Hi
After a lot of hard work I finally uploaded a first version of the demo I'm planning to show in Steam, you can download it here:
Content of the demo
The demo contains one star system with a few locations of interest that you can explore, 3 of these locations offer combat opportunities for you to test the very basic state of the gameplay.
The rest are dialogue encounters that offer opportunities to receive loot, a bit of world building or even fall into a trap.
You can also interact with a neutral space station to conduct repairs, healing and trading:
You will have access to a few basic soldiers, human, alien and even a robotic one. Also a few basic weapons.
For now there's not much difference between soldiers and weapons but I hope to make more improvements and add classes, weapon effects, traits, status effects, etc. in the future.
My Steam plans (and some last minute insecurities)
The whole point of making a demo was so I could participate in the Steam Festival of February 3, I think I'm on time but I can't deny I feel pretty insecure right now (especially because I got a look at other games in the festival, lots of cool stuff there).
Now, it's not like I didn't expect this, the main point of making this game was to create a good combat system that I can reuse for future projects so I'll be ok if the game is not a great success or gets overshadowed by better games (it's not my first game on Steam after all, I know how this goes) but that's the thing with feelings, they exist wether you like them or not.
I think it's because I can see that I could add more features like melee combat, special attacks, more varied enemies and weapons, etc. if I had more time.
I could also try to make a more unique style for the game, remake assets and look for a more unique visual style in order to get more attention.
That said, there's nothing stopping me from doing all that AFTER the festival so I guess we'll see. Sometimes you just need to apply tunel vision and push a deadline no matter what, it's the only way to get projects done in my opinion. I know setting this deadline for myself really helped me to get stuff done fast so it's only logical that I get the demo ready for Steam, receive any feedback if possible and then decide what to do with the game for the next months.
If you are still reading please do me a favor and check the demo, I have a few days left and so far I have zero feedback with my previous prototype so I could use an extra pair of eyes to discover any last minute bugs.
If not, thanks for reading anyway.
Regards,
Jorge
Caveat: I love XCOM style games (Phoenix Point is underrated) so I'm admittedly VERY bias.
That said, this looks great but SUPER early in development. Forget graphics, forget sound, forget writing; that combat video was 5 minutes of your 4 troopers taking cover in the same exact spots and taking potshots at the enemy the whole time.
You are right, it is super early (I started this project only a few months ago). I'm thinking of changing a lot of the combat before I release an Early Access version (ai, add fog of war, more combat actions, etc).
Thanks for the feedback, I'm certainly wondering if I should just wait for the next Steam festival instead of presenting this demo next week.