2/28 Status Update

Last update of February. I know the question everyone wants to know the answer to is if Netoria Tactics 2 is almost ready, and the answer is... kind of? The last few weeks of work have been pretty difficult. More and more stuff keeps popping up that needs to be dealt with so in terms of how much closer the game is to being complete, I'd say it's kind of the same despite all the work I did.

There's a concept in software development that the last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time and that pretty much describes what's going on right now. While in theory most of the content is in the game, my attention is being drawn in a hundred different directions towards features that need fixing or refining. I'm fighting a game dev hydra where every head I cut off results in two more growing. In theory I could keep doing this forever. And yes, the game would get better and more polished with each hydra I slay and bug I fix, but at what point are the returns not worth the time and effort?

Basically, I'm debating whether to take lots of time and make the release as good as possible, or cut a few corners to get it out sooner. It's tough because in theory I'd like to make the game as good as I could but the way these things are monetized the longer I take the longer it'll be until the game starts earning money. Bringing new people to my subscription pages and giving current subscribers payoff for their support. And in theory I could just fix bugs and problems after the fact. But a good first impression is important, besides I don't want to spend a bunch of time on bug fixes instead of going straight into Act 2 content.

Overall you patrons and subsribestarees have been great. I know I haven't given you a lot of content to play over the past year-ish, but a lot of you have stuck around. If you're willing to continue for a few months longer, I'm willing to keep plugging away at polishing things. But if not I understand that too. Let me know what direction you think is better.

As far as concrete details go, art is getting close to being all delivered! So that's exciting. If I do go the spend extra time route, I might order some extra grope popins for the TFd forms of characters. Because how those play is pretty different then when I first made the system and they really should be as gropable as the base form. But I don't have any art for that so I kind of would have to cobble things together in a weird way. If you played the recent demo there were items that let the TF'd characters get groped anyway with mismatching art, and I want to take those out. Having to use an item slot on unlocking content in general is something I don't really like, it limits your build options a lot.

That's all for this week. As always, thank you for your continued support.