Let's talk about Amie Dungeon

Just some thoughts I've been having that I'd like to share.

I started this project back in February, super excited about it even though I was unsure if people would be into it at all. To my surprise though, a lot of people were! And that was really motivating. A lot of people cared about the game and wanted to try it out. We even made a group of testers, who have helped me SO MUCH through development. I'm really thankful of all the help and support I've received from everybody. Especially considering it's, well, just a "lewd game".

However, if you're in the discord server, you may have noticed I haven't been very active these last couple months. To be honest, I've been putting a lot of time and effort into this project throughout the year, and at times, it's been more than I should have— keeping me from doing other things I cared about, like my art and composing music. I focused on this a little too much, and big surprise, I ended up getting kinda burned.

So, I felt I needed to take some time away from it and recharge my batteries. I'm still looking forward to developing the game further, I really enjoy working on it and I have been working on it— just less often than before.

Instead, I decided to shift my focus to other things. Like practicing art, which I've been doing a lot lately and I'm really happy about. I also started a (much) smaller side game project for fun too, which helps me keep my mind fresh in the meanwhile. And beyond all that, I went through some family stuff last month that also required a lot of my attention.

Then there's also the matter that I've been having some money problems for a few months now, so that makes everything more complicated. But I've been planning some commission stuff to help with that, which I'll begin working on soon and is something I'm really excited about (more on that later).

Anyway, all of that combined led me to think a bit about Amie Dungeon in general.
The reason I wanted to do a closed beta in the first place was that I didn't want to spoil the experience for players. I didn't want players to play an unfinished game and get bored of it instantly because of the lack of content. But after months of work done, and even though there's still A LOT of missing stuff in the game... I kinda feel it's in a better place now. It's at least playable. And let's be honest, most people will play it only for the lewds anyway, they won't really care about the dialogue and stuff.

So my thoughts are, would it be a good idea to maybe just release the beta publicly already? I can't know how long it will take me to finally get to version 1.0 and out of the beta builds, and honestly, it just feels unfair at this point to make people wait that much longer for a small game like this.
On the other hand though, I'm still thinking— I don't want people to get bored at the characters with almost no dialogue and empty dungeons. But I can't say how long it would take to finish otherwise. And it's not like people can't come back afterwards if they want to check out the updated stuff, anyway.

So... yeah. I'm not sure what the best course of action is at this moment, but I think I'm leaning towards releasing the game as an open beta already. I know a lot of you have been waiting for it. And I'm honestly sorry it's still so unfinished, but I hope you can have some fun with it while I keep slowly working on more updates.

I'm gonna make a Twitter poll about this, and I'd really appreciate it if you shared your thoughts in there. You're all awesome, and I want to thank you all so much for your time and support. We'll see how this goes!

Edit: here's the poll.
https://twitter.com/moodylewds/status/1335010248910893058

Lots of hugs.
— Moody. 🐾

Viewed:	165 times
Added:	3 years, 4 months ago 05 Dec 2020 00:47 CET

3 Comments on this Journal

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Afterglow

3 years, 4 months ago

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Sounds like a good decision, thanks for filling us in Moody, and thanks for being caring and dedicated!

Agabu

3 years, 4 months ago

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Well... You can just use a difference in terminology here, really. You can either call it a Beta or a Demo, and games have been releasing Demos to build up hype for ages.

CDivisionPiplup

3 years, 2 months ago

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It's been about a month by now, but I decided that maybe I should give my thoughts.

Now, you saying this in particular kind of surprises me -

"	The reason I wanted to do a closed beta in the first place was that I didn't want to spoil the experience for players. I didn't want players to play an unfinished game and get bored of it instantly because of the lack of content.

I can instantly say, this probably wouldn't be the case for most fans, and I can generally point to an example of a game that could be currently considered unfinished - Library of Ruina, if you're wondering - Which isn't finished, and yet consistently releases enough content, and occasionally takes break off of development, and yet, the fans of said game have always been happy with what they've been given, except for one isolated incident. In my honest opinion, most genuine fans of the game would be fine with waiting for content updates for Amie Dungeon, no matter how long it took - After all, you're probably the only developer on the game, and everyone will understand if you can't update the game for awhile, or if you're burned out by it, and need a break.

What I'm trying to say is, I don't think anyone would really mind playing an unfinished game, as long as it's good, and/or entertaining, so to speak. Given how Amie Dungeon is, I'm sure this would be the case from what we've seen so far. Heck, even Library of Ruina started off small, with barely any content, but fans gobbled it up and were content with what they were given in early access! (They paid $20 for that, for reference!) But they were entirely happy with what they were given, and as content continued to be released, their support for the developers grew - And I'm sure this would be the case here for you, as well.

Of course, this is just my opinion on this matter, but still, I hope you can get why I feel this way.

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