, thereby making the game better. 

I'll start making a trailer this week. The biggest problem here is that the music track is not ready yet. However, the trailer should be ready by the end of April. Just after that, the game will appear in Steam store in the "coming soon" section. Steam requires the game to stay in this state for at least 2 weeks. During this time, I will keep making final improvements.

Thus, the game should be expected in the second half of May. 

I think that in the next post I will already be able to show the finished trailer and share a link to the page in Steam store, and you (I really hope so) will add the game to the wishlist :) Also most likely in the next post I'll specify the final release date.