2 years in: Reflection and Projection

Wow we just hit the 2 year mark for this project getting funded on Kickstarter!! 🤯I thought this would be a good opportunity to reflect on how far we've come, as well as talk about a future release. 

Whereas the first year was largely spent building and refining much of the player mechanics and power-ups (perfecting things like the grapple and the 2 types of dashes), this second year saw a lot more construction of the playable spaces for those mechanics to live in. 

More specifically: we finished multiple Boss fights/encounters, redesigned and reformatted menus (the menu for the tarot card database is a thing of beauty I'll likely show you in its own update), made mini-levels, puzzles, and side-quests, the mechanics for all sorts of switches and trampolines and such, animations and cutscenes, not to mention all the actual level design and building.

I had two people ask me recently if I had an updated timeline for the Little Ghost release. My answer to them, which I realized I should share with you in one of these updates, was that I wasn't sure but wasn't really stressed about it. Development has been continuing in a way I'm really happy with, and since the progress is steady I don't see a reason to add a sense of urgency to the process. My concern is making the best game I possibly can, and I want to keep that as the highest priority. I work on this game nearly every day and again, I can see real progress and a world taking shape before my very eyes. I'm proud of the work I'm doing and truly excited to share it with you -- when the time is right.

here's that same progress map, but with the original demo highlighted for scale

My only sense of disappointment is that I don't have a good way of sharing that progress with you. It has been my intention for a long time to release a playtester version or a giant addition/patch to the demo, but I have revised that plan for the best reasons possible! I'm working at such a pace building the new zones that I think it would be detrimental to the process to pause now. For example, if I release a patch update adding the first 2 bosses into the demo (which was my earliest plan) then I will have to redirect my attention to player feedback and potential bug fixes there. I just cant justify taking my attention away from new development to go backwards just yet. While it may disappoint a handful of folks to have to wait a little longer, I think you'll be very happy once you see the work that has been done. 

I am considering a potential future patch that could reveal the first 2/3rds of the game but that obviously comes with some similar concerns. For now I just want to keep the momentum that I have and I'll keep you posted where I land with that.

I'm happy to be going into the new year with a solid foundation and a real sense of satisfaction with the work. Let's make it a good one!