GHOST MISSION RELEASE!

Well, it’s official – GHOST MISSION is finished and will be available for purchase on Tuesday, November 21st via Steam!

The road to this day has been long and fraught with joy, frustration, fulfillment, disillusion, and everything imaginable in between. It feels utterly surreal in this moment to know that I made a video game and that it’s available to the general public, especially when I think back to January 2020 and how this project began as a Word doc story outline on a cold, rainy, Sunday afternoon.

I’ve detailed GHOST MISSION’s gestation and inspirational development in previous dev logs and I won’t rehash that here, but I will say that I’m happy with the final product and I think I accomplished what I set out to do. Will the game playing public agree? Who knows…and who knows if many people will even play it! I met my creative goals with GHOST MISSION and, financially, I’ll be pleased if the game breaks even on my meager investment. Outside of those things, I just hope that GHOST MISSION can connect with a few people and give them some kind of meaningful experience. Considering that I started my solo-game dev journey at absolute zero, I’d take that as a win. What honestly scares me more than people not liking the game is that a massive bug will crop up that I didn’t foresee and thus cement my current imposter syndrome for all time…

 Meh. If that happens, I’ll patch it.

Thank you to everyone who added the game to their Steam wish list, downloaded the demo, and sent words of excitement and encouragement along the way. Your support has meant the world and has kept me motivated to see this through to release.

I have been asked a few times what I’d do differently if I had to start development on GHOST MISSION today with the knowledge that I have now, and it’s a difficult question to answer. GHOST MISSION is a road map of my developing skillset, and in many ways it’s a diary of my day-to-day game creation journey. Being so close to it makes it difficult to consider what I’d do differently, but I can assert that I would create a working vertical gameplay slice first before starting work on level design and full campaign level structure.

I created GHOST MISSION linearly – Level 1 created before 2, 2 before 3, etc. I’d “finish” one level’s graphic assets, create and populate its rooms, test it out, note its bugs for later, and move on to the next level immediately. This process lasted from April 2020 to February 2021, at which point I went back to revise level designs, balance bosses, add gameplay mechanics and features, and jot down more notes for later revisions.

That’s…really not how you should do things. GHOST MISSION was approached with the same creative M.O. I use in writing, i.e., get all my thoughts on the page and then go back with a scalpel and hone them to something resembling a coherent product. The end result was a bug fest of conflicting and messy code that became more and more convoluted as I added functionality and features which should have been present from day one. Adding a few things here or there isn’t a big deal and is honestly expected, especially after the alpha and beta test processes, but waiting until you’re three years in to finally get around to a save function? Not so much! The functional vertical approach would also let me realize sooner what is working from an experiential standpoint and what isn’t long before a pre-alpha build is even touch by potential players. Definitely something for me to keep in mind for future projects.

Speaking of future projects, I have a few in mind. One is fully outlined and 50% scripted. I’ll probably start working on code for that early next year. Two others are mostly outlined but have no script information and I’m not certain where the “game” aspect of either would come into play. Finally, there are about three more with general ideas that I’ve yet to flesh out in any significant way. I’ll be addressing these in future blog posts as it’s way too early to speak on them now, so stay tuned.

I’ll be spending the immediate future supporting GHOST MISSION from a technical standpoint, addressing any issues that may crop up and hopefully adding Steam Deck support. An iOS release should follow thereafter and I’d like to port the game to modern consoles as well, but that process is fully dependent on how well the game performs on Steam. I’m not trying to get ahead of myself there. To have a physical GHOST MISSION release on any modern console would be a dream come true, but making that happen isn’t financially viable yet.

All right, enough rambling. Go play GHOST MISSION on November 21st, and remember to download on launch day for a 10% discount!

-Kevin

Burn Below