Hey everyone! It's almost four weeks since we released 868-BACK, and the response has been fantastic. The user reviews people are posting on Steam are consistently, wow, well just for example: "It's hard to think of another game that's bursting with this many exciting ideas." "This is, no hyperbole, the best video game ever made." "this is without doubt one of the greatest video games I've ever played" "This game has a shocking amount of depth" "868-BACK is the best roguelike ever made" "What a special game." Folk, I'm not cherry-picking these quotes here. It's all like that. Look at it. People really like the game. (AND FAIR ENOUGH, WE DID GOOD WORK.)
You will have noticed that I announced that I would release the game on mobile platforms, and we haven't done that yet. At the time I honestly thought that I was going to just somehow manage to simultaneously release on all the platforms, like I've never done before. But this turned out to be a huge game. It was already clear that it was quite big back in 2024, but as I filled in the blanks it became obvious that it's really very big. We had to make choices about what to prioritise for release and what to save for later, and this was a pretty obvious one.
It's not going to be easy to make it play well on a phone. Honestly, although many people played and loved 868-HACK on their phones, I do feel it's pushing the boundaries of what's comfortable. (After all, it did start as a PC game!) Since then I've figured out a lot about how to make a game work well on a phone, and e.g. Imbroglio and Cinco Paus were designed with that interface in mind from the start. I had hoped I could do that here, but it grew the way it grew. There's a lot of work still ahead to get this right, and I am going to do a damn good job of it - but even after I do my best I think more people will prefer to play it on PC. It's just a big game!
Aside from that, I've talked about my health a bit with respect to this project. I suffer from chronic fatigue, and we've learned how to do a very good job of managing it. I know what my limits are, and in the last push to get 868-BACK released I went right up to those limits but not past them. I'm okay, but I'm tired. I need to rest quite a bit now.
All that is to say: a mobile release is still planned, but it's going to be at least some months away. I'm resting and recovering, supporting the game, fixing bugs, doing interviews, trying to promote the game, and then I still have the project of MAKE IT GOOD ON PHONE ahead of me. I'm not going to announce dates or anything until it's reasonable to do so! But for now, the game is out, it's great, I'm proud of what we've done, and thank you all so much for your support. (And please tell your friends to buy it!)
Finally, here's an interview that came out today! Dev Dive with Michael Brough and Tara Macalister. We talk about the process of making the game, the music, my illness, and a bunch of other stuff.
Draknek and friends interviewed me on their podcast! I've also done a couple of other interview which I think will be coming out this week.
What's also coming out this week?
The game itself!
We're busy this weekend putting in a few finishing touches, to have time to get the final build well tested for Thursday. That's been cutting it a little finer than I'd really planned to, but these last few things will really be worth it!
For example AJ has finished The Mainframe!
AJ is a really cool visual artist - check out some of his work at that link. His glitchy pixel scenes have been a huge inspiration for my own pixel work, and when we discussed getting some contributions from other artists to help get this game finished he was the first person I thought of. He's been drawing some fantastic scenes for the game - I'm excited for you to see them (but you'll just have to hack some servers to find them!).
Only about a year later than I expected... it grew!
I'm still pretty busy finishing up the last several things, and we've got some cool extra people doing some graphics and sfx that are still going in. You'll love it.
It has the tutorial and one servers-worth of the full game - but you can replay that server to try a few different devices and progs.
I'll update you with a release date for the full game when we have it - there's still a lot to do... but here you can see the work we've been putting in!
Hey, it's been a while since I've posted an update here.
I am still working on the game! It's turned out a little bigger than I expected (and maybe I got some things done a little slower than I expected) but everything is going well.
This means I can finish making it as big as it's gotten, and I'll have some expert help in getting the game out to more people. So, it's coming! More soon!
Thanks so much to everyone who's backed 868-BACK! We did it!
I'm going to rest, take a little break, and get back to you in the new year. I still have a lot of work ahead. But - I can do it now! I can afford to finish this game and do a really good job on it, thanks to you all. I'm really looking forward to when you'll all be able to play it!
Hey hey! Just one day to go on this, and we reached €30k yesterday. Thanks everyone, we're celebrating! I'm going to take a really good rest over the holiday break (as much as the kids will let me) and then get to work with confidence that I definitely have time to explore the systems to the depth they need.
More still helps of course - both for the game (see my update on stretch goals) and for us personally, as we're still recovering financially from my long illness! And yes this is your chance to preorder, the game is going to be great and you will not be disappointed. Get on it!
I did some Q&A in the livestream I did a couple of nights ago - some important questions like "what's new - is it basically just more progs?" (no! it's a huge new game built on the foundation of the old one, with rich mechanical additions, a bigger world, and an adventure!). I thought about doing another stream today just to answer more questions you might have, but it's all been a lot and I don't think I have enough energy for streaming.
So let's do it here! Post questions in the comments and I'll answer how many I can - I'll pace myself and just check in throughout the day when I can! Ask your questions, back the game if you haven't / bask in my gratitude if you have, and have a great Christmas and new year!
Hey! Someone asked for a clarification on my "stretch goals", because I haven't given a lot of detail on how the game would be different if I had more resources to work with. Most crowdfunding campaigns write something like:
if we reach $11111 i will let you pet the dog
if we reach $22222 also cat
$33333 goat
if we reach $44444 you get more experience points! you will level up faster and have more fun!
I hate this because it's all fake. You don't know in advance how many iterations an idea will take, you don't know if an idea will even work out until you've mostly implemented it. It's just not how designs go. At least, it's not how I make games - I grow them organically, using what resources I have available, trying ideas and adding them if they make it better, scaling things down if I have to, and taking out what doesn't end up fitting.
Honestly I think lots of games are much worse than they could have been because they commit to this kind of budgeting beforehand. Especially if they're publisher-funded; the small-minded conservative risk-averse fools in charge of making investment decisions want everything planned and scheduled in advance so their ass is covered. They care more about avoiding looking bad than whether what gets made is any good, and so they insist on all these processes that end up preventing lots of good work being made. This is one of the reasons crowdfunding is a better fit for me - you, the backer, can look at the end results of my work and decide just based on whether you like what I make! You don't have to justify to your boss if it looks a bit weird in the middle!
That said, you want to know the kind of stuff I have planned. None of this is binary in the sense that a certain number will let me do it or not, it's things that might scale up or down depending on how many months I have to work in, and what I have left over to pay collaborators.
DAILY MODE
Lots of people asked for a daily mode in 868-HACK. I thought I had a good reason why it wouldn’t work well, but looking back, I was overly attached to my clever solution to a problem that didn’t necessarily need to be solved. Regardless, for the new game I’m pretty sure I can make a good daily mode! But - obviously it takes time to implement and test.
CHALLENGE MODE
I'm inspired by the Cursed modes in Slice & Dice (and especially by talking about them with Doug on the eggplant show) to think about how far the complexity can be pushed, in terms of escalating the difficulty modifiers to absurd levels while also powering up the player to deal with them. I'd like to explore that here for an alternate challenge mode, but it will take at least a few weeks of experimentation to see if there's a good version here, and then if it works out (which it might not) a few more weeks to polish it. So this potentially costs a few thousand extra!
Other ideas I haven’t thought of yet will come up along the way, and the more funding I have the more free I’ll be to explore them when they do.
COMPLEXITY OF DYNAMIC MUSIC LAYERING
Most of my games feature some kind of dynamic music, responding in some way to the game action (e.g. getting more intense during fights). We’re planning to take this to the highest level I've done yet, now that Tara’s collaborating on the music. How deep we go into this, with how many layers and how detailed the reponses to game events, is going to just depend on how much time we can afford to spend on it - it's not a fixed target but just a flexible area where more resources can keep making a better experience. I really want to do a great job of this - the soundtrack is a critical part of cyberpunk vibes.
COLLABORATION ON VISUAL ART
As it stands I'm working on the game graphics by myself, but there are some scenes I want to include to really situate you in the world of the game, to evoke a stronger sense of environment and presence. I don't currently have the skills to pull this off. Either I have to spend time skilling up, or work with a visual art specialist to bring them to life. At the current level of funding we'll be able to get together a cool intro screen and ending screen, but I'd like to have a few more for special events in the game. Again this is not a $number, but a flexible possibility space where I'll do the best I can with whatever resources are available.
PORTING TO VARIOUS PLATFORMS
I've already released a game on Windows, MacOS, Linux, iOS and Android with Godot engine, so I'm confident in all of these. Though - with the variety of different devices and resolutions these days I wouldn't expect to catch all issues without extra costs. People have asked about things like Steamdeck, Switch and other consoles and.. I have literally zero experience with these! I would have to get hold of the equipment, play with it enough to have a good feel for it, do whatever it takes to port the game to them (for consoles, this means paying someone who specialises in that), spend time making sure the game feels right.. this is one of the areas that adds a lot to a game's budget - add say €5k for Steamdeck and at least €15k for any console. Yeah, it's a lot, and I'm probably even underestimating here.
So, I hope that clarifies my stretch goals. Thanks again to everyone who's backed, and if you're on the fence then maybe now is your time!
Hey, last time I talked a bit about the server network map, where you'll choose between different challenges to get different devices (and other gains). Today I'll tell you a bit about how these devices work. Again: this could be considered spoiler territory, so stop reading if you'd prefer.
(Also: we're still hoping to reach my estimate for a "comfortable" budget - i.e. definitely having time and resources to get everything done how I want it. So sharing this still helps!)
-
As in 868-HACK, it's easy to complete a round (hack one server), and the challenges come from scoring points as you go or from completing multiple rounds with added difficulty mods. (I should note: sometimes when I talk about this people disagree with my claim that it's easy! If this is you, I recommend avoiding collecting any points at all until you've reached the end with 0 - getting all the points is probably impossible and you won't know how to judge the risks without a baseline. But for the sequel I'll be building a new introduction to help get the concepts across.)
I realised that if you have to finish hacking a server to get a device, then you never get to actually use the device from the final server, which feels kind of wrong: you've won the game but now it's over so your loot is worthless. So instead I moved it to the start of a round — the loot comes before the dungeon! Conveniently this also means that you get to play with shiny new stuff already in the first server you hack. Explained via mspaint: This is kind of a basic point but it probably has some general applicability in other designs so I have belaboured it.
So straight away devices are adding more variety between plays — an opening with /exorcism feels very different to /menu. And if you're successfully hacking multiple servers, eventually you have lots of them! What do you do with them? First off, they're not all switched on all the time: you have to make (increasingly complex) choices about which ones to activate in any given round. But when you can get them plugged in, they can make powerful combos!
I'll go through some examples; they're still changing a lot as I work on the game so no guarantees which of these will actually make it in but it will give you some kind of a picture:
Hey everyone! It's almost four weeks since we released 868-BACK, and the response has been fantastic. The user reviews people are posting on Steam are consistently, wow, well just for example: "It's hard to think of another game that's bursting with this many exciting ideas." "This is, no hyperbole, the best video game ever made." "this is without doubt one of the greatest video games I've ever played" "This game has a shocking amount of depth" "868-BACK is the best roguelike ever made" "What a special game." Folk, I'm not cherry-picking these quotes here. It's all like that. Look at it. People really like the game. (AND FAIR ENOUGH, WE DID GOOD WORK.)
You will have noticed that I announced that I would release the game on mobile platforms, and we haven't done that yet. At the time I honestly thought that I was going to just somehow manage to simultaneously release on all the platforms, like I've never done before. But this turned out to be a huge game. It was already clear that it was quite big back in 2024, but as I filled in the blanks it became obvious that it's really very big. We had to make choices about what to prioritise for release and what to save for later, and this was a pretty obvious one.
It's not going to be easy to make it play well on a phone. Honestly, although many people played and loved 868-HACK on their phones, I do feel it's pushing the boundaries of what's comfortable. (After all, it did start as a PC game!) Since then I've figured out a lot about how to make a game work well on a phone, and e.g. Imbroglio and Cinco Paus were designed with that interface in mind from the start. I had hoped I could do that here, but it grew the way it grew. There's a lot of work still ahead to get this right, and I am going to do a damn good job of it - but even after I do my best I think more people will prefer to play it on PC. It's just a big game!
Aside from that, I've talked about my health a bit with respect to this project. I suffer from chronic fatigue, and we've learned how to do a very good job of managing it. I know what my limits are, and in the last push to get 868-BACK released I went right up to those limits but not past them. I'm okay, but I'm tired. I need to rest quite a bit now.
All that is to say: a mobile release is still planned, but it's going to be at least some months away. I'm resting and recovering, supporting the game, fixing bugs, doing interviews, trying to promote the game, and then I still have the project of MAKE IT GOOD ON PHONE ahead of me. I'm not going to announce dates or anything until it's reasonable to do so! But for now, the game is out, it's great, I'm proud of what we've done, and thank you all so much for your support. (And please tell your friends to buy it!)
Finally, here's an interview that came out today! Dev Dive with Michael Brough and Tara Macalister. We talk about the process of making the game, the music, my illness, and a bunch of other stuff.
