We finally did it!

We've left pre-alpha, created a solid foundation for the game, and now we'll have stable and continuous development.

We previously tried building the game with Unreal Engine 4, then with 5 when the new version was released, in Lua. Now we've come to the conclusion that the game should be built in Java. We're using Java 8 and LWJGL, along with our own libraries we're developing, and we've already created a playable version.

ROADMAP

Now that we have a playable version and a stable codebase, we'll start adding features and fixing bugs to launch the game soon. We plan to make the game available for purchase on Steam when it's free of critical bugs, still in alpha. We don't know if we'll reach this stage by 2025 or 2026, but we plan to launch commercially before 2027.

We're implementing our own scripting language for adding content, so we can add cool new content without having to touch the Java code (and this would make it easier for players to create their own game mods). The version we've released, 0.1.0, doesn't yet have this support, but at the time of writing this devlog, it's already partially working in our development environment.

We have a lot of technical aspects to address, like the rendering pipeline, scripting, and servers (which we'd like to integrate with Steamworks), so we won't be focusing too much on adding large amounts of content that differs greatly from the core game, but we do plan to release some game content as free add-ons to avoid issues with the core game.

The Game's Vibe

We're creating a game that will both feature pre-made content and allow players to create their own procedurally generated story. This can be challenging, but we think having these two modes (linear/procedural) separate is the best approach. If we tried to add a specific experience to the procedural mode, we'd have to force the player to play the game a certain way, otherwise it would become a useless, forgotten feature.

The game will definitely not be child-friendly, as making a child-friendly game necessarily limits the game's scope. For example, not adding weapons to the game to avoid "violence" necessarily limits the experiences available, and we'd like to give players as much freedom as possible.

Is this just a clone of a popular game?

No. We choose the same framework and features as a good starting point. We're building a different renderer and experience than the popular game we based on. We started on internet's large pool of public available technical information on this other popular game.