Dev Update 18/10/2019 (Patreon)

Update time!

I'm going to spend this update laying out the roadmap for the new game. Only partially because this is a thing and I've been mostly useless this week. Bell Master 1.0.1 is out and is as robust and bug free as I could make it. I'm super happy with the way it turned out and how it was received (holy shit I was not expecting that!). I'm still a bit behind on my responses to helpful feedback. But I do read and appreciate every word I find on it.

So, roadmap. The plan right now is to spend the next two months working up to a playable alpha. That version would contain little to no story and only really flesh out the mechanics, tech and art style for the game. This should be ready around December - January. I will then share this alpha with a small group of testers. Get feedback and refine the design, working up to a beta build that should be ready around March.
This beta build will contain the story intro and as much content as I think will be helpful to get a feel for how the game will look and play going forward. I'll share this build with the tester group, and after fixing any issues that pop up, I'll share it publicly as well. So we're looking at the first publicly available version of the game around mid March. Now obviously any plan that far into the future can change, but as usual I'll keep you up to date as things progress.
Once the beta is publicly available, I'll take in all the feedback and refine the design even more, possibly doing a few beta versions before the final design settles in (similarly to how Bell Master alpha versions worked). At that point the game will go into the usual two month release cycle. This is an extremely early estimate and may change a lot by the time we get to that stage, but based on the current design, I estimate it'll take about 18 months (9 versions) to get it to a completed state, unless my art budget increases dramatically by then.

Naturally, I'm not going to hunker down quietly until March. I've already started the artists working on the games concept art and visual design, and I'll share as much of it as I can along the way, as well as set up polls where appropriate. I also have some other ideas of fun things to share while I do the "boring" infrastructure work, but you'll know those when you see them.

Have a great week!