It has been an amazing year of progress for Mercury Fallen, and things are just getting started. I'm very excited about what the new year will bring.
At the beginning of 2017, my goal was to have Mercury Fallen on Steam by the end of summer, something I wasn't sure I would be able to do. In April, Mercury Fallen was released on Itch.IO, which was a great way to get early feedback about the game and resolve critical issues. After a few updates and patches, I started to migrate the game to Steam. Mercury Fallen is my first solo development project, and my first game ever on Steam. This process was rather intimidating, but Mercury Fallen was released on Steam on October 16. Since that release, I've been very busy working on new updates and building a community around the game.
I'm very excited and humbled by the positive response I’ve received about Mercury Fallen. It's a really great feeling to have gamers playing, and enjoying, my creation. I have a lot of big plans for Mercury Fallen and your feedback and support has been very motivating. A huge thank you and a Happy Holidays to you all.
Here are some of the things I'll be working on next.
Job Priority System
Priority control for colonist jobs has been a highly requested feature and is in development. The new system will allow you to set custom priorities for each job role per colonist, which range from 1 to 10. Jobs with a higher priority will be done before jobs with a lower priority, if that job can be done, of course. This allows you to have multiple jobs selected for a colonist, but still control which job will be done first.
Changes to the management screen and colonist info window have been made to allow for the new priority settings. Priority 1 is the highest priority and priority 10 is the lowest.
Planetary Expeditions
This is still deep in development and won't appear in the next update, but I wanted to add some clarification to what planetary expeditions will entail. The goal is to allow expedition parties to be sent out on a planetary map. These expeditions are meant to explore, discover and expand the world of the game. The comm officer job role will play a part in discovering Points Of Interest (POI) on the planetary map, which can then be explored by expedition parties. The planetary expeditions will serve as a large extension for acquiring new resources and making new discoveries.
The focus of development right now has been on setting up procedural generation for the planetary map, which will include various biomes, POIs and hazards. The biggest challenge right now is ensuring a good balance of focus between the primary facility and expansion/exploration on the surface.
Merry Christmas and a Happy Holiday to you all. I look forward to what 2018 will bring. :)
