2024 Roadmap and plans

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Heya everyone,

As we step into 2024, I wanted to share a bit about what I've got planned for the whole year. This is going to be pretty packed, and I'm sure it's going to be very exciting! Here's all you can expect from me this year:

Patreon discontinuation

As planned since the great Patreon banwave, and even though my page didn't get banned, I'll delete my page on 31st, January. I still have a few useful posts to save and put back here, like the debug command list.

Polishing for Perfection: The 1.0.0 Update

Following 0.9.9, my efforts will shift towards Release 1.0.0. This is a pretty important milestone, as this is where I’ll consider the game "finished." This doesn’t mean "completed," but more like a state when I can look at it and see it's playable from start to end, without temporary mechanisms and with a main story that can be finished.

So, what does this imply? This means that for this release, I’ll make a giant pass across all the pesky little bugs, polish the world, add more interactables in the world (something that I find very lacking), extend some features I implemented but never really expanded upon (NPC accidents for example), add more little events playing in and out, use more some places that are currently used only for a side quest...I think you can see the goal here: Not adding a ton of new content, but polishing and expanding what already exists.

For the public release, there's quite a lot of stuff that was added in between the 0.9.0 and the future 1.0.0 ! This is why it's especially important for me to take the time to make it good and polished. I know this is taking more time than my usual release schedule (more on that later), but it's about time to make things better, and that take time.

The projected date for that update is the end of Q1 for members, so late March- early April. The public release should follow about a month later.

Community Insights: Survey Results
Somewhere around the 1.0.0 release, I'll be sharing the insights from last year's survey. Your feedback has been invaluable, and the first dive into the results has been really interesting. It will be extremely useful going forward. Some of you might be wondering, why taking so much time? It's only results right?
The answer is that I only have the raw results for now, and I've just began analysing it . Going for a serious survey analysis take a little bit of time, and I really want to be serious here to respect everyone that took the time to reply.

There's also a tons of verbatim from the survey that are more difficult to analyse, and some asked interesting questions, so I'll be sure to answert his in a separate FAQ or something like that.

Balancing Act: Post-Release and New Horizons

Post-1.0.0, I'll be juggling two roles: continuing to support The Pacifier Project with additional content, and kickstarting development for our next project. This is where your voices matter. I'll be reaching out to you to gather insights and preferences for the direction of our new venture, using the survey results to better orient the direction of the future game.
The goal here is to continue to provide content for The Pacifier Project, because there’s still a ton of things that can be added to the game, and also because, very likely, it will be some time before something "playable" comes out for the next project.

New Game, New Goals

The ultimate goal for the new project this year is to develop a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – a prototype that will serve as the foundation for further development. It's a big step, and one that marks the beginning of another journey. On that road, I may release small prototypes so you can test out features to see what works and what doesn’t. I really want to build something on a much stronger basis than The Pacifier Project, and I want to be very careful going forward with all the very basic features, ensuring that it’s tested and feels "fun" right from the start.

A Change in Pace: Quality Over Quantity

Here comes a very important yet controversial point. During the last two years, I did my best to release a monthly update of the game. I think this is very important, both for consistency, the ability to gather feedback, and to give people something to expect.
However, I feel like it comes with some drawbacks that are slowly compounding over time, namely stress over deadlines, rushed updates, lack of QA, and bugs creeping out. To be fair, most of these drawbacks come from bad planning in the first place by wanting to cram too much into a one-month period. So, for the best interest of everyone, I’ve decided to step back a bit. This is especially important since this year, there’s going to be a small overlap between the ending project (The Pacifier Project) and the next game, meaning I won’t be able to dedicate myself 100% to releasing something for the current month.
A monthly release will not be set in stone this year. Instead, here’s the general outline:

- There will be a guaranteed member-only quarterly release for The Pacifier Project during 2024.

- Starting from 1.0.0, if an update has the potential to be ready earlier, I will release it (cosmetic things, simple additions…) when it’s done.

- The next game will not have any planned release this year but will have multiple prototypes and demos released to test out.

As for the public release:

- The 1.0.0 will release for public availability soon after the member-only version.

- Another public release will probably happen at the end of the year with all the new stuff.

- There probably won’t be any public release nor demo for the new game in 2024 given how early the project will be.

 I think this change in approach will help with general game quality and polish.

In closing, 2024 is a year of both endings and beginnings! I’m very excited for all this year has to offer, and I hope you’ll continue to enjoy my work. I would like to thank you all for your constant support during this year. This was a pretty packed year, with a lot of hardships, especially at the end where Patreon decided to kick us out. I'm glad we managed to sort things out. Thank you again, and wish you all the best for this year!