Welcome to November’s monthly update for Akuto: Mad World. There was no new content released this month, as I was focusing on important behind-the-scenes business for Akuto: Mad World during October. I completed that work, which led to some bad and good news.
You can read on to see what happened in November. At the bottom of this post, you will find what I am planning for next month. And remember, if you like the game, recommend it to your friends or leave us a review.
Akuto: Mad World is available from Steam, Humble Store, and itch.io. Join me on my Discord server to talk more about Akuto: Mad World and my other games.
November Update
I am going to start this dev log by talking about the behind-the-scenes work I have been doing. Most of you might not be aware, but I had been talking with a publisher for the past 8 months. The talks with them were going great and they had big plans for Akuto: Mad World. I liked the vision they had for the game and started developing the game towards that. That was one of the reasons I started changing the gameplay over the past few months, and also created an ‘Experimental Branch’ on Steam. However, last month the deal fell apart and now I am where I was 8 months ago, but with the game split into two.
So what does that mean for the future of the game?
Well, the game is still going to be developed by me, and most likely also published by me. By me, I mean Hut 90.
My new plan was to combine to the two versions of the game into one, final, polished version. I decided the final version will be more in the direction of the game in the experimental branch.
So I started doing that by removing the minigames, level editor, and singleplayer from the game. I also brought back ‘Score’ and ‘Score Hardcore’ modes. In the future, ‘Stock’, ‘Score’, and ‘Score Hardcore’ modes will be available for online as well.
Regarding online, I removed the current version of it that used P2P (Peer-to-Peer). I will be creating the online mode in the near future using a server-based architecture. I decided this because I found that the P2P was causing issues with 90% of gamers who tried to play online mode. I will write more about the online mode in a future dev log.
The next thing I did was remove all levels, apart from Acme City and Finale’ from the game. I wanted the game to have a consistent art style, and the art style I decided to go for was a similar art style as the Acme City level. I designed and created 8 new levels over the past month, bringing the total level count to ten levels.
I removed some melee and ranged weapons I had planned due to budget and time constraints. I also removed the ‘Specials’ from the game as I found them too similar to the ‘Power-ups’.
The last thing I did this month was create a progression system. Initially, I wanted players to unlock weapons and levels for offline play as the continue playing the game, but I decided against the levels idea. Some weapons are still locked until the player has played the game for X amount of time. The main thing that player’s will unlock are hats. They can then wear these hats during offline and online play.
Plans for December
My goal for next month is to release a stable build that has most of the offline features implemented before mid-December. At that time, I will also remove the experimental branch from Steam as it will become redundant.
I also want to start focusing on the online mode after the stable build release, and having that ready within the next few months.
And that should keep me busy pretty much all month.
Oh yeah, one last thing. My goal is to release the game from Early Access in Summer 2019.
And remember, if you like the game, recommend it to your friends or leave us a review.