Sorry for the lack of updates recently. I've been busy hacking away on some systems for NPCs, Story, Localisation, Costumes and Item inventory, Costume stats upgrading, Load Save, and all that fun stuff. On top of that we're iterating on the terrain art and character animations. It's all coming along nicely. When all the new systems are up and running I'll release some new videos. Cheers, Antony.
Hi all, It's been a while since I've posted. I've actually been on holiday for the last few weeks but I'm back now so progress and more posts should start flowing shortly.
Hi all, Another update on development. We've had a slight change in direction. We had difficulty getting the fully open world ski field game to flow and remain interesting, turns out you can't make that trip up the ski field very exciting, even in a game. We've moved towards more of an endless downhill runner style game which has had a lot of positive effects on gameplay. Faster paced, easier controls, less confusion for players, etc. We've also changed the name of the game and are working on some new art to back it up. Epic Ski Trip will now be known as Ski Pirates.
Here's a video of us previewing Ski Pirates for Eli from Touch Arcade. http://toucharcade.com/2015/03/09/gdc-2015-ski-pirates/
Not really sorry. We're getting into the meat of development now, nailing down our release feature set deciding what to push to updates as well as polishing up content to the standard we expect from ourselves. We've got a tentative release date early August but these things alway change so I wouldn't hold my breath. If you have any specific questions I'd more than happy to try and answer them for you.
Alright! I thought you guys were close to finishing. My bad. Still some months to go though! Keep rocking guys, I'll welcome ski pirates with open arms when it's done around August.
Looking forward to Ski Pirates, however is there any chance of you all trying out the open-world ski concept again at some point? I thought the videos of it looked great and I'd love to see a game like that reach completion.
Hi Cevan, Unfortunately that's not looking likely. The trouble we found was an open world ski game is that it's incredibly hard to communicate to the player what the point of the game is. There's no obvious measure of success, there's no obvious way to tell the player they are improving and to encourage them to keep playing. I also found it was at odds with how people play games on mobile platforms. Most people, like it or not, play in short sessions. The trouble with an open world game is there is a lot of 'dead time' when you have to travel from location to location without actually accomplishing anything... The more we traveled down the rabbit hole the more we found an open world (mobile Diablo or GTA style) skiing game was just way to big in scope and way out of our skill set to be feasible for our tiny team of 2. Rest assured that everything we do and every decision we make is to ensure we deliver the funnest and richest gaming experience we can with our skills and resources available.
Now that it's early August, I was wondering if there are any development updates? Not expecting release this week or anything, just maybe some news. Thanks!
Hey Jerutix, If it's news you want it's news you'll get! Ski Pirates is coming a long nicely. We've rebuilt the terrain generator and finalised a lot of the terrain assets now. I still have a lot of levels to build to get the variety we want. We've added in mini goals and an XP levelling up system to give the players some more long term meta mechanics and another way to unlock content more quickly. I've also got plans to add co-operative goals with your friends or a select 'Special Friend' so you and a friend a can try and achieve some simple tasks together. We're working hard on the UI and menu flow at the moment. We're trying to make the play experience as intuitive and low resistant as possible. There are still some issues with UI layout we need to address to make things like power ups and costume item unlocking more intuitive and easier to find and use. After that we need to balance gameplay with the new power ups, goals and XP system, and finally test test test test test. We'll be releasing a soft launch on Android and maybe iOS before official release. The soft launch will likely be restricted to smaller english speaking countries such as Australia and New Zealand. This will just be to test that everything is working as expected. Systems like cloud multi device cross platform load save, analytics, IAP, incentivised Ads and all that lovely monetisation stuff as well as tweaking some of the balance. So.. as you can see there's still a tonne to do! but the game is looking a lot better now than it ever has. Once all the menus are in I'll probably do another few gameplay videos so you guys and girls can see the progress. Thanks for you patients and interest. It means a lot to us. Cheers, Antony.
Hi all, I'm sorry to have to say this but we have some bad news for Ski Pirates: We have cancelled development. I'm sorry to all of you that were looking forward to playing it. Please know that we have not made this decision lightly. We have put a lot of time and effort into Ski Pirates but sadly it just wasn't coming together as we had hoped it would. Thank you all for your interest in us and Ski Pirates. We appreciate it. Hopefully you'll be able to enjoy another game we bring to you in the future. Cheers, Antony, Rocket Jump.
