Level 99 Axe Rage
Old Price got the Axe
Initially, that was the price we intended on our currency ($9500 Chilean Pesos), but Steam's price conversion decided to add as much as a 50% increase in some countries! Unfortunately this couldn't be changed before 30 days passed, as for Steam's policies. But today, we manually adjusted the price for the most steep price differences, including USA, Australia, the European Union, United Kingdom, Korea, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Poland and Switzerland.
To clear other doubts you had regarding the development and value, let's not forget that we're in early access. The main engine and game mechanics are mostly finished, but we're not even halfway through the amount of content we plan to include, as a minimum. If we were to throw a number, we'd say we have around 30% content, 75% core mechanics.
Given that, we estimate the current build of the game to last around 3~4 hours, maybe 1~2 in your second run. We have speedrun the current build to around 1 hour from start to finish (not including possible bugs or exploits); but in the end this will probably vary a lot depending on players. We're eager to see more full gameplays now that more people will be able to get the game!
Speaking of which, we're also getting in touch with some people that can help us do more marketing, as other users mentioned too, so we can focus more on development.
On a more personal note, for those interested in knowing more about us, we spent around 2 years up to this point starting from absolute scratch, meaning we didn't know anything about game development at all, not even the softwares we needed. We also have other jobs, so we could only work on LVL99 during our free time. That's why it took us so long to make a playable build with most of the core mechanics! But now that we know more, and have the mechanics almost ready, we hope to create and include the remaining content in a smaller timeframe.
If you want to know more, please follow us in our social media!
fb.me/leveln2
twitter.com/lvl99_game
First Announcement Ever: The price Issue and other stories
First of all, thanks for visiting our store page. We are glad there's still interest and appreciation for retro style action games, which are making a big comeback on these last years!
Now, we'll address the unfortunate mistake we made on the pricing, which most of you have addressed on your feedback.
First of all: Since we just launched the game, we need to wait until end of the month (March 1) to be able to decrease the price on the US, EU and UK regions. That's the option Steam is giving us.
Needless to say, we agree that the game is overpriced on those regions. This is absolutely our fault, as rookie developers, we let steam automatically decide the prices for other countries, based on the original price on our country (Chile). In the end, that automatic conversion added too much. We'll fix it as soon as possible. In the meantime, you can add us to your wishlist so you can get notified when we finally can update the price!
As for the Finished Release price, we've also reconsidered it and edited the "Early Access" text to accommodate for that. One of our biggest expectations for releasing the game early on steam, was user feedback, so we're happy to accept it and evolve with it when needed.
Regarding future updates, I'll reproduce the answer we gave to @exile211 on a community post:
We can't work on LVL99 on a 100% regular schedule, as we need to maintain our regular non-game jobs in order to fund development. We also try to test the game as much as possible before making changes public, so we can only ask for your patience regarding the content updates.
If possible, we'll aim for around 2-3 weeks for fixing/programming updates, but content will most likely take more time.
Again, sorry for this, but the game WILL keep growing, and we'll make sure it ends up being a brutal experience!
Our priorities for updates are :
- Analog control support
- Resolution change support
- Steam Achievements
- Stage Map
- Local co-op
Finally, we want to highlight a cool gameplay/review by @Esty8nine, who defeated the first boss ( Spoilers I guess? ) and mentioned some very good points to consider for balancing the game. Once again, feedback is very valuable to us, since it's our first game and we have a lot to learn.
We want the game to be difficult though, and for what we've seen on people's gameplay videos, the feelings evoked are very similar to what we felt as kids when playing NES/SNES games. We believe frustration makes success taste sweeter, but of course we're willing to have some lenience and keep balancing the controls and design further. :)
Twitch video: Etsy8nine gameplay
This is already very long, so we'll leave it at this. Our next announcement should be more game-related, hopefully regarding some of the updates we mentioned.
Please leave your comments and check the community if you can!
We are really looking forward to improve and grow. Thanks for your help.