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So, after a squirt during [[Week 90 - Post Content Complete Week 1]] I ended up having another lazy few days. I wasn’t being particularly productive, my bug hunts were becoming a bit half-arsed, and I was feeling a little burned out. The winter crunch caught up with me. Well, ish… I don’t like doing QA at the best of times, and I was playing the game by rote, which is less than useless. Far better to do other stuff:
I sat down and read / edited the first third of this journal. Very interesting to see what I was thinking back then, in the context of where I am now and how the game ended up. I also started exploring how I can lay it out in e-book form. I’m thinking something like Affinity Publisher, with some stock template thing, to take advantage of all the screenshots. I’m hoping this will become a nice thing for the website because I used to devour dev diaries, back in the day.
Speaking of which; I tidied up my blog, gave the company website a spit-wash, created a new page for 2umo, and uploaded the gameplay teaser video. Yes, I should have waited for the publisher to announce the game, but I’ve been waiting for two years, and I’m annoyed that whatever momentum the company blog had has long since been lost. So I need to get that ball rolling again.
The long radio silence isn’t really anyone’s fault. When we first discussed it, back as the project was being signed, the idea was that I’d do my usual – blog, screenshot Saturday, etc – and the publisher would echo it, and do their own bits. And then their marketing person left. Cut to a year later, and we’re deep enough into the radio silence that it’s probably better to wait until closer to the end of the project, for the big announcement.
And then the game industry went through months of mass redundancies and site closures.
The landscape’s changed a lot since I started this project. And not for the better. Who do we even announce to? So sod it, I've bitten the bullet, set up the socials, started posting again, and hit Tik Tok. How do you do, fellow kids?
Making websites and videos is a nice diversion for a few days, but it’s not my favourite thing in the world. But the time away from 2umo was useful: I made a big decision: I’ve changed the game’s flow. Willy’s Mansion is now locked until you complete Moonbas.
The reasoning:
With 20/20 hindsight, I could have done a better job at trying to balance out those two routes. I set out to avoid the linearity of the first game, but I’ve ended up doing the same thing, despite myself. But I do think, having changed it, that the flow is better, and the difficulty scales a more linearly, which will avoid some frustrations. Worth the sacrifice.
And yeah, this is what I get for never designing things, up-front. :D
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