Release Schedule and Future Plans

Hi all,

Hope people are enjoying VoxelVale so far!

I want to make this post to kind of ramble about what my future plans are with this project, and how I plan to release updates. Typically, I've been updating plans through my Patreon and Youtube, but I think I'm going to try and centralize this project on itch because it seems easier to track analytics and gauge feedback from players.

Future Plans

This section will be a little disorganized, but I'll try to highlight the important things. 

First off, I'm trying to focus mainly on adding more content and progression into the game. There are a ton of things I'd like to focus on the visual side, but I'm putting these on the back-burner until the game is a little more fun to play. 

I'd also like to standardize the game across itch and voxelvale.net. Currently, the only difference is that, the version I've uploaded to itch does not allow players to save their world. This stems from worlds needing to be saved to the cloud, which requires users to sign up for an account on voxelvale.net. There is obviously no elegant solution for long term local saves when playing through a browser, so cloud saves are kind of a must have. I think moving the signup and login buttons into the game, then triggering a popup for the player to enter their credentials is an okay solution to this. So, I'm working on that, but it probably won't be implemented for at least a week or two. I also want to give players the ability to save multiple worlds, and make a nicer interface for saving and loading worlds.

As far as actual content, water is the next thing that will be added into the game. I have a video detailing the mechanics of how water will function on my Youtube channel if anyone is interested. Adding more enemies is also a top priority. Lastly, I initially had randomly generated dungeons similar to The Binding of Isaac, but I kind of scraped the idea because it felt too inconsistent with the rest of the game. Lately, I've been trying to retool it though, because it was the whole reason I started this project. I have a laundry list of other content as well which I don't want to spoil, so stay tuned!

Release Schedule

Right now, there is no set schedule. If the project ever gained more attention, I would probably set a day of the week to release updates, but for now I just try to release an update each week. In reality, I have obligations outside of this game, so it's not my top priority. I have a lot of fun making it though, and that's why I do it!

I was releasing updates early through Patreon as an incentive, but I'm going to stop this for a while as I don't really see the point in walling off content if people currently aren't that interested in the game.

That's all I think, I'll try to post semi-frequently on here to keep everyone informed. Thanks for reading :)

Jay