Devlog #20- Demo Released!

Last week I finally got around to releasing my long-promised demo, and it took a lot more out of me than I thought so I skipped on the weekly devlog. This week I'm gonna do a postmortem of sorts, talking about some of my thoughts on the demo release.

----------------------------------------------

Demo Content

I've had a version of a playable demo for around 6 months now, but there was always something missing that stopped me from releasing it publicly. I wanted the demo to actually represent the full vision of the game and I think I've managed to achieve that now.  The demo now features the main pillars of the game-
 -A non-linear story: Momo's story can be ignored and returned to at any point, and dialogue and cutscenes change based on who is in the party
 -Exploration: Once the tutorial is done, the player can go anywhere they like and every area is unique.
-Constant feeling of Progression: Each character has an upgrade tree, and everything the player does contributes to the overall stability level. Also the difficult boss-battle gives players something to work towards, even in the sort time span of the demo.

---------------------------------------

Demo Reception

Overall I'm quite happy with how the release went. The demo got a decent amount of downloads and a lot of interest from people learning about it for the first time (although sadly no proper feedback from anyone yet). Most of all, I'm very satisfied with the quality of the demo itself, and that I was able to release it somewhat within the time-frame I had set for myself. Releasing a public demo has been my next major milestone for a such a long time it's refreshing to now be able to move onto the next stage, although it's given me a frightening awakening to how hectic the release of the full game will be.

---------------------------------------------

Game Length

I've always set out to make a short-length RPG, condensed to 6-8 hours or so, but I'm learning that it's probably going to end up significantly longer than that. The overworld area accessible in the demo is around 1/8 of the total map size I plan to make, and the content is maybe 1/20th of what I've had planned. My brothers took around an hour and a half to play the demo, so with that logic, the game will actually be around 30 hours by the time I'm done.

I'm not sure if this is something I should avoid or lean into yet, because the problem isn't scope-creep, I just vastly underestimated how long it takes to actually play through.  30 hours of content doesn't seem impossible to me anymore, but playtesting through 30 hours of game does, so I will probably try to cut back where possible moving forward.

--------------------------------------------

Next Milestone

Since releasing the demo I've been working on areas that will be in the full game and not part of the demo for the first time. As a gamedev I've always made freeware  and jam games, so it's actually the first time that I've ever made any content that I plan to get someone to pay for. It's kind of surreal, and adds just a bit of pressure to everything I do now that I lose the excuse of "well, it's free so it doesn't really matter".

I'm having fun with it though, and now that the major systems of the game are done it really is mostly content from here on out. I spend most days writing dialogue, designing areas, drawing pixel art and making cut-scenes, and it's coming along pretty well.

My next major milestone  is to release the full game and I'm determined to get it released this year, so I've worked out some rough checkpoints for when I want things done. The first of these is a very purposefully short term goal of finishing the next major area of the game. I've set myself 2 weeks to get this done, and depending on how well or badly it goes I may need to adjust my long-term plans for the project.

Currently I'm one week in and things are a bit behind where I'd like to be, but we'll see how things go this week and I'll report back in the next devlog. Here's a little teaser for the new area>

-----------------------------------------------

I might have to change the way I do these weekly devlogs from here on out, because most of what I'm making throughout the week would be considered spoilers so I'll have a lot less to show off freely.

Thanks for reading! If you haven't checked out the demo yet, it's available to play here and if you have any feedback I'd love to hear it!