Solarix December 2014 Development Update
Hi Guys,
As some of you may not know we hit alpha in October and have been working on play testing, polishing and bug fixing ever since. During the internal play testing process it became apparent to us we wanted to add more story content to Solarix and change the way in which you interact with the HUD and UI. With that in mind we’ve now added layers of polish to the story for the sake of pacing the story and gameplay progression and it now flows more naturally.
I mentioned previously about adding additional story content, after play testing internally we felt we had scope to add more lore content. So we did it. We secured the services of two wonderful voice actors who have done an excellent job of expanding the Solarix experience.
One of the major challenges we’re still facing in pacing the gameplay is ammunition distribution throughout the levels. Getting that balance just right is taking time and a lot of play testing by the team. The good news is we feel we’ve reached a point where the balance feels right as you progress through the game.
Our trip to the PlatformExpos in Hull last month was extremely valuable in helping the team understand what gamers are a looking for and expect from a game like Solarix. Everyone who played the game came away with a positive experience and helped highlight some of the areas we were unsure about by playing the game in different ways. Again, thanks to everyone who took time to visit us at the booth.
As far as game development goes in the past month, our developers have been knuckling down on fixing bugs based on feedback from our testing group and we’re pleased to say that we are in the final round of code related bug fixing.
Optimisation in today’s PC game space is more important than ever so we’ve been spending time looking at optimisation and making sure that we can reach as many PC gamers as possible when the game launches next year. This year has proved that no matter what size of developer you are, gamers expect solid performance and we hope that we can deliver on that.
We realise that with more games than ever to choose from , not all of today’s PC gamers are familiar with the stealth genre so based on feedback we’ve added more tutorial content to east players into the concept but at the same time keep the game challenging for veterans of the stealth genre.
Feedback from testers has been vital to helping us get to the stage we are and every piece of feedback has been carefully considered and in some cases been tested in internal builds. Thanks to that we feel Solarix has reached a very important milestone in its development and we think the game is almost ready and we are looking to move it into a beta phase at the start of 2015.
We want to say a huge thanks to everyone who has been following the game this year and we hope you have a fantastic holiday season. We’ll continue to tweak, test and fix any issues we find over the next few weeks and we’re looking forward to 2015 when we’ll finally be able to get the game into the hands of more testers and then launch.
Don’t forget to sign-up for the newsletter and follow us on Steam, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit. As an indie developer we need you to help spread the word about Solarix.
Merry Christmas to all and we’ll see you in 2015. I’ll leave you with a couple of new screenshots.
Mark Gregory -Producer
