most portem

 

this looks alarming!! it's not. i haven't died yet.

at least, i hope not. i'm no deathologist.

anyway, for my lovely course i'm doing, i have to make a "post-mortem" analysis of my game's launch... the only problem being, it's not really launching yet.

this course has been a real weird one. everyone's put a lot of time and even more effort into their respective games, and the games themselves are really really great, but nobody's launching them. crazy! thing is, everyone's put so much time in and is so invested that we aren't happy with leaving the games here. 

in terms of me and my lovely little game, it's definitely not in a place where i'd be happy releasing it. it's been six months of work and really all i have are good systems, with not much content to back it up. i'd be much happier continuing to work on the game in my own time and making it way better for when i do release it, rather than being like "alright project done get it out the door" and i feel like that's the general consensus between nearly all the groups. 

but i'm gonna have to make it public soon - not because i really haaaave to, i could leave it in a restricted-access itch.io page and that'd work, but i'd like to put it out. it'll be a good opportunity for feedback, and to see how people like the game on a conceptual level. but if i put it out right now, i'd have a lot of feedback that just says "yo, the bar button doesn't work" or "how do i open the atlas??????" which wouldn't help me at all, really. so i need to spend the next couple of weeks making the game user friendly, making it clear that it's not done and content is unfinished, and getting the baseline narrative in. wild!

at the same time, this isn't something i'd ever really do on my own. if it weren't for this course, i'd just continue working on the game as normal. screw putting a game out when it's in this state! you can't even beat it. i'm not sure if anyone will like it with the amount of content i've got in it right now, and i don't want to spoil the experience for anyone that *would* be interested in it otherwise. first impressions and all, right? so i'm releasing it and making it entirely clear that "YO, THIS IS A BETA!!" and that the first thing i do when i release it is probably work on something else for a bit. i really don't want to disappoint anyone, but at the same time i'm not entirely sure i can see trucker's atlas the whole way through. i really want to, but i don't want to lock myself into being obliged to anyone else to make this game in a shorter timeframe than i would otherwise. if that makes any sense.

wacky and wild times...