Devlog #0 - The Journey So Far and The Road Ahead

A Quick Recap

During the past few months, a lot of things have changed for us, and for Republic of Jungle. When we quit our jobs to kick off this project, we had some ideas and a rough plan, but you never know where you land with these things. You just have to try your best at every step, learn from mistakes and improve as you go. That was our mentality when we decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign, and when we re-launched it so we could show it at PAX too. As it turns out, in the list of the notoriously exhausting things that a small studio can do, running an expo booth and running a Kickstarter campaign are not far from the top. Doing both simultaneously while an existing campaign is in motion is considered somewhat insane. To be honest, we didn’t know what we were getting into, and it was undoubtedly difficult, but we’re happy to say that it was well worth the effort!

A New Beginning

As a result of our presence on Kickstarter and attendance at PAX, we are now more confident than ever in our project thanks to community members like you that have supported and continue to do so in various ways. Seeing so many people back us, play the game, join our Discordand provide feedback has taken our commitment to the project to the next level. So far, we could only plan for the next immediate step to minimize our risk, but now we have a clearer picture of what we’re building, and we can plan with more confidence. With our Kickstarter stretch goals unlocked, and our team fully focused on production, we are excited to work on things like the new UI/UX, usability features, new artwork, and a lot of polish! In many ways, this is a new beginning for Republic of Jungle.

A Strong Foundation

The current beta of the game is built based on a minimal scope that we felt comfortable with when we started the project. Game development is a risky business and we wanted to be smart and play our cards right, and that’s why we focused on making a playable version rather than a perfect one. We wanted to fail small and learn fast, so we focused on core gameplay and gradually built on top of our prototype based on feedback from our community. Republic of Jungle is a bit of an unconventional game, and it heavily relies on playtests and player feedback to evolve and improve. Now thanks to the support of our community, we are designing a new UI/UX for the game that includes a lot of the exciting ideas proposed during the early stages. 

We are now committed to work on this project long-term, so we are focusing on building a strong foundation first. Game industry at large suffers from rushed plans and product stability issues. Having experience as software engineers in large scale projects, we are fully aware of the challenges that come from unpreparedness in live software production. Therefore, we are taking a moment to assess our goals, build our pipelines, and put systems in place that would help us stay focused on the game instead of fighting fires. A good foundation built with preparedness in mind is going to pay a lot of dividends in the long run.

What’s Coming Next

We are aiming to first release a major update to the current beta that significantly improves the build on top of a  new, and better foundation. It might take a while, but it will be worth the wait. 

Fixing bugs and adding features on top of the current foundation is not sustainable and scalable. Many parts of the game are changing due to the new design, and we want to minimize the risk of doing “throw-away work”. Here are few foundational things we’re working on:

•  A more detailed design based on collected feedback to increase focus at the implementation stage
• Better development tools and pipelines to allow our team members to stay productive
• A better architecture to enable us to add new features faster, and with less risk
• Automated tests to help us push updates faster, and more confidently
• Better dashboards and alarms for data-driven improvements, adding the opportunity to catch issues early

While the current version does not provide the smoothest experience, it has been played thousands of times. It lets our community members enjoy the core loop of the game and its fundamentals. Since this version has been built with simpler assumptions in mind, trying to push updates puts its availability at risk. Therefore, we won’t be pushing bug fixes to the current beta for a while. This lets us stay focused on our top priorities and allows the community to keep playing the game. We will keep track of all reported bugs and feedback and incorporate it in our new designs and implementations, but it will take a while for you to see the actual changes in the game. So, please keep in mind that your input is taken into account even though you may not see it reflected in the beta for a while.

Stay Tuned For New Content and Dev Logs

As we’re working on the new designs and concepts of the game, we will share a summary of our progress here in our dev logs. You can also see WIPs, early designs and artwork in our Discord, or even contribute to development by your feedback and ideas for improvement. Throughout these dev logs, you will gradually see more of the game come to life, until the eventual release of our first major update that will capture a lot of the new content and features we’re adding to the game.

At this time, we don’t have any public estimates on when the major update will be released. As pieces come together, we will start communicating the roadmap in more detail. The best way to stay informed about our progress is to join our Discord, follow our social media channels, and follow our future dev logs.

Thank you,

Team Gerdoo