GHOST MISSION BETA
GHOST MISSION’s Beta build was finished earlier this week and it’s now out for final testing. It’s still hard to believe that the finish line is finally in sight.
Though seeing it feels like an accomplishment in its own right, staying on target and task is vital at this juncture and I still have plenty to get done in the meantime. I’m not going to pretend I know what true crunch-time at a AAA studio feels like, but I venture to say that I can at least sympathize with the stresses of the process. There’s a laundry list of items which all need to undergo stress-tests to ensure they work as intended in all possible scenarios, however potentially rare. Staring at that list begets a feeling similar to analysis paralysis – i.e., there’s so many items on it that it feels useless to even start work on them. Regardless, it’s all work that needs to be done and the last thing I want to leave this project with the is the feeling of “I could have fixed XYZ thing and given a potential player one less thing to complain about…but I didn’t.”
It’s hard to tune out the negative voices in my head telling me that almost no one will play the game anyway, so what’s the point? Apparently I’m not alone in this thought process, as the statistics behind indie games, and especially behind first projects, stand overwhelmingly against developers in regards to exposure, sales, and player count. I’m trying to look at this all pragmatically – expect less and stave off taking a pessimistic attitude towards it. Gaining traction in 2023 is difficult and finding the means to stand out in a sea of marketing buzzwords and social media algorithms is a monumental task and definitely not in my comfort zone…but I’m trying! In the end, I have learned A LOT about the gaming business and will continue to do so.
All that said, my primary goals in beta testing are:
Identifying game-breaking/mechanic-breaking bugs and exploits.
Identifying game-crashing bugs/exploits.
Achieving “final” level and enemy balance (which will probably update multiple times after release and wide-scale player feedback…but such is gaming in 2023)
Ensuring that all save and grade functionality works as intended
Successfully implementing Steam Achievements
Other than that, I’m still adding graphic and audio polish elements whenever possible (and it feels like I’m constantly uncovering animation glitches dating back to the summer of 2020…). I’ve been asked whether the game will have Steam Deck and/or controller support and the answer is…not at launch. There are too many other things to focus on at the time being, and those two implementations aren’t as easy for me to support at this stage as I’d like. Again, solo-dev work takes a while. Give it time.
On additional fronts:
I held an Instagram-based contest a few weeks back with the winners receiving the chance to be inserted into GHOST MISSION as NPCs. I thought this would be a cool way to get the game some additional exposure and it seems to have paid off. The contest winners have been inserted as POWs capable of being saved by the player in mission segments 4 and 8.
Campaign-finishing unlocks (and an easter-egg based unlock) are well on their way to completion. I had a few ideas early-on for what the player would get on completing the game but none of them felt right, or they felt like tacked on afterthoughts. These included things like unlimited G.H.O.S.T. ability and unlockable character costumes, but none of the ideas really resonated with me or felt like value adds.
What will be in the finished game is something that came to me while decompressing and spacing myself from the project for an evening…another ringing endorsement for not devoting all your free time to work.
Anyway, GHOST MISSION’s official release is still slated for November 14th of this year and as I mentioned previously, the game will be a part of the October Steam Next Fest. Give it a Wishlist and download the demo if you haven’t already!
Until then…
-Kevin
Burn Below
