Rant
In the game development industry, it is essentially guaranteed that at some point in your project you will look at the entire thing and realize that one of the most core components, central to the entire design, has simply been done wrong from the beginning. Depending on budget, or more often leadership and partner deadlines, it often then becomes a choice for the development team: Do we put an ugly bandaid on this feature and release it as-is, knowing that it is wrong? Or do we invest a significant amount of time and effort to drastically change the direction of development at such a late stage?
The two most complained about things in the previous version seem to be the lame tutorial, the difficulty of learning the controls, and the fact that it is hard to get crystals during the mid-game when the story tells you to go talk to the pirates. Addressing these complaints have been the primary focus of my most recent development work.
I usually name these updates both before and after making them. Before making them I have an idea of what I intend to make, and then afterwards they are nothing like what I intended so I need a new name. This one started off as update 0.5.2.00 and will be released as 0.6.0.00. Oops.
I rant about what’s coming in the next update.