Entry #13 - Post announcement & roadmap

The game is announced! It can finally be wishlisted on Steam. This is the biggest milestone so far, making the project feel more real than ever.

Announcement

I had to push the announcement date back a bit because working with trailer contractors turned out to be a challenge. In the end, I tested three different people, and I’m still not fully happy with the gameplay trailer. But it’s good enough for now.

Once the trailer was ready and the game was accepted by Steam, Next Fest happened. I figured that announcing a new game while everyone was busy playing demos wasn’t ideal, so I decided to wait a bit longer with the Big News. Now, it’s been out for three weeks.

The numbers didn’t really surprise me—I hit the wishlist targets I expected. Not what I hoped for, but what I considered a realistic outcome. Most wishlists came from my friends and personal socials, but posts on game dev-focused Facebook pages also got a good response—better than most other games posted there. However, it doesn’t seem to be translating into wishlists, so it’s probably not that important.

A nice surprise is that I’m seeing some organic movement on Steam and my both pages that I didn’t expect.

Development Roadmap

I’ve spent some time planning and thinking about the future, and I have a solid plan. Right now, my main focus is on the big, missing chunks of gameplay—developing the core experience as much as possible until June.

Around June/July, the next big milestone is coming: lots of new content and a big, open playtest. That will be the moment I decide on the full scope of the project. If the response is positive, I’ll scale up development and invest much more into the game. If not, I’ll likely adjust the scope and aim for a more compact version. It would still be a decently sized game but with slightly lower visual quality.

I’ve also mapped out some rough plans for development beyond that milestone, but it’s still an early assessment.

New Features

So, I’m back in the prototyping phase, adding a lot of new features. It’s fun, but I can already see the project growing significantly. Soon, things like balancing and interactions between different systems could become a challenge. I’m ready for it—part nervous, part excited.

New mechanics will greatly expand replayability and introduce fresh ways to beat levels. Every new feature has a strong reason behind it. During the last playtest, I identified Shitlings’ strengths and weaknesses, and I’m only adding things that solve existing issues.

Some systems I’m working on right now:

• Scouting Gates – These are special spots on the map where players can send their Shitlings on off-map missions. Success means valuable loot. Failure… well, bad things happen.

• Dead vs. Downed Characters – I’ve removed permadeath. Now, Shitlings can be resurrected by other characters. This prevents players from unintentionally ruining their future progress. Previously, losing even one character could make the game nearly impossible to beat.

• Better Telegraphing of Enemy Waves – Improving clarity so players can better prepare for incoming threats.

• AI Improvements – Lots of tweaks here. Among other things, Shitlings will now search for food or a resting place when near death—another safety net to prevent losing due to oversight.

• Items & Workspot Power-Ups – This isn’t started yet, but it’s a big feature. I want to allow deeper Shitlings customization with special artifacts. At higher levels, these can be crafted; at lower levels, they can be found in scouting missions or bought with microtransactions. Ok, no microtransactions. But there will be special loot chests.

• Loot Chests & Guarded Areas – Adding special loot chests with randomized rare rewards—artifacts, rare resources, or workspot power-ups. These will be heavily guarded, making retrieval risky but rewarding.

So yeah, the game is in a weird state right now. Everything is broken, tons of new stuff is coming in, and it feels like the next few months will actually determine the final shape and quality of the game. Pretty exciting. And very, very scary.