Hello everyone, it's been a rather busy couple of weeks since the last update. This update is a rather important update and brings with it a spot of super fun exciting good news and a small bit of not so great news.
I'll go into everything in far more detail below but the quick and painless version is as such... we are currently postponing development on Will to Survive in order to craft a smaller project based along similar lines, the codename for which is Project Tunguska.Full details below...
Will to Survive Development Postponed Temporarily
As mentioned above we have decided to postpone development temporarily, it's really important to note that this is temporary and I can't stress this enough. The game is certainly not cancelled but we won't be releasing it any time this year unfortunately. I know some of you will be upset by this and you have my sincere apologies, it wasn't a a quick and easy decision to make.
Will to Survive has always been a rather ambitious project so the reason why is fairly simple... size and funding. We realised early on after the failed Kickstarter attempt that without any form of funding finishing the project off was going to be quite difficult. Our initial goal was to carry on developing and eventually make a new Kickstarter attempt later on once knowledge of the game had increased. However as the project grew and adapted to certain changes we realised as time went on that even launching a Kickstarter for a small amount to fund an early-access build would probably still not give us enough funds to develop the game properly, we would need more cash in order to secure a bigger team.
For a while now I had been trying to think of a smaller game that we could tackle to release quickly and help fund development but not detract too much from the main project. Up until recently most ideas were too different to Will to Survive, then one day my house mate suggested something that sounded fantastic and we set about working out how we could develop it but still make everything so that it can go towards helping the Will to Survive project as well.
Our main goal in all of this is to develop the new project in such a way that a lot of it will go into further development of Will to Survive, so in essence although development is postponed the project will continue to develop by proxy.
I hope you understand our reasons for doing this and aren't too disappointed. Our thinking is that delaying releasing a game is better than never releasing it at all.
Project Tunguska
So, what is the new project?Project Tunguska as it's currently code named until we finalise it's real name is a project based along the same lines as Will to Survive. It's a randomly generated adventure survival game with roguelike elements. Think the Binding of Isaac meets Uncharted.
I won't divulge too much information just yet but I can say that it will feature the same exploration, interaction and combat mechanics used in Will to Survive as well as some of the survival elements. The great thing about these shared mechanics is that by focusing on a few core mechanics exclusively we will end up with highly polished versions that can later be used in Will to Survive so developing this new project will greatly help improve that in the long run.
We are looking into the prospect of launching a Kickstarter for this game in May/June and releasing an early-access build no later than November.
Here is a sneak peak of what it currently looks like:
What Next?
On Friday all being well I'll be putting up a new development diary video showing the progress we have made on the engine as well as what we have done on the new project. We'll be releasing more information about the new project in the coming weeks along with a new IndieDB page for it and possibly a Greenlight page once we have a solid build to show.
Thanks for reading and hopefully you understand why we are shifting our focus and are excited by the new project. Feel free to ask any questions and I'll do my best to answer them.
Until Friday!
Alex
