As with every video I have to mention my upload schedule- this is the first video in a while that's actually been on time. If you're watching this, I appreciate your patience with me straight-up not doing what you subscribed for. Anyway, let's just get on with it.
The demo for Mass O' Kyzt will very likely be released alongside the full game. This is due to the fact that it's a much better idea to start with a complete product and cut bits off rather than to built a small version of something, release it to the wild and then try to build on top of that.
The fact that I've revamped large elements of the game like three times now should be proof enough of that- it's very difficult to gauge when the game is actually done and whether the game is what I want it to be. It's probably not the best idea to just start making something and mutating it until it's acceptable, but my experience with design documents have been disappointing at best.
So far, all the projects I've tried to start that involved a design document have failed and I've given up on them before long. Of course this is entirely on me, I'm not trying to tell you that design documents are useless but I would have to change the way that I approach creative design to be able to access the full potential of a design document.
For some reason, my brain just doesn't work in a way that facilitates design documents. Maybe they're too rigid or I'm just bad at writing them but something's awry. I'm probably not going to return to design documents until it's more suitable, for instance if I were to become part of a team.
I'll stop rambling on about design documents for a moment and get back to the point. Mass O' Kyzt is a difficult game to trim, since it's not particularly big to begin with. It's got a nice core gameplay loop which is only just rearing its head after months of work and re-working. Naturally, the big question is "How am I going to make this demo both fun in its own right as well as able to incentivize further purchase of the game?"
The most likely scenario is that the demo will limit the number of consecutive waves that the player can play, and also will gate off a lot of the unlockable stuff that I've got planned. This means that the player can get a feeling for the core gameplay without being able to just play the entire game straight through.
As to when the game will be released, the current estimate is some time in January. Maybe around Christmas, but since I need to create a bunch of new maps, environments, player skins maybe and I'm sure a lot of other stuff I'm forgetting right now- I have my work cut out for me. I can probably implement some of this stuff in updates after the fact once I've established a sufficient baseline of unlockable content, but that could take a while.
We're already almost over with November and I'm just barely finishing what I believe to be the core loop. Sprite work is what takes me the longest and unfortunately it's what I need to do the most of at this point. As I'm sure you have been able to tell if you've seen the current iteration of the boss sprite that comes in five waves, I'm not exactly the best at it.
This video has really been quite rambly and it could get a lot more rambly so I'll cut it short now. I'm not quite ready to create the next Devlog video and I didn't have quite enough content to fill up an entire video just talking about the demo when I really just needed to get across a few key points, so yeah I allowed myself to go off on a tangent a bit more.
One more thing, if you want my hot take on something that I can make a video about- please let me know, it's not easy to come up with video ideas all the time. I've got a few more video ideas, but it would help to have something fresh.
Anyway, thanks for watching and stay tuned for the next video I make probably being Devlog #16, but no promises because everything I say is incredibly volatile and open to change. Goodbye!
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