Hi all. Today I was working on the Wickie a lot – as I tend to do on Sundays during the day, working on some fixes and issues that crept up and also reading up on comments made about the game, reviews et al. It’t not easy being a game developer, especially an indie one. Most of the time there’s no money and no accolades, Im making something I want to make and so I am at the mercy of indifference or disinterest and occasional dislike however that is sometimes the way it goes.
A reviewer asked in his review recently why I chose to release the game with its bugs and then patch on the way rather than releasing a finished product. That is a very good question and I will answer it here;
Testing.
I am a single person team – its me. Testing is a CORE component of game development and for 3 years the game has gone to volunteer testers who have been reporting back the faults and I have been working on ways to correct them. The game is in no way similar to what it was 3 years ago due to this however as Portal so correctly got right, testing is an ongoing thing that never ends. I am now fortunate that I have people playing the game and therefore finding things that the testers or I never found or considered and that is a good thing as it means I am constantly iterating and improving.
It would be impossible for me to wait and release the game in a finished manner, its an evolving project. In 6 months it will not be what it is now and never will be again. You are on this journey with me and your game will evolve as the new sections segue into it and the fixes evolve. At the moment Im taking a long look at last at the atmosphere and its balances from the 2d characters. I have the 3d ones still from 3 years ago that I may yet repolish and put back into the game. We will see.
So, thankyou for the reviews, the comments and so forth. Yes this is a buggy indie game but it will be continuing to evolve and get better. Remember Day 1 is just a way to get used to the island, once you are past 20% of the game that’s when the world finally opens and the story begins. I might put in a way to jump straight to day 2 if that is what people prefer.
