Happy New Year! We hope everyone had a safe and relaxing holiday season. Here’s what we were up to during December and what our plans are for the new year!
December 2020
During December we primarily focused on developing the next beta update. We wanted to get it finished for the end of December before New Years, but between holiday breaks and spending time with immediate family it didn’t end up getting finished and tested. We have about one thing left for the release before testing, so look forward to seeing it later this month.
2020 Review
Before going into our plans for 2021, we want to give a brief roundup on and celebrate what we’ve gotten done in the past year.
- Released 2 Beta Updates, 1 Demo Update
- Upgraded to Gamemaker 2.3.x+
- Revamped all of the SFX and added a few more
- Completed the graphical update – all of the battle animations and all of the characters for the game have had their sprites updated
- Added in a quarter of Gataela’s world
- Restructured the skit and cutscene systems
- Added some extra polish to the UI
- Improved the TTBattles by adding criticals, dodge, escape and updating visual effects among other bug fixes
- Added our first pass of fullscreen mode
- Started work on adding new overworld tiles and new animations
- Plus a ton of bug fixes and misc improvements
2021 Plans
Last year was a big year for structural changes and preparation for Gataela as we worked to put in more content for beta testers. We tried to do quarterly beta updates and they were more-or-less successful. We can’t say that the pandemic has not impacted our ability to complete them. As we expect more of the same as last year, here’s some of the big changes and things we’ll be attempting to get done:
- No quarterly beta updates, they’ll be released when ready
- Finishing all of the debate portraits & adding a few more
- Adding more SFX and making new SFX
- Creating new overworld tiles for new areas & to add more visual interest
- Adding in more music and expanding the soundtrack
- Creating new enemies, more battle animations, more VFX, and more creatures to make the world feel alive
- Backer In-Game Reward Fulfillment
- Adding more cutscenes & content
Most items are to be expected, but to briefly note on the quarterly beta updates, we’re largely making this change due to COVID and the on-going pandemic.
In 2019 while we were preparing for the updated demo we had internal milestones each month where we had a dedicated tester run through the content and note issues for us to fix. Our thought was that for 2020 we would be able to keep this up, and releasing quarterly would be absolutely possible. However the pandemic has greatly affected how we work, and when we work. In order to release quarterly the team needs to work in a very structured linear way, which isn’t possible anymore. So for those reasons we can’t guarantee when future updates will be. Thanks for everyone’s understanding, and we’ll be sure to let everyone know when they become available or when we feel one will be coming!
In the meantime, look forward to January’s update and have a good new year!
December 2020 Progress Update