We Are The Caretakers Development Update — 10/15/2019
Hello! It’s been awhile since we gave an update on We Are The Caretakers. Much of the team was extra busy preparing for various industry events and working hard on features for our IGF submission earlier this month.
Last week Stephen attended PAX Australia, and Scott and Xalavier attended IndieCade in Santa Monica, California. In addition to showing WATC at IndieCade, Scott spoke as part of a panel on running Kickstarters, and Xalavier ran a Night Game called “Fulfillment.” We were able to show We Are The Caretakers in the “Game Tasting” area, and received some good feedback on our updated build. Most notably the game’s core ideas seem to be understood clearly now without hitting bugs or points of confusion. Players responded particularly well to the new things that have made their way into the build since SAAM Arcade, such as the first tracks from Jon Parra’s original soundtrack, timed scouting, more polished encounters, and new rooms in the HQ.
Speaking of new things, we updated the screenshots on our Steam page to show more of gameplay and the new UI! You can check those out here (https://store.steampowered.com/app/1042960/We_Are_The_Caretakers/) and Wishlist the game if you haven’t already. We’ll continue to update the page with more info as we move along in development.
IGF Submission!
As mentioned earlier, at the beginning of October we submitted to the Independent Games Festival! Here is our entry page: http://igf.com/we-are-caretakers
If you happen to be a judge or juror for the IGF, be sure to check out the build! We Are The Caretakers and Heart Shaped Games was actually name-checked in an IGF press release (http://igf.com/article/igf-2020-accepts-over-550-innovative-and-exciting-entries), which we’re hoping bodes well for our chances of getting nominated.
October Sprints
For the rest of the month, we’re going to be focused on rounding out our demo of the full “Era 1” loop of the game. Our campaign is organized into a series of missions called Eras, and we want to have a “complete” look at how the game will play, so we can evaluate how players interact with the progression systems (character leveling, tech tree, game balance, etc). As part of this, we’re building out an Prologue level that will act as a more guided tutorial, as well as finishing some important systems such as unlocking technologies, upgrading characters to different classes, basic save/load, and more.
Our plan is to continue sharing our development via these devlogs, as well as weekly streams. Our next dev stream is later today at 3pm EST on Twitch, so be sure to stop in and say hi! Let us know if you have any questions about IndieCade, the new features were working on, or anything else you might want to know about WATC. Until next time!
