Happy New Year! (A New Perspective) (Patreon)

Happy New Year to one and all! Apologies for a couple of weeks AFK - between the festive season and a close family bereavement just before xmas, I've had a couple of weeks out of everything.

I got a great email this evening which teed me up perfectly for the post I planned for today but 2015 had its ups and downs but we're back to making progress and I'm happy with where was are again. Sure, somewhere between naive optimism on timeframes, wasting our original budget on people that didn't deliver,  and basically just life I guess, we're a long way from where we started for sure.  Ultimately we are still here and that says a lot given how much more logical walking away would have been at a few of our bleakest points...

The last 6 months have seen the most momentum since we originally started thanks to being able to commit my spare time to project again. Its been really exciting for me to sort some personal shit out and get fully involved in the evenings and weekends, and be able to hire a lot of people again. This time, learning a lot and trying to minimise people taking the piss.

James coming back on the project full time has been amazing and you can see a lot of progress from where we were(n't) and where the game is now. The new interface was a major 'ding' moment and really changes the whole feel of the quality of the game in my opinion and gave us that kick in the arse to realise we needed to buck our ideas up if this was to actually be what we wanted it to be.

We've had a couple of new artists filling in the blanks last year in terms of missing characters, the interface and much more, and after the fail that was the Greenlight Mistake, working towards doing the animated intro plus created some great new sprites we were sorely missing has also been great.

Unfortunately 2015 definitely had a good number of lows too, but in the spirit of a positive mental attitude I'm putting that behind us and moving forward from it.

The major realization though was how lacking the tilesheets were once we really started piecing together the major story plot so that's been fun too. We've drawn some monstrously large zones (the header is a very early preview of the Fire zone for idea of scale of the final zones now) which I regret only for the sheer time it takes to get them right. Ultimately it yields a better game and at this point, it does deserve it.

Speaking of perspective, I also agreed with the views on the ship level 1 so that's also in the process of being reworked. Thanks for the heads up on that one!

I've definitely been doing better with the updates in the last few months so I guess that's also a positive too. Long may it continue into 2016!

The artbook is done now and about to go to the printers, once I finish my thanks, credits and we settle on the final name for the game! That will be great to get out to people, if only to dispel a small amount of the negativity I've come to accept as my own fault surrounding the game.

So yah! In TL;DR format, we're still here doing what we can to get her finished. The new intro quality is closer to what I had envisaged from the off and hoping to have a V1.0 it out at some point before the end of Q1 2016. A lot to do, but thankful to be in a position again to get it over the finish line.

Cheers, and a Happy New Year! Thanks for the continuous support and I'm looking for to what 2016 holds!