One Year Anniversary of the Studio Xehryn Website
It's Been One Year
It's one year since the Studio Xehryn website in its current form and the Twitter has been up and running.
For this dev blog, I want to review what has been accomplished during this time, and what is planned for the future.
Games
Games are the main thing I work on. This year I worked on 5 games. Two of them were released, one of them was cancelled, and three of them are still in development.
Released Games
Gate of Providence
This game is my current greatest work. It took three years to make due to its epic length and the fact that I was also busy with university at the time. I consider Gate of Providence a finished work, meaning there won't be additional content coming to the game. I still do bug fixes when people find them, but for the most part, the most obvious bugs have been caught. There's still the invisible wall glitch that shows up once a playthough for some people, but I still haven't found the cause of the problem.
Players that have played this tend to enjoy it enough to play it all the way through with 100% completion (which takes around 15-20 hours!). It makes me very happy that people are enjoying my work and spending many hours playing my game.
Pestilence Stirs
This short game was made for a game jam, in about a week's time. It was fun making this game as it was the product of my first game jam. I also got to experience the infamous "crunch time" during the final hours of the game jam, which was something I did not have during the development of Gate of Providence.
The game was played in a couple of Let's Play videos, and the players enjoyed it. I will likely write a postmortem for Pestilence Stirs within the next couple of months.
Cancelled Games
Windra's Endgame
This game was worked on for a while, but was eventually cancelled after stability and gameplay issues emerged. I was already losing interest in this project, but those issues were the nail in the coffin. Windra's Endgame is my first ever cancelled game that had reached the production stage. Hopefully it will remain as the only cancelled game for a long time.
In-Development Games
Project Seventh Seal
Title pending. This project was commissioned. I'm aiming to have a demo with mechanics fully fleshed out by the end of the year, and the complete game early 2019. It is made with RPG Maker MV and thus will be playable on all platforms, but my main targets are PC and Android.
This game has a high fantasy setting, with dwarves, elves, orcs, etc. It also has some educational elements, intended to teach players about Computer Science. However, it is not an educational game, which typically aren't good for either education nor gaming.
Rondo of Wizardry and Love
I've been working on this game for a long time, but I've also been putting it off for a while. I will likely work on this game after Project Seventh Seal.
This is one of my "big" projects, not on par with Gate of Providence, but close.
Project Roguelike
Another project I've been working on for a long time. It is more of a side-project compared to my other games, but I occasionally implement a feature when I take a break from developing my main projects.
This game has little to no story, and instead focuses on arcade-style replayability.
Tutorials
I released three tutorials this year. I was planning on writing more, but they take a long time to write, typically an entire day or more. I try to focus more on creating systems (like puzzles) than general how-to-use, as there are plenty of those already.
Puzzles tutorials like Sokoban, sliding ice, hidden path, and timing-based crumbling floor are planned, but I have no estimate on when they will be written.
I may also consider doing a video format for those who can't be bothered to read.
Dev Blogs
I've written ten dev blogs, including this one. Dev Blogs take a surprisingly long time to write, which is why they are so infrequent. Interestingly, when I do write dev blogs, they tend to be released close to each other.
I should definitely be writing more, since it's nice to look back at the development process and see how far I've come. I could also just write shorter, but more frequent dev blogs.
The Future of the Website
I'm planning on a website redesign soon. It will hopefully make the browsing experience better, with improved readability and aesthetic. I'm not too happy with my current design, especially when writing short lines of text on large resolutions.