We're back. Ricky and I have both been starved for free time lately, so we did what anyone else would do... Take on an intern! To be honest Cypress has been more of a creative collaborator than an intern, pitching her own ideas and working with limited instruction from us. This little partnership only took place for a few weeks all up, but we've made plenty of progress. Together, Ricky and Cypress have made some real headway on the thematic and story aspects of the game which we hope to begin implementing soon. I just want to take a moment to thank  Cypress for all her effort and commend her on her creativity.

In the mean time I've been working on new mechanics, specifically maze rooms. These are a new type of encounter the player will face during their adventures. When you enter a maze some of your existing units and a few new ones are scattered throughout the room. Each move you make has a chance to cause the floor to collapse and you must think carefully and choose which units to rescue. We've been planning this feature for a long time but it's (mostly) working in game now and adds a heap of variety to the runs.

I mentioned this on twitter recently but I'll mention it again; we're shooting for Public Preview 2 to come out in early October. We've been focusing a little on branding and marketing assets for the game lately as a result, I've refreshed all the screenshots on itch, our website and Steam to reflect the latest look etc. More importantly, Ricky and I are discussing how we're going to approach development and release after Preview 2. We're considering an insider's early access model here on itch.io and/or via Patreon, we'd like to use early access to build a community of people who resonate with our design effort on this game and would be willing to support ongoing development.

We are not yet committing to this approach, but we have long considered a Patreon where we could share our thinking on game technology and design with those who would be interesting to hear our perspective. Reach out on Twitter if you have thoughts about this or would like to know more!

Cheers,

Ben