December (2018) Update
To say that 2018 has been a transformative year for UnderMine is an understatement. At the beginning of this year UnderMine was a loose collection of good (and some bad) ideas without much direction. Now, at the end of 2018 we as a team have a strong vision for the game and are cranking out content at a faster pace than we ever have.
We’ve changed as a team as well. Clint joined in April, rounding out our number to a whopping three! We also added Wesley Slover and his company Sono Sanctus to compose music and generate SFX for the game.
2018 is also the year where UnderMine really made its public debut. We went from having a humble 200-300 followers on Twitter to nearly 1K. We launched our website and our Steam page, opening up wishlists. We also launch a Discord channel which has quickly grown to around 100 enthusiastic fans. And UnderMine was chosen to show at PAX as part of the Indie Megabooth, and Dreamhack in Atlanta.
Honestly, looking back at what we achieved this year is overwhelming, but it has been probably the most rewarding year of our careers. Anyways, with all that out of the way let’s talk about the game.
Alpha Test
Around mid November we made the spontaneous decision to run a public alpha test. We were feeling a bit isolated and were losing perspective on aspects of the game, like the difficulty. At the beginning of December we released the alpha, and overall are very happy with the results. Players found a lot of bugs, some of which we were able to patch early on in the process. More importantly though, we saw everyone’s reaction and it has been overwhelmingly positive. It’s hard to express how much this energizes us as creators. It really reminds us that everything we do will eventually be touched by players, and it motivates us to put our all into it.
We’re still discussing what to do with the alpha branch moving forward. We may leave it open to those that have access to it and just leave it unsupported for the time being. Patching, and focusing on support really creates a lot of overhead for us, so if we are to make the progress we want to make we need to refocus on forward development.
We’d like to thank everyone who has provided feedback, pointed out bugs, and otherwise just played the game. It has been a pleasure to discuss UnderMine with you and watch all the spectacular streams and videos.
January Development
Moving forward we have a lot of content to tackle. Our UI is still half finished and there is a lot to work on there. We’ve also learned some valuable UX lessons, like telling people how to access the Journal menu, so we’ll be tackling that as well.
We also have our Dungeon boss about half complete so we’ll focus on finishing him up as well. This all is in addition to ongoing content development which includes: encounters, relics, prayers, curses, blessings, potions, familiars, upgrades, and a host of other things.
Thank you again to all our fans and followers. We appreciate all of your support, and you help make UnderMine a better game. Happy New Years, and have a fantastic 2019!
