I am very wary of making promises wrt game development. Although I try to maintain a steady tempo in this work, it remains an activity that I primarily do in my – all too scarce – free-time.
The past few months have been harsh on my free-time. Part of this has been the move that I’ve already mentioned; that sort of stuff takes time. I begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel now, although there’s still a lot to be done (e.g., the bunch of Ikea bookshelves waiting to be collected behind me). The other part is that work is just that my bread and butter work has been hectic for the past many months. I’m not complaining, mind you – I love what I do for a living – and I pretty much decide what (and how much) I work myself. But overtime spent on day work means less time for other things – and usually means I cannot work as much on my games as I would like to.
I spent some time planning out my (real-life work) projects a couple of weeks ago, which was immensely cool (we’re going to be doing some really fun stuff if you’re into open data and apis). But it also made me realize that I’ll be immensely busy for the rest of the year – and I’ve spent some time for the past weeks considering the various projects I’m working on. And the easy conclusion is that the Pirates and Traders 2/Dwarf Kingdom games I would like to deliver in the first version are probably more ambitious than is realistic. Understood in the way that I probably won’t be able to finish either of them this year.
So after some hard planning, I’ve decided to go back to basics. For the next month or so, I’m going to be working on preparing the minimally playable version of Pirates and Traders 2. Essentially the core gameplay experience – trading, travelling, and sea battles. No land combat. No duels. Limited storylines (I’ll convert as many as I can, of course, but I won’t delay the game release because of this). As soon as I feel that this version of the game is stable, I am going to release it on open beta. I’m aiming for April or May this year. As soon as the open beta indicates that people are able to play it without things crashing constantly, the game will be released in its free version.
I’ll then iterate over the released version over the following months (and perhaps years) and slowly add in all of the features that I have planned (and – as always – listening to your feedback and comments). Those of you who have been playing the game for many years, will be familiar with the approach – it is exactly the same way that the first – very simple – Pirates and Traders game developed into the game it is today.
I know that not everyone will like this approach, but from my point of view, this seems to be the best option. It means the game comes out faster and it means I get better feedback faster (and thus am better able to gauge which ideas are good or bad, allowing me to be more effective). In fact, simply releasing the game is of benefit – it is always extra motivating to see something one has worked on being (hopefully) enjoyed.
It will soon be five years since I released Pirates and Traders on the Android market. I can – quite honestly – say that it has been a wonderful journey. I hope that very many of you will join me when Pirates and Traders 2 sets out on its journey in the hopefully not too distant future.