Hey girls and boy! First off, I owe you all an apology:
It has been so very quiet around the forums and the launch of Shift Happens and I am sorry for that!
For everyone that was wondering why the game still hasn't launched yet, I will try to clarify and give an insight into what's happening @Klonk Games lately.
Although we thought the launch would be this july we had to delay it to an - even for us - unknown date.
This was back in August, pre-gamescom and now it is November already. During this time a lot has happened for us, especially when it comes to marketing the game.
Timing is everything
That said, our initial plan was to release Shift Happens on steam this july together with the XBOX One version simultaneously.
Now, speaking from a marketing point of view as a small developer, everybody you talk to regarding this issue will tell you that timing your launch means "everything". Simply said, your release date will have a big impact on how your game will eventually sell. Obviously there's a lot more to it than just the release date but it plays an important role anyways. Most importantly, releasing an indie game in Q4 (sept to december) is always a higher risk because around this time all the bigger companies are announcing and releasing their triple A titles. So chances are very low for your game to get picked up by press and therefore won’t get much attention or any at all. Of course, there might be exceptions but exceptions prove the rule, right?
With this in mind, we had lots of discussions and came to the conclusion that, since we didn't manage to get everything perfectly done for a launch in early august, we would have to delay the release even further.
Why no patches/updates
Now you might obviously ask: "Well, if you had to delay the launch, why hasn't there been an update/patch on steam?"
One reason is staying alive. As mentioned a lot of times, we are constantly doing contract works to make ends meet and still be able to develop Shift Happens.
The other reason for this is that we had to switch yet again to a newer version of the engine we use, which is Unity 3D. From a game dev's point of view, having to switch to a newer version of your engine sometimes can mean re-doing a whole lot of work. In our case it meant playtesting (looking for old/new bugs) and lightbaking EVERYTHING again. Lightbaking is a procedure that takes a long time and a lot effort. Very simply put, lightbaking takes real time lighting from a scene and "bakes" it onto your objects so they look illuminated. This process comes with a lot of issues/bugs itself which means setting it up with parameters that work is a walk on a tightrope itself. Now having to re-do this with an updated lightbaking process means re-setting every parameter again to ensure the game looks still like before the engine update. That alone took us 2 months. Which brings me to my last point:
This patch/update
We have currently finalized light baking processes and bugs that came with the update of Unity. This patch is a bigger one due to the re-done lightmaps and will include a few bugfixes as well, but mostly minor things.
Full Release date and content
With all that explained, we are aiming for a simlaunch for early 2017 Q1 where we will launch on every platform Steam, XBOX One and PS4.
The full release will still feature the current game including:
- the 4th and last stage of the game, The Grotto! (10+1 Bonuslevel in multiplayer and 7+1 bonuslevel in singleplayer)
- The story cutscenes, explaining Bismo and Plom's connection
- Bug fixes.
I'd also like to encourage everyone to give feedback or ask questions if there are any!
Other than that I will make sure to update you more consistently on what is happening or if anything has changed for the release of the game. Believe me when I say there's nothing more that we want than to finally release our baby "Shift Happens”
Cheers,
Team of Klonk
