Initiative: Red Dawn
Development Update August 2018
First of all, sorry for disappearing the past months. To be honest we've had to momentarily pause Initiative's development due to lack of funds and had to focus our time on other projects and side-jobs to be able to continue with it in the future. As we said before, this is our passion and we will finish this game no matter what, it just may take a little longer!
But not all are bad news. Last year we've applied for a government incentive to software development and we've just received confirmation that Initiative has been selected as one of the winner projects. This means that once we receive that money we will be able to gather a small team, rent an office and work full time on the game, pretty much like we would have accomplished had the Kickstarter been successful.
It may take a couple of months to receive the funds but once there we estimate to have a demo three months later and a first early access version on Steam six months later.
We'll try to post here more often as before. Also wanted to thank all of you for your continuous support and good wishes!.
Nick and Seb
Playable Demo Announcement + Updated Dev Path
as most of you already know, the KS campaign wasn't successful regarding reaching the funding goal, but we think it was successful in reaching hundreds of new guys and gals whom never have heard about Initiative and now are following its development, helping with ideas and encouraging us to move on with it. That's very important for us and we are really thankful with all of you.
Because we didn't get any funds from KS and we'll continue to self-fund the game, we've been forced to review the announced development path. We think we can achieve the original release dates (Alpha end of 1Q 2018, Beta end of 2Q and game release on the 4Q 2018) by simplifying or reducing some graphic details, while keeping most of the mechanics intact or even enhanced with some of the feedback received.
This last month, beside a few days off to recover energy, we've been working full time to update the Game Design Document (GDD) while moving forward with code (the only thing we are doing 100% in-house).
The idea is, besides the aforementioned Alpha and Beta tests, to have an internal playable demo with all of the core mechanics ready (from start to launch of the first Space Station module) before the end of the year if possible or in January 2018 at most, aiming for two goals: to try the "Fun" of the game with some of the most enthusiastic followers and start getting coverage by quite a lot streamers and youtubers already interested on Initiative. Player's selection for the first playable demo will be announced shortly.
Once that demo is finished we will also analyze the possibility of a new crowdsourcing campaign, either on KS, Fig or on our own website.
Soon we will start sharing again weekly screenshots showing the changes to all of the game screens along an explanation of the new and improved features and mechanics. We will also link every new code repository push to our Discord "Development" channel so you can keep track on the development status as we develop.
Here is the link to the Initiative's Discord server: https://discord.gg/SyckUR3 . Join us for daily chats about the game or anything related to space. There are some great guys there with a lot of knowledge eager to share it.
Again thanks to all of you for the amazing support and keep tuned!
Nick and Sebastian
Kickstarter narrowly missed, what next?
The Kickstarter campaign came to an end, but we are still here and more excited than ever. There is no loss on running a Kickstarter campaign, since an amazing community of close to 800 backers has been formed. To those, we want to say thank you for believing in us.
Rest assured, Initiative's development will continue, and the game will see the light of day. We've worked a lot so far, and this pushes us forward by seeing how many people are interested in the game. With all the comments, suggestions and ideas we received, we're even more excited.
We may have to cut some bells and whistles here and there for the first initial release, but the core will remain the same game you backed and that we all want to play.
We will continue to stay active and run updates here as well as our other forms of communication such as our:
Newsletter: http://initiative.online
SubReddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/Initiative/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/IndelveStudios
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/indelvestudios/
We have a few announcements coming, so stay tuned.
Our next step is to go back to full time development and work towards a playable demo. At that point, we'll analyze if we want to run another crowdfunding campaign or to advance a bit further and move straight to an Early Access release a bit later on. Either way, we want to honor our original time schedule and keep working on Initiative.
If we decide to not run another crowdfunding campaign, we'll most likely provide a few of the most desired (digital only) tiers on our website to give you the opportunity to pledge for the same or similar digital rewards.
As we've said from the beginning, stay with us, and let's make human life interplanetary together!