Hello everybody! It’s been a long time, as I haven’t posted in about 8 months, but don’t worry, DarkDale is not dead, quite the opposite. The winter months have been really busy for me and I couldn’t unfortunately dedicate much serious time to game development between January and April. With May came the end of the school year and I could finally get back working on the project, which has been steadily advancing in the last two months.
This break led me however to think some more about the projected timeline and how I was planning to get the game done.
First of all, I’m realizing that despite all good will, I won’t be able to do it all alone, or at least not in a decent amount of time. As I don’t want to release the game 3-4 years from now, I will most certainly need some help in the asset creation department, essentially for models (environments or items), creature animations and character portraits. This means some expenses, which naturally leads to the idea of crowdfunding, something I was planning for anyway : but instead of simply trying to cover some of my own expenses, the campaign will try to raise enough to purchase assets and hire some freelancers. Before committing to a Kickstarter campaign and the ensuing challenges and deadlines, I want however to advance further in the development of the game, as to be able to assess precisely my needs, what I can do myself and what needs to be contracted.
So, what’s the new plan then?
- First, I’ll finish the game engine in its basic state over the next 3-4 months, which essentially means to have a completely playable experience, even if it’s only 1 level. Most of the major elements are already in place, and meeting this target shouldn’t be a problem. Of course, as development goes on, I’ll keep adding more components and functionalities, but these will be easy to implement on top of the existing framework.
- Then, over the course of the school year, I’ll work on writing, quest and level design prototypes, so as to have a good general skeleton of the game by the spring.
- Run a Kickstarter campaign somewhere in April/May 2016.
- Following which (if successful), hiring some help to get remaining things done over the summer, to enter alpha/beta testing in the autumn.
- So this leads towards a release in the earliest at Christmas 2016, and more probably during the first quarter of 2017.
Will we get there? I’m ready for it, and provided I have your support, most certainly. Now let’s see how things are going!
