Posted February 24, 2020 by GBPatch
Hello!
To get right to the point, we’re going to have to partially push back the release of Our Life. By partial, we mean that Steps 1-3 will release in Summer 2020, only Step 4 is being delayed.
We know how disappointing that news must be to people who have been following the project. One of the worst things a project can do is not do what it said it would. We seriously apologize for being unable to make things work with the original timeline planned.
Why are we doing this? For Step 4 to be the best it can be, the other three Steps need to be as complete as possible ahead of time. Steps 1/2/3 are best worked on at the same time as one another, so they feel cohesive. But more so than all the others, Step 4 is a culmination of what came before. At least, that’s the goal.
If the game was still smaller, it would’ve been easier to finish the first three Steps and then jump into Step 4 at the end. Since we're trying to use a fair amount of the extra funding to add things to Steps 1-3, it’s cutting into when we would’ve worked on Step 4. There just wouldn't be enough time to release it in summer if we waited until the rest of the Steps were done.
This new plan isn’t a perfect release method, but we do think it’ll let us make the best overall game. The other options of putting out the entire project later than planned or working on Step 4 simultaneously with the other Steps after all (meaning the events of Step 4 would be based on incomplete information) seemed like they’d work out worse.
You won’t have to worry about the game coming across as incomplete with only 3 out of 4 Steps. The storyline will an end on a meaningful note of “we’re fully grown now and are taking our first steps into the real world together” vibe. It’ll be a worthwhile experience to play through on launch. Then later you’ll be able to return to OL and see what actually became of the MC and Cove.
So, from here on out, when we talk about the Our Life release we’ll be specifying that Steps 1-3 are planned for summer and Step 4 will follow after, likely in fall or winter 2020.
We’d also like to announce that some DLCs will have a $1 price increase from the original listed cost. Some of the $3USD ones will be $4USD instead and a couple of the $4USD ones will be $5USD. This won’t impact anything backers got from the Kickstarter. It’s only applicable to DLCs being sold after the official release.
Thanks to the Kickstarter we were able to make Our Life so much more than it would’ve been initially. Though, we’re worried about setting a difficult precedent for the future. We don’t want the standard to be large projects with a lot of content that get sold at the price of a much smaller game. That wouldn’t be sustainable for us in the long run, which is why we decided to make the DLCs a bit pricier.
We will, however, still regularly put the game on sale and have giveaways and such for those who might have trouble purchasing the DLCs.
And that's everything for the not-so-exciting news. If you’re ever feeling unsatisfied with how the project is coming along, we’re always around to talk about the situation, answer questions, or give a refund (Kickstarter or Patreon)!
Before we close out, we wanted to highlight a positive thing happening. Besides some extra touches, Step 1 of Our Life: Beginnings & Always will be done before the end of March! Seeing it all come together has been great and we think it turned out nicely. We're looking forward to when we can hear what people think of a full Step of the game.
(Parts of Step 2 and 3 have already been written, but we didn't want to add them to beta until it had all of Step 1 so events could be played mostly in order.)
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In summary of everything currently going on/planned for the future-
Thank you for checking out this announcement!