Margin Notes 6 : Launch Woes and Progress
- Daniel Langley
- Jan 14
- 4 min read
Hey folks, sorry for the delay in getting a new Margin Notes post out into the wilds! The transition from 2024 to 2025 held many changes and numerous surprises that got in the way of putting together a post to usher in the new year. Never-the-less here we are, new year afoot and some big updates to share. Let’s get into it!
~ THE WAY TO LAUNCH 2.0 ~
The Way To Life saw a bit of a rocky launch cycle and that’s entirely due to the fact that I’ve never shipped a game on Steam before. Getting the game ready and getting it on the digital storefront took a lot of back and forth between Steam and myself which extended the time it took to get the game out by so much that I wasn’t confident the game would be ready on time for its December 16th release window. This proved to be true which ended up meaning I needed to push the game out past December.
This means that The Way To Life is set to release on January 31st. It is officially approved by Steam and ready for launch, it’s simply waiting for the end of the month to roll around for the sales to go live. My apologies for the delay in getting this game out there into the world after so much back and forth on the release date. Ultimately, this boils down to a lack of understanding of the process and a lack of planning on my part, hard learned lessons on my end but lessons that needed to be learned one way or another, and I’m grateful that I’m able to bring that knowledge into the next project, ASSIAH.
You can wishlist The Way To Life by following this link.
All sales for The Way To Life help greatly! All money earned goes straight into ASSIAH development, so please don’t hesitate to share the game with others who it may interest.
~ FROM CATACOMBS TO COSMIC WATERS ~
I mentioned earlier that the transition from 2024 to 2025 held many changes and numerous surprises. The surprises mainly rest in my personal life, so unfortunately there’s not much else to share there other than I needed a little time to ground myself for the new year. With that done and dusted let’s get into the exciting stuff. Mainly, ASSIAH pre-production has been going well. A development schedule has been put together, the GDD updated, the script pushed into its latest draft, and all the campaign levels have been sketched out on paper. Let’s break down what all that means for ASSIAH.
The development schedule is massively important because it breaks down how long the team has to put together the entire game. Basically we took a look at the script and wrote out what we think we would need for every level to get the game built, this includes 3D assets, programming, lighting, animations, voice lines, and so on. With all these various parts laid bare we were able to look at how much time we would need to build each piece, categorizing them according to importance to help mitigate spending too much time on things that players won’t really see much of while giving more time to work on the things they’ll see more prominently in the game. With the schedule built we now have an internal time table to base our deadlines off of so that ASSIAH development stays on track and doesn’t hit us with as many unknowns. I say “as many unknowns” because in game development there will always be unknown variables that sneak in and cause scope creep, with this schedule hammered out however we hope to minimize that as much as possible. The GDD (Game Design Document) being up to date also works towards reducing scope creep and keeping costs in check. This section I can’t expand upon too much otherwise there wouldn’t be anything to look forward to. Needless to say the game is thoroughly outlined as best as can be and the GDD is paramount to keeping the scope creep to an absolute minimum. The campaign levels have all been sketched out! This is a massive step forward for the project because with all the spaces imagined in 2D we can now begin to refine and adjust the asset lists. We can now visualize what each level looks like and create some more concept art to better represent that space.
Speaking of concept art, that is exactly the next step of pre-production! We’re currently hard at work hammering out all the ideas and exploring how we want the game to look at large drawing out the different kit styles for environments in the game based on geography and faction (human or alien). There isn’t much concept art that can be shared because designs are all still in flux but here is a taste of some of the more concrete ideas.
Concept art above is considered a Work In Progress. Designs are subject to change.
Thanks for reading this month's Margin Notes!
Development on ASSIAH is full speed ahead in 2025! Remember, you can wishlist The Way To Life by following the link and all purchases of the game help fund ASSIAH’s development. I’m looking forward to sharing more as development continues.
Cheers!
-DannyMac