Time for some news about this game! First of all, you might remember that I wanted to put this game on the next Steam Fest event.

In the end, I decided not to. But don’t worry, not because the game isn’t ready or not in a good state. Not at all! Indeed, I might start the full beta of the game towards the middle of this month!

The state of the game

As I already explained in the past, some devs use Kickstarter (or any other crowdfunding) as a way to recoup money spent, maybe to add more content, but when they do the campaign they might have already an alpha/beta of the game. In my case indeed, when I did the Kickstarter I had already done a lot of work on the game coding before. I had already started back in 2020, then paused it, and resume working on it.

Since the beginning of December to now, two months have passed, in which I’ve made very good progress, but I know that being a complex game the beta phase will take some time, so that’s why I put a longer deadline.

I wanted to participate on the Steam Fest, since with Summer In Trigue went well. The problem is, that with a visual novel is very simple to have a demo. You pick a point of the story, cut everything after it, and done.

With a complex game like this ? Not so simple. Also because how the framework was coded. So in summary, even doing a demo could lead to bugs present only because I had to cut content from the full game to the demo (cards, scenes, gameplay stuff, etc).

I started doing it. But after spending 2h on it, I quickly realized that it wasn’t a good idea, for three reasons:

1. I was effectively wasting my time to work on a demo that, once the Steam Fest ended, I’d have removed. So hours that I could have put to improve the full game instead
2. if by mistake I left some bugs, it could have even backfired: imagine, people playing the demo, finding crashes / bugs, and it could have made a negative impression on them
3. I said in the past that indie games aren’t directly competing with AAA titles. Sure, especially if are visual novels (and even better with adult content, which is not present in AAA titles for sure). But I also said that it might be different for more gameplay-oriented games like this one. I really think the next Steam Fest visibility will be much lower due to big AAA titles coming out around same time

And last but not least: since the game is such in an advanced state, in the end I’d have both a full beta out on my own site and a demo on Steam, which means I had to mantain two bulids and anyone who is developing games knows that this is a bad idea!

What’s Next?

I’m taking some time to polish stuff, and the editor is checking some last texts in the game. Then, sometimes around mid-February, I’ll start the beta as usual on my own site using itchio. Anyone who pre-orders it, or anyone who backed it on Kickstarter using the beta testing tier will have immediate access to it (with option to also have a Steam key later).

How long will take before the final game is out? I have no clue honestly, it all depends on how testing goes. For my previous card game I think the testing lasted 2-3 months but that was because the framework was still new, so I think this time should be a bit faster.

In any case, as always I’ll be sure to announce here once the game is officially out!