Planck Dev Diary #13: Alive and kicking

A couple of people have understandably written in to ask how things have been going and to make sure we haven’t gone away or given up. Rest assured we haven’t! It’s been a busy year for everyone on the team: we’ve moved, changed jobs, gone on long trips. But that’s not to say we haven’t been working on our indie dream at the same time.

So what’s been happening? The first thing we’ve been doing is continuing to iterate on Planck’s core mechanics. In particular, we’re keen on trying out a new system that makes changing the color space of the level more explicit and less of the mysterious thing it used to be. Right now in the build we’ve got special “transverse motes” that create great changes in the level’s energy when hit. This makes mixing up the palette of sounds easier and potentially much more dramatic. We’ve got more to do on these— we need to adjust the levels to work with them and do their art—but it’s a promising step towards making our suite of player actions simpler and more powerful at the same time.

We’ve also been exploring some basic prototypes for other games in a similar vein to Planck, with the idea of doing something small and simple for mobile platforms. I wasn’t lying when I said that we ambitiously bit off a little more than we could chew trying to make Planck, so our desire as a team to get something out the door together sooner rather than later led us down this particular path. The prototypes aren’t too far afield from Planck in art and sonic style, but they do show some of the other interesting ways we can combine music and gameplay using the systems we’ve already built. I think we’ll be sharing some of those prototypes with you here at some point.

Tying in with the above is a significant amount of thought that’s going into the business side of things. Some people have asked if we would be open to doing a Minecraft-style paid open Alpha. We’re definitely open to that, but I think we would need to get farther along with the game before that could happen. Right now, we’re considering a wide range of possibilities as far as platforms and release strategies go. Navigating these waters can be confusing sometimes— depending upon whom you talk to, you can get very different answers about the viability of the options out there for a game such as ours. Sorting that all out is taking longer than we want it to, but I’m of the mind that, just like in life, in business it’s best not to rush into a relationship you haven’t fully thought through.

Finally, thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent us a message. It’s always great to hear from you.

Comments

[anonymous_person]

I can't wait until you guys finish, looks like such a fun game. Great job so far!

[ElectroMite]

Yay :D