Welcome to January’s monthly update for Akuto: Mad World. This month I had to give some bad news, but work on the game continued. I will talk more about the bad news in detail, but the gist of it is that online mode is not coming to Akuto: Mad World.
You can read on to see our reasons for the cancellation of the online mode, and 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.
January Update
So last month I did say I was going to work on and release a new online mode for the game this month, but this did not happen due to deals falling through in late 2018, causing months of work to be scrapped.
I did attempt an online mode in early 2018, but that didn’t meet my standards and that was also scrapped. The second attempt for online mode is currently in mid-development but most likely won’t be finished. So what happened?
Well at the end of 2018, I started going through how much I had already spent on the game and how much I was expecting to make in sales. By my calculations, it will be very unlikely that I will ever make a profit from this game. This is because the development budget for the game had to be doubled halfway in development.
I initially planned to release the game in Q4 2017 or Q1 2018, but due to circumstances out of my control, I had to push back the release date. Because of that, I decided to scrap a prototype I was working on at that time and used the budget of that prototype for Akuto’s development throughout 2018.
I am now increasingly close to running out of money for this project, and I will definitely not be able to complete the development of online mode for Akuto with the remaining budget. Now, instead of releasing a half-working online mode, I am going to use the remaining of the budget to complete the remaining features of the game (leaderboards, achievements, trading cards, etc.) and polish the game.
I apologize to anyone who was looking forward to the online mode. Even though I initially did not plan for online mode, I did want it in the game as I continued to develop the game.
Plans for February
I am now working on completing the game and polishing it so that players who already own the game, and who want to play it, will have a good time with it.
I know this is not much, but the one good news from all of this is that the game will be out much sooner than I planned. Expect the release date to be announced very soon.
And remember, if you like the game, recommend it to your friends or leave us a review.