Posted May 14, 2026 by RandomActsOfConstruction
Aprils update got lost to… uh… lots of different small things, really. In short, it all just wasn’t quite ready yet, and the time to get it ready didn’t make itself available.
Is it ready now? Honestly, it depends on what you expect it to be ready for. Ready for steam time? Nope, not quite yet. I’m just going to take the liberty and call this “demo release candidate #1”. The entire feature set I want for the first steam demo is implemented (minus prometheus), which encompasses:
The problem with it all is that I have no idea yet how well it works. It will take some playing to figure that out. And Prometheus is still missing, as mentioned. That’s an entire problem on its own.
Now, if I had people actually testing, this would probably be the opening salvo in a rapid-fire iteration of release candidates to get from now to steam. Since… uh… basically nobody is playing it yet, I guess I’ll just do those iterations in private. I will update this version here once it’s ready, of course. If you’re here already and want to check out the Demo, you won’t need to go over to steam. Although the demo on steam will probably be more long-term stable, since I’ll just leave that as is, while this version here will continue to be happily updated… At some point.
I guess this is a good time to talk about future plans. The first step in the near future is, as mentioned, getting the steam demo out. I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that it’s going to land on Steam in July, probably a bit earlier here on itch. That’s 5 months later than I was hoping for in the beginning of 2025, but oh well. It is what it is.
After that, I will continue for a while under the hood, getting some systems ready and starting to develop the history for like the first year of the game or so. There probably won’t be another update for another 3 or 4 months, and probably not that much communication during that time. I’ll need that to go about the base work required to get this world to start breathing, then I’ll start releasing some “episodes” of in-game history so the entire thing starts to feel a bit livelier.
I’ll also be watching during that time, though, and possibly send out some probing attempts at this thing they call “marketing”, not that I know anything about it. If I did I wouldn’t be here making a game, I would be all over the internet advertising a game that doesn’t exist instead, because paradoxically that seems to be a far more stable source of income…
Despite my rather tongue in cheek tone here, economics will start to matter at this point (or at least potential economics). After releasing the demo, I’ll give it another year, during which I will hopefully be able to hammer out the first couple months of in-game history, maybe flesh out the job system a bit more. This would make a good second demo to gear up for early access. But if I don’t manage to find an audience for the game until that point, it won’t be a second demo. In that case, it will just be “the game”. I’ll release it and call it done*. Maybe slap a 2 bucks price tag on it. Maybe not. I don’t think it would matter. But I’d need to stop sinking time into it. Which would be tough, but it’s better than beating a dead horse. Maybe I would try another game. Mabye not. There’s no way to know at this point in time, and I don’t need to yet (though I will freely admit that I have about 3 or 4 ideas for a next project, but who doesn’t?).
Because of course we’re not there yet. We’re not even at the release of the first demo yet. We are, however, at the point that I would officially consider the beginning of the “mid-alpha” phase. So let’s not be gloomy, let’s be hopeful! Because I’m soooo good at being hopeful! Right? riiiiiight…
*In case you were wondering, the only way any piece software is ever finished is because somebody says it is.