Hello! Welcome to the very first... [h1]2024 Year in Review[/h1] 2024 was an important year for the project. I had my first ever playtests. Scope creep was nipped in the bud, establishing a more attainable vision. The demo was released! There are so many things to cover, but I'll start from the beginning First, things got off to a rocky start when I spent 4 months implementing a game feature that I ultimately had to cut. I tried to make a full-on first-person dungeon crawler section that would have been accessed after you go down the dark staircase. [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45140768/c8e5038cfa3635000a3cf00122a581f54ec8c7cf.png[/img] It was a cool idea and all, but as I would have wanted to make multiple of these "alternate game modes" for the full game, ~5 months of dev time (I started working on it before the new year) just for this one isolated experience did not seem like a good investment of time. So ultimately I scaled back, saving at least another 1-2 years of dev after wasting 5 months. Taking a month off to mourn this decision, I came back in the summer time to focus on releasing the demo. Many weeks of playtesting and bug fixing ensued, and what I thought would just be a 1-month turnaround until the demo turned into 3. Finally in August, the demo came out! I didn't expect much, but as of writing this, it has amassed 1200 downloads and 120 unique players. Not bad for a game that had no marketing, no publisher, and no online presence leading up the the launch. The rest of the year went by pretty smoothly. I had a lot of new ideas for new areas and slowly churned out characters, buildings, and scenes for them. So what's next? Well, in addition to launching the demo this year, I also wanted to get a good understanding of my average working speed and use it to roughly estimate how long I need to finish the full game. Here is what I've estimated: [h2]2025 Will be the Year of Content[/h2] There is so much content I need to make for this thing. There will be 5 main areas about as big as the town, if not bigger. Those areas are: [list] [*] The Swamp (30% done) [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45140768/6508867c5f4eaa413076f6e328ddc260bfc31b33.png[/img] [*] Farm Town (40% done) [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45140768/cf07b253ce2e9a3c66cbd7d08738f3d8fe9f7d7e.png[/img] [*] Magic City (2% done) [img]{STEAM_CLAN_IMAGE}/45140768/712ecdb95168d12a7d8dd49e4e30b26209428cb9.png[/img] [*] Cyber Desert (Not Started) [*] Mysterious Forest (Not Started) [/list] The percentages listed shows how much I was able to complete between September and December of this year. Because of ~3 weeks of holiday traveling and UFO 50 (I was completely absorbed for over a month) I only had about 2 months of full working capacity. This makes me optimistic that I will be able to reach at least 80% completion in each area in the first 10 months of 2025. But of course, the game wont be that near done by then, not even close... [h2]2026 Will be the Year of Polish[/h2] Even though I don't think all the base-level content will be finished by 2026, I should still have a clear picture of every major experience the game will have. I'm still kind of winging it right now on future game design, puzzles, and even the story. But I am known to work best when I make content first, and then design around it. For example, one day I could be bored and make a little bird wizard. When I have to implement him, it will set off a chain reaction of ideas. Who is this character? Does he have any friends? Maybe he could live in a large birdhouse hidden in the forest. And eventually, there would be a quest where you have to bring him some bird seed in exchange for something. I could never dream up such a thing starting with nothing, I need a catalyst. So, coming into 2026, I will have many catalysts and reactions that have gone off that I will need to organize, polish and finalize. Giving myself a full year to do this seems pretty generous right now, but I'd rather overestimate since I have no idea what challenges I'll be up against! [h2]2027 and... beyond?[/h2] In 2027, I expect to move fully into playtesting and bug fixing. I'll probably need a few months for this, which lands me in an early-to-mid 2027 release date. Will I actually hit this goal? Who knows, but it's nice to have something in mind. We shall see if my forecast changes in the coming year. Overall, I am very excited! I'll be posting infrequent updates on my Bluesky account [url=https://bsky.app/profile/froggy-loops.bsky.social]here[/url] if you want to follow along. Until next time stay magical, and thank you for reading!