So, it's been a while yet again hasn't it? Well, this time we have some real news for you! After some thought, development time, and major reworks to it we have decided to bring Great Gun Gauntlet to Steam Early Access! This isn't just something we're saying to hopefully do, but something we're actively in the process of setting up, as it already has a Coming Soon page up if you want to take a look:
Exciting stuff, right? We've been so quiet for so long it feels nice to finally have something to talk about publicly, and talk we shall! I'm hoping to have plenty of preview content to post as we lead into the first releases of the Early Access version.
Getting right into it, the first question worth answering is:
Why Early Access?
The main answer is that while we've done a lot of reworking to the game since the demo to vastly improve its core systems, there's still a lot of content to develop which could take some time to finish; but once we get to that first Early Access release most of what is left to add is just that, content. With a lot of the core built and improved by the time the first Early Access release comes out this game should be a pretty good experience for those that enjoy such things, most patches should hopefully be about adding content rather than fixing broken or unfinished content.
Besides that, gauging interest is also important. Do other people like the game or is it just me? This is our first release so being able to build interest over time rather than revealing the final product all at once saves us from spending another two years on this only to find out no one cares, but not only that but potentially making money on the game before v1.0 is done allows us to invest back into it (such as maybe commissioning a better soundtrack than I can make).
Next, for those familiar with the demo or who might look back to it:
What changed from the demo?
We'll have far more in depth posts about this soon, part of the fun of having a demo to upgrade from is all the comparison screenshots we can post from it. For now a quick summary would be that most scripts have been tweaked or improved, most models and textures have been improved or redone completely, in general there has been a complete graphical overhaul especially with fancy details like particles, new functionality has been added to the gameplay, and there are way more obstacles than before.
- For the new functionality, the core of that is stuff added to the system that generates the gauntlets so the variety of those can be vastly better than before. The two biggest changes there would be that we can now decide which conveyors obstacles spawn on instead of having them completely randomly placed, and we can also freely control the movement directions of the conveyors instead of having them being locked to the same direction pattern.
- For new obstacles, this is such a step up from the demo as the demo had 5 basic obstacles, 1 turret, 2 lasers, and 1 collectable. Now we have 10 basic obstacles, 9 turrets, 5 lasers, and 6 collectables. Going from 8 to 24 obstacles to work with has made the possibilities for design almost overwhelming.
And these are just the changes we've made from the demo to now, not to mention how much will be added once we get to v1.0.
So when will the first Early Access version be released?
We'd like to get it out before the end of the year, but at the same time we also wanted to get the page up this time last year, so I don't want to make any promises considering how life tends to go. I'll have an entire other post later talking about game development and why it is so slow for us, but for now just assume we'll be trying our best to get it out in a timely manner but life can be surprisingly busy especially when this doesn't pay the bills yet.
Anyway, I hope this post gives some basic insight to what we've been up to, it should at least act as a springboard for our upcoming posts and I'm glad to finally have the project coming along this well. If you have any questions you can contact us, either on our contact page, social media, or also I'm quite active on my Twitter.